Epistemographer

Come work with me:

This is a one- to two-year position (depending on funding) at the rank of Research Assistant Professor at the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), which is closely affiliated with the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University. A PhD or advanced ABD in History or a closely related field is required. We are especially interested in people with some or all of the following credentials, but they are not required for the position: 1. experience in digital history or digital libraries; 2. strong technical background in new technology and new media; 3. administrative and organizational experience; 4. background in the history of science, technology, and industry, broadly defined. Please send letter of application, CV or resume, and three letters of recommendation (or dossier) to chnm@gmu.edu or Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive MS 1E7, Fairfax, VA 22030. Electronic submissions encouraged. Please use subject line “Digital Historian/” We will begin considering applications 1 April, 2006.

All the online world’s abuzz over the seeming resurgence of enthusiasm around web development; Jeffrey Zeldman’s Web 3.0 post notwithstanding, it can seem as though the past six years didn’t happen and all is sunshine, roses and optimism for the online world. While the move toward dynamic scripting and web applications is clearly changing the ways in which we interact with the world within our browser pane (in most cases clearly for the better), there’s a small but nasty thundercloud on the horizon that hardly anyone’s talking about, but which has the potential to seriously rain on the parade.

For the first time in a good two years, the beginning of the semester is bringing with it that rush of excitement tinged with uncertainty that only comes when you’re teaching a class for the first time. In this case, a colleague referred me to the folks over at American University’s Department of History, and tomorrow I start teaching a seminar for them titled “History in the Digital Age.”

Syllabus is online, if you’re curious – it’s a kludge of Bob Griffith’s earlier incarnation of the course, Roy Rosenzweig’s “Clio Wired“ and the Digital History workshops that I’ve been designing and running for the past year. I’ve got the first few weeks pretty fleshed out, but I’ve held off on pinning down too many details after that until I better know the capabilities of my students; one of the awkward things about teaching digital history is that you never know the range of skills and expertise that’ll show up in the room.

As an aside, one fringe benefit of teaching this class is that it’ll spur me to a lot more blogging – if I’m expecting it of my students, I suppose that I’d better be willing to step up as well.

Just upgraded to Wordpress 2.0. All sorts of new bells and whistles behind the scenes.

Total time to upgrade = 15 mins (mainly thanks to the slow airport wi-fi connection I used to upload the new files).

While I was gone, CHNM went and set up a listing of all staff blogs, and several of my colleagues seem to have started blogging without me realizing it. The particularly great thing about this (aside from the general satisfaction of others drinking the same kool-aid) is that I get to see a very different side of their personalities and research.

While I love the Center, one of the few downsides of working there is that we all tend to focus on talking about the projects at hand and technology in general, with our own academic interests figuring into fewer conversations. Reading my colleagues’ blogs lets me see other facets of their interests, and hopefully might bleed back into our day-to-day work.

Shearing Layers (from Stewart Brand’s “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built”)

• Buildings have layers, each of which change at different rates (fast change on inside, slow change on outside)
• Applies to NDIIPP – nested shearing layers from fastest to slowest
  • Media shelf lives are short – fast change
  • Format
  • OS
  • Architecture
• Essence of content (we want this to stay as still as possible, given the rapid change of internal layers)
• Preservation involved managing shearing layers (What if the Constitution was written in 1980’s?)

• Book, for example, has few shearing layers (short of physical preservation and literacy)

Potential problem with this model: separates archival “thing” from its context of use. Assumes that the thing in itself is useful (or, perhaps more accurately, “usable”) in and of itself…in the context of the book, this is literacy, but problems of use and access are bound up with both the artifactual and the epistemic

Theses

• Longer the time frame, more shearing layers
• More layers, more kinds of expertise are involved
• Longer the time frame, the more social the problem

• Digital Preservation Network must syndicate expertise

Example: Syndicated storage

• Separate out storage function from other aspects of preservation
• Share distributed storage, not content or access
• Heterogeneous storage schemes safer (one fails, others might now)

• Data checking

Example: Shared Tools

• Deals with “Understanding, Interpreting, Caring For” level

• File Validators, File Walkers, Risk Assessment

Questions for partners

• Where are your areas of expertise?
• Where aren’t your areas of expertise?
  • Access, Operations, Storage?
  • Ingest, Export?
  • IP? Security?
• Workflow? Contracts?
• Bilateral? Multilateral?

• High Trust? Low Trust?

Technorati Tags: NDIIPP 2006

Back in the states, though not at home. Thanks to the miracle of crossing the International Date Line, managed to work about 28 hours of travel back from New Zealand into a single day last Thursday, and the the weekend was all about getting the various strands of my life back into some semblance of order. Had to cut this “picking up the pieces” short, however, in order to fly out to San Francisco yesterday. I’m in the Bay Area through Thursday night, mostly at a series of meetings about the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (read: NDIIPP), about which I’ll post some notes if relevant.

It’s looking like this year is going to be full of really interesting and engaging projects; I can hardly wait to get started!