“Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art.”[1] Similarly, we can say the same about scholarly publications in the digital age. The Webinar event, “Technology and Publishing: The Work of Scholarship in the Age of its Digital Reproducibility,” presented by Dr. Martin Paul Eve and hosted by the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) discussed the ways in which the digital age and the unlimited reproducibly of scholarship has changed the expectations of researchers toward scholarly communication. Our digital technology promises the notion of access to infinite resources. But as Eve identified, our social and economic processes do not compliment this idea of abundance. This lecture therefore considers a variety of challenges with open access as a way in which to identify solutions to this disconnect between infinite reproducibility and scholarly publications.

 

The lecture began by considering why academics publish as a way to refocus the objectives of scholarly communications systems. According to Eve, academics publish their research for two key reasons, dissemination and assessment. Scholars disseminate their work as a way to communicate their results to their academic communities as well as to put their ideas “on the record”. Publishing also ensures that their records will be preserved by institutions, colleagues and within the footnotes of future scholarship. Additionally, scholars publish their work so they can be assessed. Assessment allows for recognition and promotion. By having research published, especially by a renowned publishing house in the field, the work is recognized as a critical contribution to scholarship and results in salary promotion within Universities. While publishers will pay scholars a small salary of patronage, which enables academics to produce work that will contribute to their field, the majority of their salary depends on Universities, as their contract requires and incentivizes publishing research. Scholars are not dependent or affected by the royalties from the sale of their publications. Therefore, publishers can make a profit, often substantial, from the sale of these publications to library institutions. A major problem within libraries is that they have insufficient funding to provide academics and students sufficient access to these publications year after year. Moreover, since libraries purchase the publications rather than researchers, researchers are not cost sensitive to the publication ecosystem. This entire system results in researchers driven to produce ever more work, hyper-inflationary price increases, libraries unable to afford to purchase publications, and the micro-monopolies of scholarship.[2] However, as Eve argued, these issues also existed in the pre-digital age, beginning at the age of mechanical reproducibility. And, digital technology might help us with these conflicts.

 

Referencing Walter Benjamin’s, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Eve asserts that the digital age and digital reproduction and dissemination, similar to the technical reproduction era of photography and film in the early 20^th century, has caused a profound change in its effect upon the public.[3] But as discussed in class, the digital (computer) revolution, has affected a much larger and wider scale of people than that of the industrial/ print revolution. Similarly, as Moor theorized, “as computers permeate more and more of our society, I think we will see more and more of the transforming effect of computers on our basic institutions and practices.”[4] We have consequently seen this effect as our traditional work has transformed into instructing a computer to do a job.[5] Therefore, the job in which we now assign to a computer to complete has become an invisible operation.[6] And this notion of the invisibility factor in the computer revolution is directly applicable to Eve’s conceptions of the effects of digital scholarly publishing.

 

In the digital age, we don’t need multiple print copies. We can reproduce, disseminate, read and access information digitally. Moreover, we can have interactive scholarly communication. As the Internet is a system that provides us with information freely, it has become expected that free access be given to articles on the Internet. As a result, when a user is asked to pay for an article, it is believed that the fee is for the shareholder’s return and going towards the author and/or publisher. However, the fee for access to the article is actually for the invisible labor of the producing the article. As Eve clearly articulates, digital reproduction hides labor functions seen within the print age and the costs of labor have changed between print and digital. While labor functions, such as type setting, proofreading, editing, preservation, marketing, legal budgets, etc., are still included in digital labor costs of production, the cost of dissemination is lower in the digital age. This is why digital reproduction has invisible labor in comparison to print reproduction. These issues of labor invisibility within digital reproduction of scholarly communication are also reminiscent of our class discussion on computer invisibility. Computer invisibility of software and systems inhibit the public from evaluating where the information is coming from as well as prevents technology literacy. Digital labor invisibility and computer invisibility therefore, similarly impact and change the public’s perception of information provided and consumed through digital technology. Thus, systems such as open access and open software/free software are seen by many as a solution to several of the concerns of invisibility within digital technologies.

 

Open access systems provide free access to read and to refuse scholarly communications by enforcing a processing charge on library institutions. However, as Eve asserts, the current open access system is not economically sound. It costs more for institutions to pay the article processing charges for open access than it did for them to just subscribe to publications individually. Since our current scholarly publishing system enables publishers to have control over an authors work, they also determine how the work will be accessed within open access systems. As Eve points out, it makes no sense for scholars to produce their research to then hand it over to publishers for almost no cost, as it is then sold back to the university libraries for a high price. To combat digital publishing’s economic and labor systems within open access systems, Eve proposes that many small to moderate sized libraries should pay a small sum to companies like the one he helped found, Library Partner Subsidy (LPS), as LPS will conduct the labor of publishing so that the scholarly works can be available to everyone. By having many institutions participate in this system, they will be able to provide fully free access to their users to a wide range of publications for a fraction of the cost. While Eve’s analysis and solution lead us to support his own initiatives, his ideas are interesting to consider. By having a middle-man institution working with providing libraries with open access by removing the labor costs placed on the shoulders of publishing firms, institutions and their users can gain more access to information for less of cost.

[1] Walter Benjamin: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,”(2005 [1936]).

[2] According to Eve, Micro-monopolies in this context refers to the concept that each scholarly published work is individual and cannot be supplemented by another scholar’s or publication’s work.

[3] Eve references Walter Benjamin’s theory of mechanical reproduction

[4] Moore: “What is Computer Ethics,” Pg 5.

[5] Moore: “What is Computer Ethics,” Pg 5.

[6] Moore: “What is Computer Ethics,” Pg 6.

