Conference on Technology, Culture, and Memory 2013 Nov 12, 2013CTCM 2013, Recife1 Cultural Heritage,...

Conference on Technology, Culture, and Memory 2013

Nov 12, 2013 CTCM 2013, Recife 1

Cultural Heritage, Memory Institutions, and Technology1. Technology. Documents.2. Culture & memory.3. Infrastructure: Example.4. The future.

Michael BucklandSchool of Information,

University of California, Berkeley

Nov 12, 2013 2CTCM 2013, Recife

Technology and rise of the “Information society”No. All societies are information societies!Prehistoric communication: Gestures, language, objects, etc.It is the rise of the “document society”.

Writing. Writing mediates speech, makes it permanent. Effects: Continuity. Controls time. Control. Commerce. Who can imagine life without writing?

Printing. Extreme multiplication of writing. More productive. Consequences: Reformation; modern science; . . .Telecommunications. Person on foot, horse, or boat. Then semaphore, telegraph, telephone, radio, fax, television.

Reduces distance and time. Coordination. Propaganda. Copying. Photostat, microfilm, electrostatic (Xerox).

Consequences: More writing. Image modification.


Document copying: 3 important technologies: Photostat, microfilm, xerography.Photostat camera: Negative image on photographic paper.45° mirror corrects left-right reversal. Photostat of photostat yields positive image. Designed by René Graffin, editor of early Syriac texts, Paris, 1900. Rapidly adopted to replace copying by hand and by typewriter. Dominant copying technique 1910 to late 1930s.

Photostat as intermediate for microfilm, photolithography, etc.Xerography designed to replace photostat.


Restoration of altered documents.

Ink on Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. Image enhancement makes legible.

Ultraviolet light shows erased writing in

medieval vellum. Pioneered by G. Kögel, P. R. Kögel, & R. Kögel.

Lodewyk Bendikson, 1875–1953.


Infrared light penetrates censor’s Ink, not the printer’s ink.

Copying is not simply making a copy, includes analysis and visualization.

1. Phenomenological aspect: Documents are objects perceived as signifying something. The status of being a “document” is not inherent but attributed (given to) an object. Meanings are always constructed by observers.

2. Cultural codes: All forms of expression depend on some shared understandings, language in a broad sense. 3. Media Types: Different type of expression have evolved: Texts, images, numbers, diagrams, art … 4. Physical Media: Paper; film; analog magnetic tape; bits;….

Any document has cultural (2), type (3), and physical (4) aspects. Genres are culturally-situated combinations.

Being digital affects directly only aspect 4, but the consequences are very extensive.

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Aspects of Documents



Documents, Meaning, and Cultural Contexts

Paul Otlet 1868-1944: Extract facts from texts. Organize into hypertextual an encyclopedia (“world brain”). Traité de documentation, 1934.

Ludwik Fleck 1896-1961: Genesis and development of a scientific fact, 1935. Facts as narrative simplification. Triad: concept, individual, cultural mindset / thinking style.

Paracelsus 1493-1541: Physician, botanist, metallurgist in the transition from medieval alchemy to modern science.


Documents are used by . . . Governments to control us

Schools to direct what we learnReligions to instill beliefsAdvertisers to make us buyPoliticians to induce consentEntertainers to amuse usIndividuals to attract our attentionLibraries to . . . etc., etc.

Documents are everywhere in our lives.Use of documents not only fact-finding and problem solving.Documents influence our lives, beliefs, and culture

What is done with documents?


2. Culture, Cultural Heritage (Patrimony), Memory

Cultural heritage (patrimony) and collective memory important:1. Self-identity, self-esteem, relationships with others.2. The development of social groups.3. Relationships among groups. Romeo and Juliet. 4. Large commercial, political, economic interests. See newspaper.5. Used to influence individuals and institutions. Controversies.

Often = “High culture” (opera, fine art,…). Academic = How we live and think. “Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Edward B. Tylor, 1871).How we live and think (culture) is always changing.


Cultural Heritage and Memory Institutions(i) More than books in libraries and records in archives: Artifacts in museums, historic sites, data sets, media,...(ii) Extends range of “bibliographic” description to more objects.(iii) How meaning and significance are constructed. Moves information systems from well-defined objects in formal contexts (e.g. data retrieval systems) into socially sensitive, politicized areas: Death, race, sex, patriotism, war. (v) Integrates isolated areas: archives, museums, bibliography, cultural policy, anthropology, rhetoric, education,… (vi) Indexing has a cultural perspective: -- Indians of North America – Civilization = Assimilation. -- Sexual Perversion see also Homosexuality.(vii) Multiple different groups of users.


Whose history? Whose narrative? Women’s history. Colonial history.

History is sensitive. Textbook controversies. War memorials.Antiquarianism. Because it is old, not because it is important.Nostalgia, romanticism: Remembering the good, not the bad.Historians need accessible resources for neglected people.

“No documents, no history.”N. D. Fustel de Coulanges.

-- and, no history, no identity.n

Time, the past, history, and cultural heritageThe past has passed. You cannot go there!“The past is a foreign country” (D. Lowenthal).

History is narrative (story): multiple, incomplete, extreme simplification.


Memory institutions. Memory infrastructure. Libraries are not simply information services.

Purpose is to develop their community.Museums: Literature on politics of museums. Enola Gay.Much more than ALM (Archives, Libraries, Museums)! - Education: Curriculum, textbooks. - Publishing: If not published remains invisible. - Historic sites: Preservation, interpretation. - Language policy: Preservation, “purity”. - Immigration. . . .All involve choices of values and priorities.All more of less political, controversial.

