Copyright Dalbello

LIDA 2001

The Virtual Archive and National Memory: Toward A Comparative Study of the Digital Library Models in North American and European Setting

Marija Dalbello Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

New Brunswick, New Jersey, USAdalbello@scils.rutgers.edu

http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~dalbello

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LIDA 2001

European vs. American Context ________________________________________Centralization (European)National infrastructure within government legislation; projects; top-down approach; involvement of governments and ministries of culture, managing cultural heritage

•Dispersal and Consolidation within a public policy framework (American)Transinstitutional and cross-Institutional partnerships; National Information Infrastructure (NII) (Telecommunications Act of 1996); decentralized, competitive and cooperative; grant-driven; bottom-up approach with minimum government involvement; evolutionary growth and selection

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LIDA 2001

Theoretical Perspectives________________________________________•Theory of Cultural Production digital library’s role as cultural agency; American institutions--the sites for the production, dissemination, and appropriation of cultural capital•Cultural Authority Library and the social reproduction of culture (Raber 1997)•Memory Institutions and the Invention of Tradition (Digital continuity, managing the record of the past) identity shaped by memory institutions; retrospective orientations in current digital library projects are sites for building national identity and “invented” traditions (Fentress & Wickham 1991; Confino 1997; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983)

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text

audience

context

Model for the study of digital library as cultural agency (aspects)

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Research Questions ________________________________________

Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?Institutional Contexts and Funding Patterns

Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?Techniques of Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation

Repositories of Fragmented Record or Emerging Memory Narrative?Organizing Metaphors, Spatial and Temporal Markers of Identity

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narrative coherence (How?)organizing metaphors (What?)

institutionalization (Who?)

Developing A Study of Digital Library Projects

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LIDA 2001

The Method: Content analysis ________________________________________•ARL (Association of Research Libraries) Digital Initiatives Database Web-based registry for descriptions of digital initiatives (408 registered projects) (http://www.arl.org/did)

•Descriptions of federally funded cooperative projects defined in the DLI (the Digital Libraries Initiative) Phase 1 and 2

•Virtual Library, ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR), and descriptions of projects of the National Digital Library Federation

•Limitations of content analysis from existing sources

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Selection Criteria for Digital Library Projects________________________________________•projects with "retrospective" orientation (i.e. those presenting a view of the past)

•significant initiatives that achieved some sort of institutionalization and may be deemed to have or will have a significant cultural impact

•projects in the public sector

•projects that reflect a distinctly “American” approach because they deal with cultural heritage, i.e. culture as conceptualized in the context of national policy

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LIDA 2001

Research Questions ________________________________________

Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?Institutional Contexts and Funding Patterns

Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?Techniques of Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation

Repositories of Fragmented Record or Emerging Memory Narrative?Organizing Metaphors, Spatial and Temporal Markers of Identity

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LIDA 2001

Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?________________________________________Funding contexts (Saracevic & Dalbello 2001, in print):

•funding of governmental and non-governmental organizations •funding of practical developments from similar sources •funding from academic and public institutions •funding for new implementations in their realm from professional and scientific societies and subject-specific institutes•funding from publishers to enter the new age of digital publications and access•funding for putting their treasures in the digital domain from historical societies, archives, and museums •funding from collaborative contributions to provide for the common good in the new Internet (the tradition of "free information") •funding for knowledge organization systems in industrial settings

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Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?_______________________________________Findings: Institutional contexts

•National (a: digital library initiative phase 1 and 2) •National (b: Library of Congress, The Making of America) •University (Special collections & Archives)

•Public libraries •Society / subject specific Institutes •Publishers •Historical Societies / Archives / Museums •Galleries, Bibliographic Utilities, Schools

•Trans-institutional, Collaborative distributed digital archives

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LIDA 2001

Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?_______________________________________Findings: Institutional contexts

(355 projects in 133 institutions)•National (a: digital library initiative phase 1 and 2)

