Histories of Culture and Computing

How and when did we first start representing culture as data?

Any Questions?

Today’s Overall Agenda

  • Visit from Digital Historian, Prof. Orville Vernon Burton
  • Discuss assigned readings
  • Introduce Mass Digitization, Digital Libraries, and Data Retirement assignment
  • In-class time to work on Collective & Individual Topic Selection
  • Reminder: Command line maze due Thursday!

Digital History of CHASS

Welcome Prof. Burton!

Special thanks to Aurora!

What is Digital History?

Today’s Core Questions: What is Digitization??

  • How did culture first become digital?
  • What is digitization, and what are the trade-offs of digitizing cultural materials?
  • When should digitized cultural materials be shared versus protected?
  • What is the difference between a library, an archive, and a collection?
  • How do standards shape how culture is transformed into data?

First Reading: Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive

Who Is Brewster Kahle? What is the Internet Archive?

A Decade of Running the Internet Archive

  • Who is the audience for Kahle’s essay? Who likely reads American Archivist? How does the audience shape his argument?
  • What is Kahle’s dream for the Internet Archive? Do you see any problems or tensions with this dream?

A Brief History: What Is a Library?

Kahle’s Ambitious Vision

“Universal access to all knowledge is possible, and I’d say it could be measured as one of the great achievements of humankind, along with putting a man on the moon or assembling the Library of Alexandria.”

— Brewster Kahle, 2007

What was the Library of Alexandria? Why does Kahle invoke it here? What does it mean to compare a digital library to an ancient one?

The Library of Alexandria

The dream: Collect all the world’s knowledge in one place

  • Scholars estimate: 400,000-700,000 scrolls
  • Copying texts from ships that docked in port

What Happened to Alexandria?

  • The problem: Single point of failure
  • Likely destroyed gradually (fires, neglect, political turmoil)
  • Most devastating: 48 BCE fire during Caesar’s visit
  • By 3rd century CE: collection largely gone

Legacy? Don’t have just one copy in one location!

How Did We Get From Alexandria To Today?

Print Technologies

Why Do Modern, American Libraries Exist?

Where is this?

18-19th century revolution:

  • Libraries as public good
  • Free access regardless of ability to pay
  • Democracy requires informed citizens
  • Andrew Carnegie: 2,509 libraries funded (1883-1929)

Challenges for Libraries in the 20th Century

What is this graph tracking?

The Rise of Digitization & Digital Libraries

First Digitization: Microfilm & Microfiche

Microfilm

From Kahle:

We started doing some work with the University of North Carolina, testing digitizing single pages, such as loose-leaf papers. We’re still in the early stages to see if we can get that cost down to ten cents a page and do really high-quality imaging. In some ways, this project is reminiscent of microfilm, but with color, better resolution, and better accessibility. (p. 26)

Example of Digitization?

What is this an where did it come from?

What is Digitization?

Internet Archive book scanner, 2010

How and What Do We Digitize?

  • What are some of the materials that Kahle mentions when discussing digitization?
  • What is the process he describes for digitization?
  • What institutions and communities are involved in digitization?

Who does digitization?

Scanning Labor by Ellie Colbert, Lucian Li, David Satten-Lopez, and Elizabeth Schwartz

The Art of Google Books by Krissy Wilson

What happens to digital copies?

What is HathiTrust? Where does it come from?

Google Books & HathiTrust

Before Google: Vannevar Bush and the Memex

Vannevar Bush’s Memex imagined a personal machine for organizing knowledge through linked “trails.”

From Memex to Internet Archive

Bush asks: How can we store, retrieve, and connect enormous amounts of knowledge?

Kahle asks: What if we actually tried to preserve and provide access to nearly everything?

Both want to build universal access to knowledge.

What Makes Universal Access Hard?

  1. Technical — Can we capture, store, search, and preserve it?
  2. Economic — Who pays for digitization and long-term storage?
  3. Institutional — Who is responsible for maintaining it?
  4. Legal — What can actually be copied and shared?
  5. Political — What gets preserved, and who decides?
  6. Ethical — Should everything remain accessible forever?

