Comments vis-a-vis proposed workshop on "Digital Humanities"
Henry Gladney
(1) I would prefer not to comment on what might constitute a proper agenda for the Digital Humanities. Although I have opinions about that, I try to avoid making normative assessments, i.e., statements about how other people should behave. That said, I am not loath to make predictions about the evolution of university faculties in the Digital Humanities, since these will be conjectures that future history will test.
(2) Most of the digital preservation literature that has come to my attention seems to be written by professional archivists and/or librarians. Quite naturally, they seem to be striving for responsive measures implemented by ways of managing their institutions. Quite likely this will be a different community than that whose existence and pronouncement stimulated the proposed workshop.
(3) I believe the direction asserted by archivists (see (2)) to be flawed, and that its holders' opinions will change within about 10 years. As far as I can tell, nothing I have written has influenced this community. This observation is part of what stimulates (1).
(4) My reasoning behind (2): The important qualities that make some documents more valuable than others are properties of their realizations--properties that include authenticity, legibility, provenance information, and so on. These are not properties of how document instances are held and managed, except that management failures can decrease the value of any holding. Instead they are properties of realized document instances.
(5) This is implicit in everything that I have written. In case you are not already aware of it, the best expression of (4) is that in Long-Term Preservation of Digital Records: Trustworthy Digital Objects, The American Archivist 72(2), 401-435, Fall 2009. For your convenience, I am attaching a PDF copy. In this paper, the section “Next Steps” sketches program development work that is underway.
(6) Additionally, chapters 3, 4, and 5 of my book, Preserving Digital Information, Springer Verlag, 2007 ISBN 978-3-540-37886-0 sketch an underlying foundation in Epistemology. Available online are a Preface and table of contents and a slide show summary.
(7) An article
in the Economist seems directly applicable.
Available online via http://www.economist.com/node/21541398/print.
(8) I recommend that you request/caution speakers to include specific examples that elucidate whatever generalities they provide. Absent specifics, I am pessimistic of substantial debate. Instead, what would emerge would be vagaries that will serve to evade any challenge.
(9) I view software engineering as a matter of production of tools intended to be applied to activities whose justifications have little to do with the tools. I believe that this opinion would be found to be widely held among scientists and engineers. That said, it is not in itself a topic worthy of university faculty, except in connection with undergraduate education. Even that might disappear as children currently using digital document tools in elementary school mature and become university students. è In the workshop, I do not care to hear about training people to use tools. Instead, I want to hear what research is underway or proposed and/or what questions deserve research attention.
(10) Today, almost everybody (at least in the wealthy countries) spends roughly a decade learning how to work with paper—marking it up for others (called “writing” and “drawing”) and deciphering marks other people have made (called “reading”). Formally, this occurs in elementary and secondary schools; more broadly, it receives children’s attention in many of their activities.
This example notwithstanding, many middle-aged people regard digital tools as being difficult, without ever considering expending a few weeks or, if necessary, a few months learning to use them!
Should further notions of similar import (or lack thereof) occur to me, I will communicate them presently.
Best wishes, Henry
H.M. Gladney, Ph.D. http://www.hgladney.com/ (408)867-3933