Collecting and Preserving Digital History

A handful of images made into a slideshow, through Flickr.
Here's a map for your viewing pleasures...


Reading Reaction 4.

In this chapter of Cohen and Rosenzweig we really get an idea of the intended audience in their writing, which is not necessarily restricted to a certain age, rather a certain section of internet users with lower levels of proficiency on the web. The writers explain, “It can involve more technical hurdles than a simple history website; legal and ethical concerns, such as invasion of privacy and the ownership of contributed materials; and skills, like the marketing techniques we discussed in Chapter 5, that are unfamiliar to most historians.” It’s historians that the authors are singling out. Even though the authors are bringing up important issues that arise, it is reiterating a familiar theme in Public History, that being the historian is behind on the technological advancements, sort of stuck in their old ways. For such historians, the authors point out that the use of the internet is a likely supplement to the way they’ve always been doing their work, orally passing it on through lectures and discussions. That is where I differ in opinion, because the internet provides a number of ways to present history to the vast audience on the web. Videos, audio recordings, and images are very useful in relaying history, and these formats can be put together tastefully and with more appeal depending on the historian’s understanding of the format.

Don't be left in the dust...

Moving on in the readings, the section on preserving digital history gave way to some personal reflection on how I have somewhat of a season for when I back files up. I make sure to back up all my files on my external hard drive before finals week and before any large paper is due to ensure my security from a laptop dropping. Who’s to say that the external hard drives will not accidentally get dropped, or spilled on? The authors talk about how backing files up is not a difficult task, and that we should “store copies in more than one place, for example, at home and in your office, or in a safe-deposit box at your bank and your desk drawer.” If we were to be working with large websites circulating massive amounts of data we would probably be working with the method of mirroring, which is the copying of data to other computers, constantly backing the files up.

At least your lovely cup is still in tact... You didn't need those files anyways.

At first, I understood the Flickr Commons project to be a page where many institutions would share old images of which they did not have sufficient information on. The institutions post pictures up to the Flickr site and anybody is allowed and encouraged to comment any information they may have on that image. After examining how and when I would use it, I discovered it could be a useful tool in doing research, as well as getting all sorts of people involved in the online discussions about a variety of historical topics. This is a great example of the public and digital world coming together and working hand in hand with many historical societies.