 

Technology and Publishing: The Work of Scholarship in the Age of its Digital Reproducibility

Benjamin, W. (2005 [1936]). “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” trans. Andy Blunden. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Moore: “What is Computer Ethics,” https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/623278/mod_resource/content/1/moor-what%20is%20computer%20ethics.pdf

 

The article by danah boyd and Kate Crawford, “Critical questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon,” discusses the shortcomings of Big Data, specifically in correlation with social media. One of the arguments they put forth in their paper is the way in which data from Twitter is not what it appears to be. Since posts are public by default on Twitter, the “data” from the site is often analyzed or used in research, but those publishing their findings don’t always make it clear that Twitter posts aren’t necessarily representative of what they claim to be. As boyd and Crawford point out, “Twitter does not represent ‘all people’, and it is an error to assume ‘people’ and ‘Twitter users’ are synonymous: they are a very particular sub-set…Nor can we assume that accounts and users are equivalent” (2012, p. 669). As they go on to explain, some users have several accounts, or many people use the same account, or tweets on an account are generated by a bot. There are also those who use Twitter in a passive sense: rather than participate, they simply look at what others are saying. These varying types of users are indicative of the fact that Twitter cannot be relied upon as a representative sample of the population. Unfortunately, however, although some researchers do point out the inherent flaws of using data from Twitter, many news sources do not. Thus, many people don’t question the analysis of what users are expressing on Twitter, or statements relating to statistics of what is happening on the site.

It is this lack of questioning, and lack of awareness, that is worrisome. Big Data is everywhere we turn, yet many people don’t stop to think about the ways in which it is all around us. When the iPhone came out with the touchpad home button, many people didn’t think twice about turning over their thumbprint to their phones (and, as an extension, the company that makes them). Payton and Claypoole write in their book, Privacy in the Age of Big Data, “As business and government collects and benefits from all of this data, capturing data becomes an end in itself. We must have more and more data to feed the insatiable appetite for more. And yet, we are not having a serious public discussion about what information is collected about each of us and how it is being used” (2014, p. vii). This is most likely because the average person does not stop to think how creepy many of these tracking systems are; they either don’t care or don’t realize it’s happening. To return to iPhones as an example: several updates ago, location tags suddenly appeared on photos. As I am very paranoid about any possible intrusions into my private information, I immediately went to my settings and turned off location services for every single app except for Google Maps (and even then, the location is activated only while I am using the app). However, when I brought the issue up to friends, no one else seemed to care that their phones were essentially tracking them.

And yet, the joke is on me. Because GPS is not the only form of tracking on phones. Pinging between cell towers can also help determine location (the first season of “Serial” should have taught me that). It can also be tracked via WiFi, if the phone is continually searching for different networks (another default setting, although that function can of course be turned off – and it most certainly is on my phone). Not only does tracking happen through these types of relatively subtle ways, but it can also happen in the form of a game. As laid out in “Terms of Service,” the graphic novella by Keller and Neufeld, participating in social media can be highly compelling, even if it means giving away a plethora of information about yourself (apparently checking in on Foursquare enough times to become “mayor” of a space is enough to overcome any feelings of hesitation). For those who don’t participate in the technology at all, it can feel isolating: “Once enough people reveal their information, then NOT revealing your information becomes a stigma” (2015, p. 12). There is also a form of pressure that can happen when a person doesn’t have social media accounts: people may think or act like that person is weird for choosing to abstain.

Many of the services that are touted as time-saving and efficient, such as Amazon Go, are actually tracking insane amounts of data on each user. Of course, it’s clear that Amazon is on a mission to take over the world (and no one seems to be upset about it), but people should at least be on the alert about a service that is keeping tabs on users in multiple ways. Using Amazon Go would mean providing the company with data on your physical location, your buying and eating habits, and your credit card information. The convenience of it all (not having to stand in line to check out, not having to interact with another human being), as well as the novelty, is what consumers will focus on, but what if Amazon’s databases are broken into and suddenly a hacker knows everything about you? Not worth the convenience after all.

There are also, of course, the new types of technology that have recently begun to invade homes: Google Home, Amazon Echo, ivee, etc. Here are some very worrying default settings for the Echo (and the other devices work similarly): past recordings are kept to improve answers the for future questions; location services are activated, the better to suggest nearby stores and restaurants; and the microphone is ALWAYS ON (Studio One Networks, 2016). These settings can all be changed, but will the average consumer know/care to do that?

In this day and age, everyone needs to be aware of, and protective of, their privacy. It is all too easy for both corporations and the government to keep track of and use data that is collected on the average citizen. Knowing the ease with which your movements, preferences, beliefs, habits and more can be recorded and tracked, it is the responsibility of every person to, at the very least, be aware of the accessibility of their individual data. People can decide for themselves how much or how little to reveal through their use of products and websites, but it is important for everyone to question the necessity of the data they are putting out into the world. Knowledge of this, as in most cases, is power.

 

References:

Boyd, D. & Crawford, K. (2012). “Critical questions for big data: provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon.” Information, Communication & Society 15(5): 662–679. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/ 10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878

Keller, M. & Neufeld, J. (2015). “Terms of service: understanding our role in the world of big data.” Al Jazeera America. http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/terms-of-service/#1

Payton, T. & Claypoole T. (2014). Privacy in the age of big data: Recognizing threats, defending your rights, and protecting your family. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Studio One Networks. 2016. Expert Q & A: How private is the new Amazon Echo? Retrieved from http://www.yoursecurityresource.com/expertqa/how-private-is-new-amazon-echo/

I live in a small town in Connecticut where the library is commonplace where everyone is equal providing a sanctuary from bad weather and a space for learning. Since I was a young child using the space I had seen technology creeping into the Library by educating children through film and books on CD’s. That was the extent of the technology I remember using in the library. Today it is very different, as I observed my local library the way the public use the space has changed through empowerment programs for children, adults and seniors alike, through Makerspace.