Should Everything Be Accessible?

Brings us to our second article!

Can Data Die?

  • Thoughts on the article? Has anyone seen Lenna before? What is the argument of the article?
  • What is The Pudding? Do you like the format?

Methods & Data

How did the build this project? Thoughts on their choices?

Kahle vs. Lenna

  • How do we reconcile these two articles?
  • What is the tensions between preservation and access?
  • Who should have the power to decide what is preserved and what is retired? Is opt-out a good solution?

Finding Traces of Digitization

What is in this image? Has anyone heard of MARC records?

History of Cataloging

Card catalog drawers

Before computers:

  • Every library had physical cards
  • Filed alphabetically by author, title, subject
  • To share catalog info: mail physical cards
  • Each library maintained separately

Problem: No way to search across libraries efficiently

Enter MARC (1966)

MAchine-Readable Cataloging

Enter MARC (1966)

MAchine-Readable Cataloging

  • Developed by Library of Congress
  • Standard format for bibliographic data
  • Made catalog records machine-readable
  • Enabled sharing records between libraries
  • Foundation for online catalogs (OPACs)

Key insight: If we all describe books the same way, computers can share and search our catalogs

What MARC Records Look Like

=LDR  00000cam  2200000 a 4500
=001  123456789
=020  \\$a9780123456789
=100  1\$aKahle, Brewster.
=245  10$aUniversal access to all knowledge /$cBrewster Kahle.
=260  \\$aWashington, D.C. :$bSociety of American Archivists,$c2007.
=300  \\$app. 23-31.
=650  \0$aDigital libraries.
=650  \0$aDigitization.

Each field (020, 100, 245) has a specific meaning

This allows computers to: - Search by author, title, subject - Sort results - Share records between systems

Metadata = Data About Data

MARC is metadata: Information that describes the content

  • Author (who created it?)
  • Title (what’s it called?)
  • Subject (what’s it about?)
  • Date (when published?)
  • Format (book? journal? recording?)
  • Location (where can I find it?)

Without metadata: Just a pile of stuff

With metadata: Organized, searchable collection

Why Standards Matter

Without standards:

  • Every library uses different system
  • Can’t search across collections
  • Can’t share records
  • Everyone reinvents the wheel

With standards:

  • Interoperability — systems talk to each other
  • Efficiency — share catalog records
  • Better discovery — search across collections
  • Preservation — future systems can understand

Digital Library, Archive, or Collection?

Term Main Emphasis Who Usually Does This Work? Key Question
Digital collection Selection + grouping Curators, scholars, librarians, communities What belongs together?
Digital archive Records + provenance + preservation Archivists, records creators, communities What survives, and in what context?
Digital library Organization + access + services + stewardship Librarians, catalogers, technologists How can people find and use it over time?

Examples: Collection vs. Library vs. Archive

Digital Collection:

  • Google Books scans
  • Files without metadata or preservation plan
  • American Periodical Poetry dataset

Digital Library:

  • HathiTrust (rights management, preservation, services)
  • Europeana (cultural heritage, multilingual)
  • Library of Congress Digital Collections

Digital Archive:

  • National Archives and Records Administration (government records, long-term preservation)
  • UIUC Archives (campus history, alumni records, special collections)

What is the Internet Archive?

The name says archive but is it actually?

Why might’ve Kahle wanted to use the name archive? How do materials get into the internet archive?

The Crisis in IA

The Crisis in the Internet Archive

How does the metadata in the Internet Archive compare to the metadata available in HathiTrust?

What about the African American Periodical Poetry dataset?

Responsible Datasets in Context

How much did the authors explain about the history of digitization?

African American Periodical Poetry

  • What is this dataset focused on and why was it created?
  • How did the authors organize their dataset? What metadata did they include? How did they document their sources and methods?
  • Would you suggest any improvements to their documentation? What would you want to know if you were using this dataset for your own research?

First Group Lab

Mass Digitization, Digital Libraries, and Data Retirement

Due in two-ish weeks! First, focus on Collective and Individual Topic selection and command line maze!