This week’s e-articles addressed the still nebulous response of the public history profession to the internet, despite the more than two decades which this technology has existed for. Joshua Brown’s piece made interesting points about the dichotomy between database-like interconnectivity versus narrative storylines in electronic history media. His observation on the difficulty of producing commercially viable historical e-media like the Who Built America project reminded me of our in class discussion two weeks ago on history in video games. Modern consumers of video game-like electronic media such as the Lost Museum Flash application are used to an ever increasing level of sophistication as the electronic media industry evolves, making it very difficult for academic projects with limited funding to compete for popular attention. This is likely to continue to be a problem of “popular history” types of electronic media.
Both Cohen and Brennan and Kelly deal with the difficulty of documenting, archiving, and sharing episodes of recent history in the digital era. I appreciated Cohen’s observations about the paradox of digital media simultaneously expanding the range of documentary evidence of a historical event, and threatening the survival of that evidence by the media’s fickle nature. Brennan and Kelly’s article was also interesting in its exploration of people’s hesitation to utilize an electronic archive that discussed recent history. After reading Archive Stories, this hesitation is understandable, if unfortunate. Politics, in the broadest sense of the word, is always present in archives of any type. This observation is simply much more obvious in easily accessible archives that are committed to incidents of recent history, when the politics are still “hot.” The fear that one’s personal contribution to an archive might be picked instantaneously by any of a limitless number of bloggers and then disseminated to the entire internet in a radically re-contextualized manner is reasonable. One can only hope that people realize this is the risk of sharing such content in a democratic institution such as the internet, and will have the courage to contribute in spite of it.
I found your concluding thoughts to be extremely interesting and pertinent. As we read about and discussed in class, the September 11 Digital Archive and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank illustrate this point so well. I was not aware of the limitations on the September 11 Digital Archive until Professor Koslow discussed the absence of materials and narratives from people who lost family and loved ones in the attacks. Though traditional archives also experience issues of gaps in their collections, the lack of privacy, easy access, and ability to disseminate material on the Internet contribute to the gaps in digital collections. Archives frequently deal with donor restrictions or people apprehensive to donate their materials in repositories where research requires more work than sitting on your computer in the privacy of your home. Brennan and Kelly make a great point about the necessity of people working for digital collections. For people apprehensive of donating their personal narratives, human interaction will be a major factor in obtaining the oral histories.
ReplyDeleteI also thought about our video game discussion as I read about "Lost Museum" and other interactive, historical mediums. I was thinking about the presentation of history in museums versus the presentation of science. It seems that it's easier to create interactive atmospheres when dealing with scientific topics as opposed to the historical. As you pointed out, it's difficult to compete for attention and to stay 'popular' without being current. I worked at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, and our museum contained some interactive portions, but I think what really drew people in were the shows - both containing lots of special effects. Like The Hall of Presidents, it's Disney-fied, but it does get people interested in history.
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