After being away for a couple years I found myself drawn to the library again. As my needs for the library have changed the library has changed drastically as to what it has to offer to the public. The differences from town to town reflect the use of each library and accessibility provided. Each town has a different need and ability to provide information access to the public.

The Westport public library has embarked on bringing technology to the forefront of the library by providing a Makerspace. Starting only three years ago, in 2014, Makerspace came to Westport through a grant provided by the Institute on Museum and Library Services (IMLS).[1] What this provides is a clear link to the next generation and the future of information repositories. The Westport library Makerspace has tools for all types of creations. Each Makerspace around the country has different kinds of tools, but here are some of the general ones; public access to 3D systems, SketchUp software, robotics, code academy, Ponoko, laser cutters, and updated computers for use within the institution.[2] Many workshops and classes that are provided by Westport’s Makerspace have an age limit, typically no one under the age of 8. This allows for users to be of a wide range of ages, just like the library space, Makerspace is open for anyone who wants to learn something new in a new way. In the most recent Annual Report by the Westport Library 2014-2015, there have been 11,304 people who have used Makerspace through workshops and 1,500 programs. Between the years 2014 -2015 1,200 people attended robot coding training and about 3,000 people attended the Makerfaire, which is recognized nationally by institutions using Makerspace.[3] Creating a safe creative space within a information center, Makerspace, fosters new ideas for the future.

The untapped potential for the technology used in Makerspace can be found in our local communities, just out of reach. Using high-grade technology may deter people who think professionals should be using the technology, maybe that professional will be you someday. The correct use of technology, whether that is a power tool or the use of the web, safety of the user is at the forefront of the Maker Movement. In looking towards the future we need to think about how to teach the next generation to use technology appropriately. When thinking about the potential of Makerspace it reminded me of the Larry Diamond’s article “Liberation Technology.” While Diamond is discussing the extremes of technology being liberated within China and other dictatorships around the world, we can relate the definition to the possibilities of Makerspace. “Liberation technology is any form of information and communication technology (ICT) that can expand political, social, and economic freedom.”[4] What is being made in Makerspace’s around the country may be the answer to the next big question that we have yet to ask.

How can Maker Movement tools be seen as liberation technology here in the United States? Makerspace allows for entrepreneurs to explore capabilities of a product or company they have created. By providing the free access to technological tools in the modern world of entrepreneurship, we will see a big positive impact on the economy. A “shift from primarily centralized [manufacturing] to include distributed small-scale manufacturing and assembly – great access to technology-aided and industrial-grade tools – allow makers to experiment with new materials, structures and products.”[5] Although the companies may be small and seen as not capable of working with larger companies, any opportunity to get a head start on knowledge and skills needed to survive in the economy is an opportunity to take with Makerspace. Socially, Makerspace has a huge influence on education of all ages K-12 and through higher education programs. The Maker Impact Summit report from 2013 lays out the key elements of Makerspace that effect, in a positive way, the education system. The maker movement “encourages learning dispositions…. Emphasizes the value of hands-on experience … [and] transforms consumers into creators.”[6] The only way that this can occur within the education system is if there are advocates for this type of change, which is a drastic shift to the long-standing structure of a ““push-and-drill model, in which learners merely interact with decontextualized content.”[7] Where as the Maker Movement is a ““why-and-how” model, in which learners probe, question and create.”[8] The unmatched potential for a change in the education system in America to occur, we can see where possibilities for Makerspace in politics could be vital. Starting from the smaller governments, locally “the maker movement has the potential to revitalize communities and change the way citizens engage with their civic institutions. Achieving broad benefits [of Makerspace] will require some changes in government policy at local, state and Federal levels.”[9] If our communities cannot connect within themselves then how are individuals or these communities supposed to connect nation wide. This is how Makerspace can represent a liberation technology. By reconnecting communities across the nation through the collaboration of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), our nation may be able to return to its glory days, because right now we are stepping back and not moving forward.

Resources:

http://time.com/104210/maker-faire-maker-movement/

https://youtu.be/7wHorfRvvcE

http://www.ala.org/transforminglibraries/future/trends/makers

 

[1] “Maker space.” Westport Library. Accessed on December 9, 2016. http://westportlibrary.org/services/maker-space

[2] Dougherty, Dale et al. Impact of the Maker Movement, Maker Impact Summit December 2013, Westlake, Texas. MakerMedia and Deloitte University Press, 2014. 7.

[3] Board of Trustees. Westport Public Library 2014-2015 Annual Report. November 2014. 22-23. http://westportlibrary.org/1440

[4] Diamond, Larry. “Liberation Technology.” Journal of Democracy 21 (2010). 69-83; 70.

[5] Dougherty. Impact of the Maker Movement. 16.

[6] Dougherty. Impact of the Maker Movement. 19.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid

[9] Dougherty. Impact of the Maker Movement. 22.

On October 21, I went to a workshop at the Frick Library called “Save Your Scholarship: Web Archiving and Tools for Preserving Research Resources”’ The audience was composed of art historians, artists and librarians. The presenters were both archivists. Their lecture was presented by the Digital Art History Lab, which is part of the Frick Art Reference Library. The Digital Art History Lab, created in 2014 has a mission to “provide researchers with the digital tools and data necessary to explore new methodologies.” And to promote the conservation of things digital. www.nyarc.org/content.digital-art-history-comes-frick. The Frick Museum is also in a consortium with the Brooklyn Museum Library, and the MOMA Library: the NYARC. This has a complimentary mission to “facilitate collaboration that results in enhanced resources to research communities.” www.nyarc.org/content/about.