(2)•National (b: Library of Congress, The Making of America)

(91) •University (Special collections & Archives) (177)

•Public libraries (17)•Society / subject specific Institutes

(6) •Publishers

(2)•Historical Societies / Archives / Museums

(29) •Galleries, Bibliographic Utilities, Schools

(3)•Trans-institutional, Collaborative distributed digital archives

(23)•Other (5)

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LIDA 2001

Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?________________________________________Discussion

•Strong presence of frameworks defined by traditional approaches to collection development in special collections and archives (predetermines uses; obscurantism; static and passive collections; digitization of materials, less contextualization)

•Library of Congress - leadership and new approaches to collection development in the digital environment (contextualization, multimedia, collaborative efforts)

•From dispersal to consolidation: Increasingly focus on collaborative efforts (1998+)

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LIDA 2001

Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?________________________________________Conclusions

•Limited number of players; consequently, dominant models and those receiving most funding are not the most innovative

•Major contexts (universities’ special collections & archives provide least innovative approaches but build strong presence in digital libraries)

•Increasing presence of public libraries

•“Community memory” projects

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Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?________________________________________Findings: information object / representation / delivery

•Originals: images, documents (published and unpublished), sound recordings, artifacts

•Digital Formats: primarily scanned images, but also formatted electronic text, multimedia to lesser degree; bibliographic information & databanks

•Delivery methods: web exhibit, limited use of databases served on the web, retrieval via structured text

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Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?________________________________________Findings: Modalities of narrative presentation

•Topicality (narrow subject focus)•Biographical approach to organizing historical discourse•Event-based approach •Commemorative •Picaresque and episodic (pre-narrative)•Self-reflexivity•Focus on local history•Localization using physical metaphors (streams, architecture, landmarks)

*Narrative = ability to tell a story

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Repositories of Fragmented Record or Emerging Memory Narrative?________________________________________Preliminary Findings •Period best represented: 1860-1920•Subject focus: Historical periods / events / people

•revolutionary war •civil war•African-American experience•local history•natural history•history of technological inventions•architectural styles•musical forms•evolution of print forms •biography

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LIDA 2001

Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?Repositories of Fragmented Record or Emerging Memory Narrative?________________________________________Conclusions

•Simplicity of narrative presentation techniques

•Story is a picaresque voyage through linear displays meandering around framed images of objects, figures, or landscapes; Floating signifiers rather than signifiers eliciting coherent readings

•Contextualization via localization, uniqueness, diversity (Glocal? = obscurity or diversity?)

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LIDA 2001

Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?Repositories of Fragmented Record or Emerging Memory Narrative?________________________________________Conclusions

•For all the emphasis on the retrospective content (the historical) as noted feature of the digital library activities in the communities of practice related to memory institutions (archives, libraries, historical societies, museums, etc.), they are weak in relating historical content and locked within their existing paradigms of discrete collections •Challenges: to make these discourses public and globally accessible (glocal); build new ways of including viewers; forge partnerships

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LIDA 2001

Conclusion ________________________________________A recent evaluation of the National Digital Library Initiative at the Library of Congress (2000), states that:

It is an impressive agglomeration of text and images but the problem is in the delivery of narrative content. If digital libraries springing up in various institutional contexts are as yet unconnected masses of fragments of data and visual information, they are obviously suffering from a lack of purpose. As a matter of public accountability for these new forms is to recognize whether they are accomplishing what they proclaim.

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LIDA 2001

Future Research ________________________________________

•In areas of: text, audiences, and context

•Text: Expand study using the same research questions to the “National” initiatives in Europe•Audiences: Viewing process study audience responses; study situated viewers, tap into interpretive strategies (how determined by “protocols of viewing” and “horizons of expectation”) rather than cognitive science approach•Context: Interviews with policy makers; how do “national” libraries’ initiatives relate to projects in the public and private sector; funding nodes for European context