Archivist by night, PhD by day at @DependencyBonn. #archives #digitization #GlobalDH, Caribbean Jewish history.
Sep 26, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
If you are working with historical data, always question what, how, and why you access what you access on screen.
Without accounting for biases and (un)intentional omissions, any results will be skewed.
Some great introspective ways to approach datasets: 1/ 🧵
.@wragge introduces the concept of doing living archaeologies of online collections, emphasizing how "the context of our queries affect the arguments we construct." 2/
The hill I'm prepared to die on is that while digitized materials do facilitate access, they are entry points to and birdviews of archival collections.
They can never substitute research *at* archives because 1/
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Interfaces are predicated on efficient retrieval, and on leading you to *The Thing* you are looking for.
Sometimes though you need to lose yourself a bit to find something else that might work better. 2/
May 8, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Each time I hear the--pejorative--term “dusty archives,” I cringe.
Most people don't realize that what they call dust, dirt, damage are in fact clues and traces of the past.
A thread with some examples of #ArchivalWaste 1/
Palaeoproteomic analysis of a stained medieval birth girdle showed that this parchment was actively used during birth in a talismanic, apotropaic way.
During 2021, lots of important work on #ArchivalSilences came out. Scholars from various disciplines using different methods explored what, how, and why it is missing from the historical record--and its implications.
In this thread, I would like to highlight some. 1/
Celeste Henery wrote about Rosa who left a "rebellious archival footprint" by risking free speech and eventual death to tell her truth. 2/ aaihs.org/excavating-the…
How can we 'see' people whose culture was meant to be suppressed in the historical record?
Wet plate photography in the 1800s made tattoos disappear. This photographic method "used by European settlers served to erase this cultural marker" and Māori intangible heritage. 1/ petapixel.com/2018/07/09/wet…
Mar 18, 2021 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
The online availability of massive amounts of digitized material creates a false sense of accomplishment when we find that one specific item that is useful to our research.
In the process, we miss serendipity and context.
A thread in praise of aggregates. 1/
Each item in an archives is part of aggregations, i.e. "sets of records whose affinity results from their mode of creation, assembly, maintenance, or use by the record’s creator or whose unity was imposed during archival processing." 2/ dictionary.archivists.org/entry/aggregat…
Aug 17, 2020 • 15 tweets • 7 min read
If you're developing online classes: Don't lose time trying to get material digitized.
There are *so* many primary sources already digitized! It is much easier to adapt your class to what's available!
A thread (with threads) and maybe some ideas for #TeachingWithArchives:
1/ Why not use #digitalarchives that challenge students to go beyond what they can 'see', and find those that are usually 'silenced' in archives.
Since pretty much everyone under quarantine has to use digitized primary sources, I thought it might be useful to point to #digitalarchives that *explicitly* acknowledge & caution users abt #archivalsilences in their contents, and describe their work to rectify them.
A thread.
1/ A note: Most people appreciate the easiness of online access to archival material, but tend to forget that all #digitization is selective.
Jan 2, 2020 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
A thread of some favorite tweets from 2019 that challenge us to ‘un-see’ in order to ‘see’.
How do we find information about people whom the archival record purposefully excludes or forgets? #archivalsilences