                The workshop I attended was part of outreach efforts by both the DAHL and the NYARC. The initial message presented, was that today we are in a time of crisis, not unlike the climate crisis (their metaphor). How to store and retrieve born-digital materials? The presenters talked about why it was important to save born-digital materials and talked about how link rot and content shift can undermine scholarship and how quickly links disappear. After having been told how little was actually being archived, we were shown pie charts of which organizations were archiving. Universities and colleges were doing the most, at 52%, archives handle another 15%, state government 13%, the federal government a mere and scary 5%. Museums handle 1%. We then were given information about what NYARC is archiving. All three museums are archiving their own collections, their websites, and related websites. They move outside their walls to archive the websites of auction houses, catalogues raissonnes, artists’ websites, NYC gallery websites, restitution scholarship and art resources.

                Because so little is being archived, the HAHL and NYAARC are providing  many trainings and resources to organizations and individuals to promote archiving at all levels. The presenters did this by giving us a set of links to websites for online archives. We discussed the Internet Archive, the International Internet Preservation Consortium.  We then had a series of exercises: looking up URLs to see if they still existed, and then archived some links.  We were also shown how to cite links that had been found in web archives. The presenters encouraged the audience to reach out to DAHL or NYARC if , in the future they have difficulties archiving their websites.

                Some thoughts about this workshop. The overarching feel at the workshop was one of anxiety, so much to preserve, so few resources, and we are in crisis. That anxiety is certainly mirrored in Cloonan’s article “W(h)ither Away”. “ The responsibility for the preservation of cultural heritage is more complex and pressing today than at any other time in history”. And repeated in Rosenzweig’s article “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in the Digital Era” where he notes “even traditional historians should worry about what the digital era might mean for the historical record. US government records for example are being lost on a daily basis” Therefore great anxiety, hence NYARC and DAHL reaching out to the community and individuals to encourage everyone to preserve. At the end of the day, however the bulk of archiving and preserving will be done by institutions, as has always been done in the past.

                So we are anxious about the pressing need to preserve, which will mostly be done on an institutional level and or a commercial level (the Internet Archive has a commercial aspect) and at the same time there is a growing consciousness of how biased or non neutral these institutions are in their practices of preserving “ Archives, ever since the mnemons of ancient Greece, have been about power, about maintaining power, about the power of the present to control what is, and will be known about the past, about the power of remembering over forgetting.”

Bias is unavoidable, and not surprisingly in this “crisis” time institutions are focusing first on preserving what they value. Each institution making up NYARC starts by preserving its own materials. This is not to be faulted, but just noted. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that whoever is doing the archiving is self-conscious “objectivity” has been increasingly understood in terms of “situated knowledge” or “partial perspective” (Cook) In our rush to preserve at least we can hope the preservers know they are biased.

https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/623264/mod_resource/content/1/Cloonan%20-%20W%28h%29ither%20Preservation.pdf

https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/623263/mod_resource/content/1/rosenzweig-Scarcity%20or%20Abundance-preserving%20the%20past%20in%20the%20digital%20era.pdf

https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/623262/mod_resource/content/1/schwartz%2C%20cook-archives%2C%20records%2C%20power.pdf

For my observation I went to the Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where they have been since 1992. The archive itself is a product of the Women’s movement, the sexual revolution and the Gay Liberation movement of the 1960’s and 70’s. A group of women, including Joan Nestle and Deborah Edel, unhappy with sexism in the Gay Academic Union (GAU), branched out, forming a separate women’s consciousness-raising group, which became the basis of the LHA. For the first 15 years Nestle and Edel ran the archive out of Nestle’s apartment on 92nd st, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They relied on volunteers and women of like mind to help organize, catalog and educate people in the community. Their goal was, and still is, to “turn shame into a sense of cherished history, to change the meaning of history to include every woman who had the courage to touch another woman, whether for a night or a lifetime.” Their statement of purpose goes on to say that the archive “exists to gather and preserve records of Lesbian lives and activities so that future generations will have ready access to materials relevant to their lives,” which was and is important because these histories or stories had previously been denied “by patriarchal historians in the interests of the culture which they serve.” Originally they achieved community outreach through the creation of a newsletter and a slide show in the late 1970’s, today they achieve this through readings, workshops and women’s study classes that are free and open to the whole community. The principles the LHA are founded on are fundamentally different than more traditional archives, something that was made very apparent to me upon my visit. Principles like vowing to teach archival skills generationally to members of the lesbian community, making sure the archive is involved in the political struggle of being a lesbian, and ensuring that the archive itself resides physically in the community, as opposed to an academic setting.

