Archives Found

One of the things that I find myself thinking and talking about a lot is the future of archives, of the research process, and of the different levels of access that continue to evolve with the internet. I recently stumbled across the blog of Dan Cohen, and this post from April really grabbed me. Dan is talking about a discussion  at UNC-Chapel Hill where a group of historians shared their thoughts about research and digitizing the Southern Historical Collection. A snippet:

In other words, in the age of Google and advanced search tools and techniques, most historians just want to do their research they way they’ve always done it, by taking one letter out of the box at a time. One historian told of a critical moment in her archival work, when she noticed a single word in a letter that touched off the thought that became her first book.

So in Chapel Hill I was the pirate with the strange garb and ways of behaving, and this is a good lesson for all boosters of digital methods within the humanities. We need to recognize that the digital humanities represent a scary, rule-breaking, swashbuckling movement for many historians and other scholars. We must remember that these scholars have had—for generations and still in today’s graduate schools—a very clear path for how they do their work, publish, and get rewarded. Visit archive; do careful reading; find examples in documents; conceptualize and analyze; write monograph; get tenure.

Read the full post here.

I’ve been poking around in the public beta sandbox of Archivists’ Toolkit in the past month or two, and I’ve found a lot to like there. While I don’t have a local instance installed with our data just yet, I think I/we may take the leap towards further testing on a dedicated server soon. So far, I’m the only one playing with this, but we’ve initiated the hiring process for some actual IT support (fingers crossed). I’ve only glanced at Archon and ICA-AtoM so far, but I haven’t been as impressed. I’m thinking about trying out a trial version of Past Perfect this week, and I’m also trying to look at less-discussed software like Re:discovery’s Proficio. Any insights would be useful! I’d like to find something that integrates accessions, donor letters and files, catalog records, processed/unprocessed collection lists, provenance and condition reports, and other stuff, and especially allows export of finding aids in XML/EAD.