Blog
Thoughts and Insights
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Optional Module: Bias in Data Description
This optional module hits close to home. As an archivist, I find myself in the lineage of a long line of data brokers and record mediators. Many times my profession gets blamed for things beyond our control. An extreme example is that we can not control that Julius Caesar burned the Library of Alexandria down.…
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Digital Storytelling
Our small group on Monday discussed what makes storytelling digital versus other methods. Pete pointed out that a board definition would include things like Ken Burns documentaries, that they are passively consumed. Should that be considered digital? Our group came to the consensus that there needed to be an element of engagement and agency on…
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Nope…Not For Me!
I will admit at the outset that perceptions of this week’s material were colored (or de-saturated) by my struggle with insomnia. I’ll start with the positives of GIS mapping. Siebert, rightly, points out that history is a study of spatial dimension, but historians often fail to examine it due to the difficulty of capturing it.…
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Privateers, Pirates, and Buccaneers…Oh my!
Made available courtesy of piracy In Jim Hension’s Muppet Treasure Island, the late legendary actor, Tim Curry, gave a rousing defense of piracy in the song A Professional Pirate. However, a group of puppets (Curry included) are not the only ones to defend piratical acts and the people that commit them. In Villains of All…
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The Project of Managing Projects
The head librarian summoned the department heads to a conference room in early June of 2024. She informed us that the board of trustees had voted to shutter the library at a separate school in Manhattan as part of a larger affiliation agreement, and that we would now provide it with library services. Then came…
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A Digital Reading Room?
As an archivist, I am no stranger to digitization. In 2009, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Society of American Archivists (SAA) issued a joint statement providing guidelines concerning access, stating “repositories must be committed to preserving research materials and to making them available for research as quickly as practicable following…
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What Is Digital History?
Adam Crymble argues that it is difficult to define digital history and that the field would be better served by historiographical studies rather than arguing about definitions.(1) His book explored the development of digital history as various periods where historians worked with computers, including cliometrics, archiving, teaching, self-training, and communication. Like many truth claims, proponents…
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Introduction
Denton Waits is the head archivist at Virginia Theological Seminary, where they manage extensive institutional and manuscript collections, including the African American Episcopal Historical Collection. They hold a Master of Arts in History with a concentration in Public History from the University of West Georgia (2014) and a Master of Arts in Practical Theology from…