(http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/history.html)

So there I found myself on November 17th, walking up the steps of a very unassuming brownstone on the outskirts of Prospect Park, with only a small gay flag in the window, not really sure what to expect upon entering. I was greeted by a woman named Red, an English and Women’s Studies teacher at Hunter College, and a member of the LHA. Straight away I was given a very warm welcome and a tour. The archive encompasses both floors of the brownstone, intermingling areas of living with areas of books, files and organization. Most documents, journals, and records are kept on the 2nd floor, along with their t-shirt collection, button collection, audio tapes and other miscellaneous memorabilia. Downstairs there is a library of sorts, with lesbian pulp fiction, a wonderful collection of literature written by women, reference materials, and even a small children’s book collection. After the tour I was basically left to my own devices, told I could go through and look at whatever I wanted, and to come ask for assistance if I needed it. I have to admit, this was a little overwhelming at first. A feeling akin to being a kid in a candy store, frozen with anticipation, and thoughts of where to begin. So I headed upstairs and started with their Special Collections area. This area was organized by topic, and each topic was kept in a small filing box on a standing bookshelf and on shelves built into a walk-in closet. There were categories like “Dinah Shore and the History of Women’s Golf,” “Lilith Fair,” “Coming Out Stories,” “Places to Love,” “Gay and Lesbian Association of Students (GLASS),” and of course, one of the founder, Joan Nestle. In this same area were cabinet files, broken down into Biographical Files, Geographic Files, Conference Files and Unpublished Files. There were bins of documents, news clippings and ephemera to still be filed, simply resting on top of the cabinet files. The arrangement of everything felt very organic and grassroots. With living lesbians and histories coexisting with those of the past in a figurative sense, but also physically, given that people who run the archive actually live in the same residence. It lends a specific type of energy to the space. On our tour, Red pointed out that the archives had unpublished papers by Gertrude Stein, Alice Walker and Adrienne Rich, an area she frequently accessed for her own research. This area peaked my interest as well and the next thing I know I am sitting on the ground reading an unpublished lecture that Adrienne Rich, a favorite poet of mine, wrote and gave in 1983 at Scripps College in Claremont, California. After, I moved on to look at their small exhibition area, with a small exhibit of clothing and one of pins. Red had said that a lot of people come to look at these exhibits. The clothing exhibit contained a military jacket, some t-shirts and a famous black slip that belonged to Joan Nestle. The pin collection was set up over an area that was once a sink, with lots of pins spread out for viewing, while others were contained in receptacles with small drawers. The pins were a lovely visual timeline of lesbian and female struggle, with sayings such as, “Women Make Policy, Not Coffee,” “We Won’t Go Back. Keep Abortion Legal, April 5, 1995, rally in Washington, D.C.” and “The New Right Preaches The Old Wrongs.” The t-shirt collection was also in this area, although not really on view. It is archived in long garment boxes on the floor and in sliding closet areas built into the wall. After looking at the exhibits, I made my way over to another section of the upstairs that contained the archives of the archives (very meta), boxes of audio tapes containing oral histories (which they have labeled, “love tapes”) and an area of mostly cataloged magazines and scholarly journals. After perusing, I made my way back downstairs, where Red and I listened to 2 oral histories on audio tape, while simultaneously looking at photographs that Morgan Greenwald had taken of Sagaris. Sagaris was a Vermont based, collectively run, feminist institution created in 1975. The goal was to have a place of feminist education, without hierarchy, patriarchy, and a strict structure, where the foremost feminist thinkers could gather, to communicate with and teach other women. Some of the original members and faces found in Greenwald’s photographs include, Rita Mae Brown, Charlotte Bunch, Mary Daly, Dorothy Allison and Susan Sherman. However, listening to the oral histories was the real prize for me. The history we listened to first belonged to Mabel Hampton, one of the original organizers of LHA. Hampton was an African-American woman living on 131st st. in Harlem at the time and she spoke of her coming out story. As she tells it, she walked into a sandwich shop in Jersey City, was so fascinated by a woman that she went home with her and didn’t leave for 40 years. She lived and had a relationship with this woman from 1932 until 1978, when she died. As she saw it, she was “already half in the light, may as well step all the way in,” a lighthearted but courageous move at the time. The second oral history we listened to belonged to a woman named Gerry, who spoke of being born for the first time, at age 39, in a sleazy, secret gay bar in Greenwich Village called The Els Bar, sometime in the late 1940’s. This woman was a real firecracker, she described herself as always being gay, but was “just too stupid to know it.” Until, that is, a woman bought her a beer, kissed her on the palm and told her to come back soon. And even though she lived in Woodstock, she went back the very next night and was never the same. She described bars like The Els Bar and the Pony Stable as being the only places where gay people could mingle socially. The bar was kept in complete darkness, except for a single light on the area where the bartender made drinks and received money. And the dance floor was so small, it was the “size of a postage stamp.” Stories like this deserve to be preserved and shared. They have the power to enlighten and to comfort. It is stories and histories such as these that led me towards the field of library science. My experience that day at the Lesbian Herstory Archives was both priceless and an affirmation of my chosen path.

“The archivist, even more than the historian and the political scientist, tends to be scrupulous about his neutrality, and to see his job as a technical job, free from the nasty world of political interest: a job of collecting, sorting, preserving, making available, the records of the society. But I will stick by what I have said about other scholars, and argue that the archivist, in subtle ways, tends to perpetuate the political and economic status quo simply by going about his ordinary business. His supposed neutrality is, in other words, a fake.”^[1]

It was with this quote from historian Howard Zinn that Anne Garner, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Library at the New York Academy of Medicine began the recent panel discussion there entitled “Archives, Advocacy and Change: Tales from Four New York City Collections.”

The discussion featured four panelists: Jenna Freedman, founder, curator, and cataloger of the Barnard Zine Library; Steven Fullwood, founder of the “In the Life Archive,” an initiative to collect, preserve, catalog, and make available materials produced by and about LGBTQ people of African descent at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; Timothy Johnson, director of New York University’s Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, as well as co-director of Tamiment’s Center for the United States and the Cold War; and Rich Wandel, Center Archivist and Historian at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center National History Archive.

