Laszlo's Blog

Unfortunately, I lost my notes about what questions and topics we need to cover in our blog posts this week, so I am going to comment mainly on what interested me in the readings.

Digitization in This Week’s Readings

Until this class, I never seriously thought about the future of what I created digitally. There was no need for me to think about it, because at most I had a few old papers. I saved them on floppies that are fast becoming obsolete. Now that I am contemplating a serious project online, my project on the documentary, I am thinking more seriously about preserving the site. This is especially important as there are probably only four copies of the film left. Soon, my VHS copy will start to deteriorate, if not already.

The most amazing/daunting thing for me in this week’s readings is the worry over loosing so much digital data. As both chapter seven of Digital History and Roy Rosenzweig’s article warn, a slight change or defection in a file can ruin the whole thing or accidentally pressing the wrong button can lead to the loss of hundreds, or even thousands, of documents. Furthermore, there is the problem of new software making old documents, files, images, and so forth too out of date to be usable. The irony there is that the urge to improve technology, which would lead to better means of recording history, is also a way through which we can lose history.

After I finished reading Rosenzweig’s article, I was wondering if anyone has bothered to put together a museum that preserves the most popular software and hardware from the last few decades. I am thinking about a place that maintains technology going back to even punch cards. I always assumed that IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and the other big companies would have kept some examples of their most important releases. I am probably wrong.

The interesting thing is that there are plenty of hobbyists (including my father) who still collect the old technology. For example, check out the CPU Shack, a site I just found from a quick search online. I suppose this means that I should think of something to do with the boxes of stuff my father has gathered over the years, if he decides to give them to me as an “inheritance.” I put “inheritance” in quotes because his menagerie is probably more of a curse than a boon. Maybe I will donate it all to someone who would do a better job of preserving it.

The other interesting thing in this week’s readings is the universal library about which Rosenzweig writes in his article. Apparently, some advocates, like Brewster Kahle, dream about a library that offers “universal access to all human knowledge” through a digital library. The curious thing is the example for this, the Library of Alexandria. When one refers to “all human knowledge” one should mean all knowledge: from what philosophers and mathematicians wrote, two areas no doubt strongly represented in Alexandria, to knowledge of farming, used by ordinary people in the ancient world but probably not well represented in Alexandria. To be fair, Kahle refers to the net as “the people’s medium: the good, the bad, and the ugly.” However, consider what archivists and conservators say about being choosy about what we need to preserve, a concern which I think is inevitable, the question is, then, would the digital Library of Alexandria really include the bad and the ugly. Regardless, it is certainly an interesting goal.

Digitizing my project

Though I lost the paper on which I wrote our topics for this class, I do remember Prof. Cohen wanted us to talk about the digitization of our projects. Well, I have thought about mine, and I realize I need to make more changes.

First, I realize that digitizing an entire film would require just too much space. Instead, I want to limit myself to a clip or two from each interviewee with commentary and links on those videos. I am thinking of an MPEG-2 format with probably at most 15 to 25 minutes of video. The total amount will depend on what I want to include from the film. I will watch it again in the next week or so and come to an initial total.

The side effect of limiting the total amount of video is to protect me from copyright issues. Last week’s class taught me that putting more effort into less video will give me more of a chance to fall under fair use.

I am not concerned about the quality of the video, because it is from VHS in the first place. I will settle for some of the more basic viewers mentioned in our readings this week. I am talking about QuickTime or Windows Media, for example, which I hope will limit the memory the clips eat up.