Marin Escalera

In these times where technology is everywhere and anywhere it is only natural that it extends into the academic world as well. This is seen with achieves that gradually becoming digital and the growth of digital public history. This growth and connection between the two fields is seen when looking at the roles of historians and archivist. While these two are often confused as being the same position they do hold different priorities as seen with experts Trevor Owens and Jesse Johnston. They state that “archivist work on systems for enabling access to collections and themselves anchored in longstanding commitments to infrastructure for enabling the use of records” (pg. 151) while historians add new forms of scholarship and “increasingly function as forms of knowledge infrastructure” (pg. 151). So each side of the party does their part to keep the history alive. Archivists organize the material and ensure that it stays preserved while historians use the material to grow the knowledge surrounding it. As things become more digital their paths cross a lot more especially with the concept of crowdsourcing and the overall topic of digital public history.

            Talking about achieves and the increase of digital archives brings in the question of what is the difference between an archive and a digital archive? According to Owens and Johnston an archive is “any kind of set content that has been moved from active use” (pg. 153) while a digital archive is a place for “publishing and sharing digitized primary sources” (pg. 153). While this is stated they also argue that archives are not just websites but rather institutions. This explanation makes their original definition for what a digital archive feel a bit contradictory but it makes sense in the context of digital archives being more looked after than your average website. As we saw with crowdsourcing things are doubled checked by experts just as they would be in an in person archive. Alongside these in person archives are also libraries that everyone knows and loves. Just like the archives libraries have also stepped into the field of the digital world with the concept of “digital libraries” which are surprisingly different form digital archives. Marii Valjataga points out that digital libraries are “focused collection [s] of digital objects [. . .], along with methods for access and retrieval, and for selection, organization and attendance of the collection. “ (pg. 187) Alongside this libraries also shifted towards the concept of Library 2.0 which is a new model that uses online collaboration and is user center to ensure effective services.  The rise of technology has brought so many changes to academic spaces and has produced an increase in collaboration between historians and archivist. These changes have made information more accessible and available to the public and have even allowed the public to be able to be part of the process too.

            This past week I was also able to see how these changes affect how things are achieved. Visiting the UNT archives and Special Collections allowed me to see how much work is put into creating these digital archives and that it’s not just scanning things and moving on. We were able to see the process of how things are organize and what machinery they use to capture each item. I was quite surprised in seeing the size of some of the special scanners they would use. Some of them were the size of small dining room table and looked like projector from the 90s. It was interesting to see overall. Though what really caught my eye was how many things they go through and take their time with each item. It really emphasized the care archivist have for the items. The process doesn’t stop there though, once they have the scan they then move on to digitalize it and making it accessible to the public with the addition of tags. As a historian who is always looking through databases for sources tags are essential parts of the research. Archivists know this and make sure to add tags based on location, time period and theme. Even before the scanning happens I noticed while walking through the archives that many of their boxes have the tags on them already so it something that they start off with. Overall this experience really opened my eyes on how much work is put into these archives and how grateful I am as historian for all the hard work archivist put in to making sure these archives are well organized and accessible not only to us but to the general public as well.  They have made it possible that digital public history is able to grow as much as it has.

Owens, Trevor, Johnston, Jesse A. “ Archivists as Peers in Digital Public History” in Handbook of Digital Public History (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, 2022)

Valjataga, Marii. “ Digital Public History in Libraries” in Handbook of Digital Public History (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, 2022)