While the first three panelists provided brief presentations on the histories of their collections, the materials they contain, and their individual collection practices, surprisingly, it wasn’t until the final panelist, Rich Wandel, that someone spoke directly to Zinn’s criticism of archivists. And Wandel wasted no time, starting off by declaring that “the archival profession is inherently an activist profession.” It was only after this declaration that the discussion of the archives as a location for advocacy and change (reflected in the title of the program and presumably the reason for Garner’s provocative quotation of Zinn) began in earnest.

However, Zinn’s characterization of the supposed neutrality of archivists as “fake” was in no way a dismissal of the archivist. Rather it was an attempt to convince the archivist of their power, a power Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook describe in their article “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory” as the power “to shape our notions of history, identity, and memory.”^[2] Indeed, Zinn went on to urge archivists to use that power “to compile a whole new world of documentary material, about the lives, desires, needs, of ordinary people.” Doing so would ensure “that the condition, the grievances, the will of the underclasses become a force in the nation.”^[3] It is therefore in the material they choose to collect, highlight, and disseminate that these four panelists exert their power as archivists.

As a gay man in New York City involved in the gay rights movement since the first Christopher Street Liberation Day March in June 1970, Wandel said it’s often easy to take for granted and forget just how far the LGBTQ movement has come. At the same time, he said it’s also easy to forget how there are still many places in America where LGBTQ youth are repeatedly told by their communities and even their families that they’re different, that there’s something wrong or even immoral about them. The archives are important to the entire LGBTQ community, but they are especially important to these LGBTQ youth. It lets them know they’re not alone, not the only ones who feel as they do, and most importantly, it “lets them know they’re worth something.”

Just as Emily Drabinski stressed the importance of librarians being “ethically and politically engaged on behalf of marginal knowledge formations and identities who quite reasonably expect to be able to locate themselves in the library”^[4] with regard to classification and cataloging, Wandel stressed the importance of the archives as a way for people, especially LGBTQ people, to “find themselves in history.” In this case, it’s not only important that the material is archived for history, but that it’s made available to the LGBTQ community and the public.

Through the lens of Wandel’s passionate advocacy of the archivist as an activist, it was possible to go back to the presentations of the first three panelists and see where that activism was present, even if it wasn’t at first readily apparent. Steven Fullwood grew up in Toledo, Ohio as one of those LGBTQ youth Wandel described; being told that he was different (as both gay and black), that there was something wrong with him, and feeling he was the only one who felt as he did. He eventually made his way to New York and a job at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library in 1998. Having noticed a lack of materials being collected about black gays and lesbians, Fullwood founded the “In the Life Archive” in 1999 at Schomburg. It was the first archive of its kind and later expanded to include materials by and about all LGBTQ people of African descent. As it stands, it is the largest black LGBTQ archive at a public institution.

While Schwartz and Cook mention the “variety of subaltern groups desiring to construct a viable, authentic, and cohesive identity,” Fullwood spoke about his initial difficulties in convincing people to donate their materials to the “In the Life Archive.”^[5] He said he was often met with surprise (“Why would you even want that?”) as people didn’t realize that what they had was both important and historic. However, as Fullwood became increasingly active and well known within the black LGBTQ community in Harlem, he was able to develop personal relationships with individuals and groups, eventually serving as a kind of “conduit” for the community into the archives. Those who were initially surprised or even suspicious have now seen their identity “confirmed and justified as historical documents validate with all their authority as ‘evidence’ the identity stories so built.”^[6]

Jenna Freedman also spoke to involving the community in developing the archives but from a slightly different perspective than that of Steven Fullwood. Although Freedman was a zinester (a person who creates zines, or self-published works of appropriated texts and images reproduced by photocopier and originating in the do-it-yourself ethos of the punk rock subculture) before arriving at the Barnard College Library, she “surveyed” the Barnard community in an attempt to discover what they felt they needed in order to “serve the community.” The result of this survey was the creation of a library focused on zines produced by cis- and transgender women (Barnard admitted transgender women for the first time in 2015), with an emphasis on those created by women of color.

However, Friedman quickly found herself running afoul of what Schwartz and Cook describe as one of the sources of “power over the documentary record, and by extension over the collective memory of marginalized members of society.” That is the institution and by extension “the ways in which institutional resources are allotted.”^[7] As zines often contain explicit or sexual material, Freedman often found her Zine Library questioned or even threatened by the administration of the college. However, she emphasized that it was essential for her to privilege the subject and not what was considered acceptable, either socially or to the institution. Fortunately, despite some early conflicts, Freedman and the Zine Library have not only survived but grown into a collection of over 7,000 zines.

At first, Timothy Johnson seemed a bit of an outlier in this particular panel discussion as the Tamiment Library doesn’t have any obvious connections to groups marginalized based on sexual orientation. However, the Tamiment and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives give voice to those marginalized due to their involvement in radical politics, labor movements, civil rights, and civil liberties.

It was in talking about the Tamiment’s collection of materials related to the Occupy Wall Street movement that Johnson provided a candid example of the power of the archivist. The Tamiment currently houses the largest collection of such material in the world; over 80 linear feet worth. It is a result of a serendipitous situation in which two library science students working at the Tamiment and involved in the protests realized the opportunity as well as the need to collect and preserve as much material as possible. When Anne Garner asked Johnson whether the Tamiment had also collected material from Chase Bank to present the opposing view to the Occupy movement, Johnson responded that the Tamiment’s mission is to give ay voice to the oppressed, not the ones doing the oppressing. With his brief rejoinder, Johnson reminded the audience of the archives origin as being “established by the powerful to protect or enhance their position in society” and that the goal of the activist archivist goal is to subvert that power.^[8]

While Schwartz and Cook echo Howard Zinn’s criticism of archivists in citing the “professional myth of impartiality, neutrality, and objectivity,” they also echo Zinn’s challenge in stating that “the point is for archivists to (re)search thoroughly for the missing voices…so that archives can acquire and reflect multiple voices, and not, by default, only the voices of the powerful.”^[9] If Zinn, Schwartz, and Cook were present at the recent panel discussion at the New York Academy of Medicine, I think they would find that both their criticisms of and challenges to archivists continue to be taken seriously.

