Stewardship and Cultural Memory Organizations in the Digital Age

Stewardship and Cultural Memory Organizations in the Digital Age was the subject at the Friday Afternoon Seminar (UC Berkeley School of Information) held by Clifford Lynch on September 12^th, 2008.

Notes

• Digital content
  • Files
  • Database records
  • Games

• Usage of terms (Google↑, JSTOR↑)
  • cultural record (cf. Google search)
  • intellectual record (cf. Google search)
  • scientific record (cf. Google search)

• Stewardship
  • Objectives
  • Roles
  • Responsibilities

Cultural Memory Organizations

• Libraries
• Museums
• Archives
• Others
  • Historical Societies
  • Broadcasting
  • Internet Archive↑
  • Collections of companies (cf. Sammlung Deutsche Bank↑)

History

• Royal collections → national collections
• Printing, publishing, copyright↑
  • More techniques (~mid 19th c.): photography, audio recording

Museums

• focused on exhibitions
  • ↔ similarity and difference in collections
    • easier with surrogates/replicates
    • cf. publication of parts of manuscripts in different collections worldwide
• projects possible due to digitization
  • Codex Sinaiticus↑
  • Dead Sea scrolls↑
• Importance of interoperability and standards
• Collections and limited institutional knowledge + role of "outsiders"

Replication, Digitization, Surrogates

• 2-, 3-dimensional
• Negatives↑ as sets of pictures depending on technology for copy (exposure↑, contrast↑, material ...)
• Digitization (+publication) as part of stewardship

Remarks

• Cultural Memory Organizations
  • Intangible Cultural Heritage↑: more potential for preservation in Digital Age
• Museums
  • interpretative role of scholars ↔ complexity/abundance/interdependence of cultural reality/context
    • validation/evaluation/review of data/information from sources outside museums (outsiders, visitors, private collectors, Web 2.0 collaboration = outside of scholarly expertise)
    • using experience from Wikipedia (no specific role by affiliation to traditional "knowledge" organizations like cultural memory organizations or universities) for validation/evaluation/review process:
      1. Data/Information (from outsider) ⇒ Museum
      2. How do you know? ⇐ Museum (asks outsider)
      3. Repeat if necessary, documentation of origin (reference)
  • accessibility of collections and information about collections
  • connecting existing information

External links

• Summaries Fall 2008 (The Friday Afternoon Seminar)