Tag: Article annotations

I believe I was supposed to listen to the podcast, that’s were I got the in formation for the question.

1.What made the smith want to do this type of community service where the preserve the history of the people. Is there a fee or what do they get out of it?

2.What is considered history? my graduation video, family party? who deciphers what is meaningful and what is not.

3.Is this the best way to preserve Black History? Maybe, some things are meant to be forgotten, generations come and generations go.

4.Over time digital tools will change and get better, is this really the best way to preserve history especially with the advancement of ai? I feel as if its a good start but is not sustainable

5. STL the Smithsonian, is this the only history museum that is doing this process and why do they mostly want to focus on black community’s? not saying its a bad thing but why is this the main focus it should be all history. It makes me feel like its a PR thing.

Smithsonian – STL partnership and black history

• Does digitizing these records effect how the public will interpret STL’s history?
• Are there significant STL black history gaps this project aims to uncover? or rather just history from the perspective of individuals?
• has this been done anywhere else? if so did it succeed?
• I think the quote “whether it’s your grandma doing oral history, or it’s a high-school graduation on VHS” does well to represent the many ways history can be captured and conveyed.
• I think that if they ran this program through schools or libraries and had students bring things in, it could be both educational and forward the Smithsonian’s goals.

-Do digital tools take away the need to visit historical sites for place-based research? To a degree, yes, but also no. Because you can’t totally get that experience without actually visiting or seeing the historical sites. I think that place-based research is important when answering some questions, but others can be answered by digital adaptations.

-Should historians treat digital tools as supplements or as primary research methods? I think they should use digital tools as a supplementary research method because words/things change over time, and it should not be relied on solely.

-Putnam argues that digitalization has fundamentally changed how historians work. They can now jump between databases using keyword searches. In the past, they have spent weeks in a single archive.

-My Takeaway: Putnam is not against or anti-digital tools; she just argues that historians need to be self-aware about how digital tools shape what we see and what we miss.

-How might text-searching change the types of arguments historians construct? (This is a question I would want to hear what people think because I don’t know)

How Does the Digitization of Information Change How We Think?
Putnam mentions in her article how digitized databases allow researchers to save time when completing research, but these databases may actually limit the type of research historians are conducting. Will historians be drawn to conduct research based solely on how easily certain information can be found using keyword searches, versus taking the time to find out about other information in their field?

The term shadows
I really enjoy the idea of using the term “shadows” to describe how digitization changes the access to research information online compared to what continues to exist today. As you digitize documents or photos of people, you bring more history online for everyone to see. However, there are many people/groups that have no way to digitize their history or have not yet had their history digitized. Who gets to choose which items from which communities will be digitized? What happens to those stories that we cannot see because they have not been digitized?

Does the Digital World Make History More Global?
Putnam discusses the notion that digital archives provide historians with a place to conduct transnational research. However, I do not believe there is a direct cause/effect relationship between having access to digital archives and creating a greater understanding of the world on a global scale. Will digital access to documents make the information on these documents more connected to one another, or will digital access simply create an appearance of greater connection via the documents being on the same platform?

Local vs. National – The Battles Between Local/Regional Histories and National Histories
Putting aside the enormously important battle to preserve Black history in St. Louis, how do you think local history communities are working with or against national institutions such as the Smithsonian? Do you think that maintaining local histories without the influence of national institutions is still more valuable than digitizing local histories with the assistance of national institutions?

Access and Inequality
Both of the articles talk about access. While digitization of archives enables history to be available for more people, there are still limitations based on money and technology. I want to explore if digitizing makes it possible for all people to enjoy history in equal fashion, or is it just transferring power to those who already have resources?

• – For the first time, historians can find without knowing where to look. As a result, at an unprecedented rate we are finding connections in unexpected places…
  • – “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey” – Ralph Waldo Emerson (American philosopher)

• We risk overemphasizing the importance of that which connects, and underestimating the weight of that which is connected: emplaced structures, internal societal dynamics.

• I seek to offer something equally simple: the suggestion that we could not be doing what we are, at the pace that we are, with the range that we are, if it were not for the search box before us.

• Google Books allowed me—in the space of three minutes at my desk, rather than a day at the library—to find out enough about African American showman William Benbow to know that I wanted to know more.

• The podcast is the exact counterpoint to the Lara Putnam article. It emphasizes the importance of technology to fight against erasure of history. You can complain about having too much/too easy of access to history/fact/sources, but you can’t overstate the devastation of history being lost forever.