 

^[1] Zinn, Howard. “Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest.” The Midwestern Archivist 2, no. 2 (1977): 14-26. Accessed November 3, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41101382.

^[2] Schwartz, Joan M., and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2, no. 1 (March 2002): 1-19.

^[3] Zinn, Howard. “Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest.” The Midwestern Archivist 2, no. 2 (1977): 14-26. Accessed November 3, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41101382.

^[4] Drabinski, Emily. “Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction.” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 83, no. 2 (April 2013): 94-111. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669547.

^[5] Schwartz, Joan M., and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2, no. 1 (March 2002): 1-19.

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] Ibid.

As I mentioned briefly in our final class, perhaps big data’s greatest victims are our youngest internet browsers. My own teen years in the aughts saw social media evolve from Xanga(!) to LiveJournal to MySpace to Facebook (allegedly Friendster was in there somewhere too). Nowadays the platforms are too many to list—although Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter merit mentioning—and the modern American teen’s life is drenched in the internet in a way no other generation, mine included, has experienced: according go a 2015 Pew study, a whopping 92% of teens go online daily, aided by these growing platforms and the ubiquity of smartphones.

The difference between adopting social media and living in a world where it has always been the norm cannot be overstated. There’s a not-unfounded assumption that younger generations are inherently savvier with new tech, but without proper education, it would take an unusually paranoid teen to realize just how much information they’re giving away in what’s always been their everyday life. While educating parents and teachers is crucial, especially because big data is gathering information on their children from birth, teens as independent agents must be taught to be safe in ways beyond the easily ignored “because we’re adults and we say so” method.

This is why I appreciate Michael Keller and Josh Neufeld’s Terms of Service: it informs the reader about the dangers of big data through a narrative, and a visual narrative no less, to spread the message beyond the classroom. It may be wordy and dry at times—after all, this is a comic entirely about two men explaining things to themselves and getting things explained by others—but Neufeld’s stylish art design and the character arcs of Keller’s cynic and Neufeld’s optimist makes Terms of Service accessible to a far wider audience than the typical news article or academic paper.

Terms of Service charts the correlation between new internet technology and loss of privacy, beginning with the birth of Gmail in 2004. Former California state senator Liz Figueroa discusses what was then a fear and is now a reality: that Gmail not only mines data from its users, but from non-users communicating with Gmail users. While Google claimed to delete the data after collecting it, Figueroa’s attempt to codify this practice into law failed, largely thanks to the efforts of “good guys” like Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Al Gore. A telling panel sees Figueroa obscuring a crucial word in Google’s bygone motto “Don’t be evil.”

This theme of feared future outcomes coming to pass resonates throughout the text, and Cassandras like Figueroa are positioned as scrappy underdogs against an unstoppable force. While this narrative’s appeal is universal, it’s particularly potent for the teen audience: the slew of dystopian young adult bestsellers, for instance, relies on an identical power dynamic. Technology is new and exciting, so condemning it is generally seen as an act of the old and out of touch, but positioning big data as a corrupt institution to distrust makes it instantly relatable to the Hunger Games generation.

In an interview with danah boyd, Terms of Service explicitly discusses teens in terms of their use of social media to control their public image. For instance, a teen who wants to be seen as happy-go-lucky may exclusively write humorous posts, while one seeking support might write in a way that elicits sympathy from Facebook friends. Boyd* also notes that teens are as apathetic about privacy as their older counterparts: her research shows that youths will “give up WHATEVER to be able to hang out with their friends.” Facebook and its ilk have become seemingly non-negotiable elements of their lives.

This section accomplishes two important goals for teen readers. First, rather than isolate teens as problematic, Keller and Neufeld connect them with adults to show that apathy is a universal problem. In doing so, the teen reader won’t feel singled out or talked down to, and is more likely to pay attention. Second, after boyd explains the image-maintaining rationale behind many teens’ social media practices, Keller and Neufeld deconstruct the notion by pointing out how corporations can use a teen’s data to construct their own narrative about the user. Social media may appear to give power to teens, but it actually takes it away. While the text as a whole is an excellent primer for young readers, this message in particular is bound to resonate.

Terms of Service is hardly perfect teen reading: beyond the aforementioned bouts with dryness, a major story element is Neufeld’s frequent use of the already-outdated FourSquare, and the app-specific terminology can be confusing to the unfamiliar. All of its principal characters are understandably adults, who aren’t totally foreign to teens, but obviously aren’t as identifiable as their peers. This is forgivable given Keller and Neufeld didn’t create the text specifically for a teen audience, but whatever the reason, this text is not in and of itself the solution to undereducated teens.

The issue of web privacy and security has certainly been addressed in young adult literature before. The most notable example is Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, a near-future dystopia pitting a teen hacker and his friends against a drastic upswing in government surveillance. Doctorow fills the story with real-life tips on safe browsing and primers on peaceful resistance methods (mostly surveillance jamming), and despite being written in 2008 it remains a timely read.

However, corporate invasion of privacy is rarely written about for the audience most vulnerable to it; in fact, I’ve yet to find anything remotely close to Terms of Service in my usual search (using internet, library, and former bookstore sources). So, despite its flaws, the comic remains the best resource I’ve found to introduce teens to big data. We can only hope, for the future’s sake, that others will take Keller and Neufeld’s lead.