Nov 12, 2013 CTCM 2013, Recife 13

Indexing, Metadata, Time and CultureNaming and describing is a language activity, hence cultural.

1: Multiple cultures, multiple dialects. Whose dialect(s)? Cancer or Neoplasm?

2: Language, being cultural, is unstable.Unstable denotations: What it names.Unstable connotations: Associated ideas.Discourses and indexer go forward in time andchange, but assigned names inscribed / fixedat a point in time, so necessarily obsolescent in relation to future discourses. Changes in social acceptability.

Sanford Berman. Preferences and Antipathies. 1971.M. Buckland. Obsolescence in subject description. Journal of Documentation 68 (2011):154-161

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Project by Michael Buckland Barry PatemanUniversity of California, Berkeley.Patrick GoldenRyan ShawUniv. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

3. Infrastructure example: Editors’ research.

Project: ecai.org/mellon2010Web site of editors’ research notes: editorsnotes.orgDescription: metadata.berkeley.edu/digdocbuckland.pdf

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Annotated editions of historical texts

Berkeley: Papers of Emma Goldman, 1869-1940, Anarchist.

New York: Papers of Margaret Sanger,

1879-1966, Birth control activist.

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Problems of Documentary Editions Requires specialized expertise for many years.Funding is difficult.Limitations of the printed edition: Cost. Limit on number of pages, so editors’ explanations reduced. Bought by few libraries. Not widely available.Much of the editors’ research not included because inconclusive or not relevant to the publication.Relatively isolated work.Research and unpublished notes lost.

The return on investment far less that it could be.

How editors start research

Nov 12, 2013 CTCM 2013, Recife

Patrick—Lenin:Had any of his family members beside his brother, been imprisoned?

What was the book he had written on ‘political economy’ that was used in Russsian Universities?

New York (Evening?) Post, September 1918 editorial on IWW verdict for the huge IWW trial in Chicago.

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How editors use research

Sources consulted, notes taken based on findings.Notes stored in a Word documents? Yellow notebook? Email?Negative conclusion reached to question, but no one will ever know.

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Nov 12, 2013 CTCM 2013, Recife 19

A Collaborative ProjectHow might the Web be used to help? “Editorial Practices and the Web” – started summer 2010.Focus on evolving editorial work practices more than on technology.

Notes onWeb?

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ParticipantsEmma Goldman Papers, Berkeley. Feminist, anarchist, 1869-1940. Margaret Sanger Papers, New York University, Feminist and birth

control advocate, 1879-1966.Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers, Rutgers

University: 19th century reformers, votes for women.Labadie Collection, University of Michigan Library: Collection of

Radical literature. Why a library collection?California State Archives. Archivists’ notes?

Led by the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley. We thank the A. W. Mellon Foundation and of the Coleman Fung

Foundation for support and the project collaborators.

Phase 1 -- 2010-2012Promote digital notes. Create shared website for research notes: editorsnotes.orgEditors’ working notes openly available August 2012.Library special collection curators’ notes also.

Phase 2 -- 2013 - 2015Horizontal interoperability with archivists’ working notes. Projects end. Scholarship continues. “Hibernating archive.”

Archiving of editors’ research notes when project ends.Work practices preprocess for archival deposit.Predispose for later continued scholarship.Introduce digital humanities tools: Map displays,

Chronologies, time-lines. Biographical networks.


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A Digital Remedy Save as .html ! Make working notes available soon on a webpage as well as published edition. Immediately available. Indexed by Google, etc.

Notes in memory or handwritten

Notes, clippings, images. in folders, boxes,

Brief notes in published volume

Notes keyed or scanned

Files in digital repositories

Detailed notes rapidly web accessible

More a change in work practice than a technical challenge. Published on the Web

Published

Ideas Working notes Notes

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Topic: Bisbee Deportations – Article-style note

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Chronology of Emma Goldman’s lectures: Text to database to visualization. http://metadata.berkeley.edu/emma/

4: Future : Of technologyFROM TOWARDSWriting, the recording of speech Recording everything.Printing, the multiplication of text Representation of

anything.Telecommunications, doc. transport Simultaneous

interaction.Document copying Analysis of resources.

The change in underlying technology enables new genres. Environment of different genres in a new tapestry.


Oral society.Literate society (= Oral & literate)Document society (= Oral, literate, and use of records we never see, cannot read, but shape our lives).

Future : Of memory techniques


To use an old data set requires:1. Discovery: Does a suitable document or data set exist?2. Location: Where is a copy? 3. Permission: May I use it? Legal constraints?4. Usable? Too deteriorated and/or obsolete to use?5. Interoperability: Standardized enough to be usable?6. Description: It is clear enough what it represents?7. Trust: Origin, lineage, version, and acceptable error rate? These differ. Require different remedies. Some more feasible

and/or more affordable than others.All need to be resolved for satisfactory document use.

Modernized bibliography / documentation!

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Archives, libraries, museums are engaged in cultural agendas through the documentation of documents of every kind.

The effects of time and culture require an active memory.

Memory requires preservation and interpretation.

Culture is difficult for technology.

Technology, Culture and Memory

And now an excellent conference program!

Conference on Technology, Culture, and Memory 2013 Nov 12, 2013CTCM 2013, Recife1 Cultural Heritage,...

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