 

*While danah boyd doesn’t capitalize her name or personal pronouns midsentence, she does follow capitalization rules for sentence openers.

 

References:

Michael Keller and Josh Neufeld, “Terms of Service”

Amanda Lenhart, “Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015”

Stephanie Simon, “The big biz of spying on little kids”

As a part of Archives Week 2016, NYU hosted an event focusing on a digitization project currently underway. The presentation, titled “What’s on the Back? Updating the Definition of Complete for Digitization Projects,” was given by Alex Bero and Maggie Schreiner, the conservator and archivist (respectively) working on the project. They detailed their work in conserving and digitizing materials from two collections: the Richard Maass collection, which contains materials related to the American Revolution, and the Sylvester Manor collection, which documented early settlers of Shelter Island in Eastern Long Island. As they explained the plans and decisions they made working on this project, they elucidated the many issues one must consider when engaging in such a project.
Bero and Schreiner began by discussing the Richard Maass collection, a portion of which had been digitized in the early 2000s. These items had also undergone a conservation process at that time, but when reexamining the materials to be digitized for this project, it became clear that the previous conservation efforts had in some ways damaged the materials through the use of “archival tape.” The previous project had used tape to hold materials together, but Bero went into detail on problems of using tape, “the evils of which are not to be underestimated,” as one slide warned. Bero explained that tape of all kinds, even those designated as “archival” (which he asserted was a relative term), can dry, embrittle, flake off, stain documents, adhere pages together, cover up or discolor images and words, and is often stronger than the document itself, which can cause tearing. As tape was used liberally in the earlier effort, Bero had to remove it all, which went at a rate of roughly one inch per hour.
Many of the documents were also sealed, but the seals were original, not remnants from the previous project. In order to get clear images of the materials, it was necessary to unseal them, and Bero acknowledged that this in effect changed the original nature of the document. Bero argued, though, that “digitization is a form of preservation,” and unsealed the documents through moisture. However, changing the nature of the document alters its representation of history, and as Michèle Cloonan points out in their essay “W(h)ither Preservation?” “to digitize a collection does not necessary lessen the demand for the original material.” In this case, Bero decided that a clean digital image was more important, but something has been lost for researchers looking into manuscripts from this era. It points to a preference of digital preservation over physical conservation.
Turning to the digitization side of the project, Schreiner discussed the previous digitization project, which, even though it was carried out roughly 15 years ago, still adhered to standards considered appropriate today, and were scanned as 600 dpi TIFF files. However, the backs of many documents were not digitized, and the digital surrogates were only made available as an online exhibit, not linked to the finding aid for the collection. The file names were also very unstructured, with no clear identifiers. This, of course, hinders the ability to find and identify these images, and had they been dissociated from their metadata, it could have created serious problems for access. Schreiner rectified this by renaming the old files, giving them a persistent ID, and integrating the new files while maintaining the same structure. Schreiner also made sure to mention the surrogates will be published through the finding aid as well once the project is complete.
From here, the presentation turned to issues surrounding the Sylvester Manor collection. This was a much larger collection, and the materials were in worse shape, in part due to the use of iron-gall ink in the documents, which can embrittle and speed up decay in paper, and the ink itself can become damaged and even fall off the paper. The papers needed to be moisturized delicately in order to unfold them, as too much moisture would damage the paper. Bero detailed how it was necessary to flatten documents through wetting them along creases, to clean them using vulcanized rubber sponges, and to mend them with paper and adhesives that blend in to the original document and do not obstruct anything. However, he also noted that this process is done only for handling the documents one more time – for the purpose of digitizing them for this project. Their conservation effort is only a very short-term solution, and the documents will not be handled after this project. Again, this demonstrates their belief that digitization is preservation, but it does not clash as much with Cloonan’s suggestion cited above in regard to the other collection. Here, Bero made clear that these materials were badly deteriorated, and the idea that even with these efforts they could only be handled once means that without digitization, these would be inaccessible. It was a more clear-cut decision, and is a better example of when digitization may be the only way to preserve documents properly.
Schreiner noted that these fragile documents were just a small portion of the collection, and had been set aside because they were too fragile to travel. Much of the material was marked for digitization through a vendor, which they employed especially because of their inability to digitize oversized items in-house. Though digitizing oversized items was expensive, they were able to do so because they found room in their budget after calculating all other expenses. This provided an example of how financial issues can potentially restrict an institution’s ability to complete the projects it wants. It certainly gave some insight into why these collections were being revisited. Had they not found the money in the budget, they may have been forced to revisit the collections again in the future to capture the oversized items.
In a Q&A session after the main presentation, they explained that NYU has committed to maintaining and migrating the digital files as necessary, putting to rest common concerns about the stability of preserving digital media. They also explained that the process was facilitated by the existing finding aid and metadata standards, which they update as needed.
One thought I had (which I thought would be rude to vocalize, though perhaps I should have) was that this project was yet another effort to preserve the historical records of white patriarchal society. The fact that these collections had previously been digitized in part made me wonder if perhaps there were other collections that had been passed over which could have offered more diverse perspectives. As this was also a conservation effort, and the materials being as old as they are, it is understandable that these were prioritized. Another factor could have been their source of funding, which came from the Gardiner Foundation, representing a family some of whose members had openly endorsed slavery. This might possibly point to the amount of influence donors have on an archive’s ability to pursue projects; however, I regret to have not explored this topic with the presenters.

Cloonan, Michele Valerie. “W(H)ITHER Preservation?” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy. Vol. 71, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 231-242

Gardiner’s Island: A Rich History. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.rdlgfoundation.org/history.ph