COMPUTER SCIENCE & THE HUMANITIES BUILDING BLOCKS

History

Field Committee Meeting

21 Dupont Circle, Washington, DC

May 9, 2000

MEETING REPORT

May 16, 2000

Summary
Discussion of survey results
Discussion of workshops

Attendees:

• Lindy Biggs, Society for the History of Technology (by telephone)
• Gregory S. Brown, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
• Jeffrey D. Groves, American Antiquarian Society
• Mark Kornbluh, American Historical Association
• Michael Mahoney, History of Science Society
• Paula Petrik, Organization of American Historians
• David Green, NINCH.

SUMMARY

I THE SURVEY

Some areas of history practice were under-represented in the survey and the co-chairs will organize a small set of additional names of people to fill the gaps.

Survey responses were showing how historians: felt that time was one of the biggest factors in what they could do; generally did not tend to work collaboratively; and liked to return to sources over and over again and build their own databases or collections of sources. There was a mixed response about the need to examine "originals"; a strong sense that developing finding aids/online cataloging information was more critical that digitizing primary sources; and not much evidence on how historians questioned their material (we needed more information here).

Survey respondents indicated that new tools they would like to see were in the areas of: finding aids; use of aural resources; searching and sorting; visualization; foreign languages; and publishing/dissemination.

The group discussed a variety of questions about working in electronic as opposed to traditional environments, broadly what were desirable new ways of working and what should not be given up. These questions might help in organizing workshop discussion.

Co-chairs would organize the field committee preparing a 1-2 page summary of findings from the questionnaire responses.

II WORKSHOPS

The committee endorsed the current overall format for the September meeting. Rather than:

How we work; What are our needs? What projects should we formulate?

field workshops should address:

How we would like to work. What do we need to work that way? And What specific projects and collaborations would allow for that?

Lindy Biggs and Mark Kornbluh would share reporting of the field meetings and Mike Mahoney and Greg Brown would share their facilitation.

TOPICAL SESSIONS

The committee favored a smaller number of topical sessions (no parallel ones) in which all participants would hear two (or so) presentations on a topic followed by interdisciplinary breakouts for directed discussion. They proposed the following topics:

• dissemination/publication;
• visualization; interactivity;
• digital images/text/sound/moving pictures.

Two suggestions were made for presenters.

FULL REPORT

I. Discussion of survey results:

A. We discussed that the completed surveys to date seemed to have some lack of representation. European history seemed to be over represented and US history under-represented. That under-representation did not seem as problematic as lack of representation in particular areas. In particular, we want to seek additional surveys from:

• someone who works with artifacts (maybe African and/or Meso-American historian)
• someone who does oral history and public history
• someone who works with sound who could respond about sound archives
• someone working on cataloguing in library or archives

B. We discussed general responses to the surveys:

1. 1. Most surveys emphasized the idiosyncratic/personal nature of history research. Few of our respondents worked collaboratively. Text is still of course the pre-dominant medium studied.
2. 2. Surveys emphasized the critical variable that Time plays in scholars lives. This is amjor constraint on the application of new technology.
3. 3. Surveys emphasized that historians liked to look at their sources again and again and reevaluate them over time. Thus, scholars like to build their own "collections" and/or databases of sources. There was the potential here for
4. 4. Scholars were mixed on whether they felt it necessary to look at originals or whether electronic versions sufficed. There was a clear contrast between the likelihood of finding electronic versions of secondary material and acceptance that most primary research material would not be digitized in near future. Surveys emphasized need for finding aids/cataloguing of primary collections as opposed to digitizing for secondary works.
5. 5. Surveys did not provide much of a handle on what exactly historians wanted to ask of their sources. What questions do they explore (i.e. causation over time, social relations, etc.) More detail in this area would be useful to discuss possible tools to be developed.

C. We discussed broad areas where historians would want to see the development of new tools:

1. 1. Finding aids/cataloguing
2. 2. Use of aural resources, esp. oral history
3. 3. Searching and sorting tools to organize research and access digitized material [esp the potential of "hyperbolic" searching]
4. 4. Visualization
5. 5. Foreign Language tools
6. 6. Publishing/dissemination

D. We also discussed the mediating factors of professional concerns: promotion and tenure, teaching loads, university funding etc. We left open the extent to which these factors should be explicitly addressed in the workshop.

E. Some questions that we have about electronic research environments:

• how do we overcome the feeling that we've missed something;
• what do we want computerized; what do we not want computerized;
• if we want to "think outside the box" we should also think about what forced us inside the box;
• do we "re-mediate" our thinking or go back to earlier techniques that worked such as making charts and diagrams of our thinking. (See Jay Boulter's book Re-Mediation on how the computing medium changes how work is done);
• question of scaling: we spend a lot of time creating a demo project, will it be easier next time or not?
• design for reusability: Will we be able to save time for someone else because we've spent so much time on the demo. Often not, putting up a web page is not easier after you've done it once;
• the cost of so much of this work is in intellectual labor, how do we deal with this cost that is too often unpaid.

II. Discussion of Workshop:

A. Field Committees: Format

1. We discussed including the scholarship of both original research and teaching throughout the meetings. We were in full agreement that we should look at teaching scholarship, as well as outreach to a public and k-12 audience. 2. We thought that out sessions on Thursday should focus on "How we would like to work." Fridays sessions can focus on "What do we need to work that way." and Saturday's on specific projects and collaborations that can get us

B. Topical Sessions: Format

We suggested beginning these with brief presentations of thought-provoking projects/approaches (not necessarily by the producers of these projects). After 2 or so presentations, we would break into interdisciplinary breakouts where participants are assigned to various groups in order to mix and match approaches. These interdisciplinary break-outs would discuss large topical areas and then serve as stimulus for the working field committee meetings. We endorsed the proposed over all format of the workshop in which the field committees met on Thursday morning followed by 4 topical breakouts on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. When the field committees reconvened on Friday afternoon, they would have much food for thought.

C. Topical sessions: Topics

We endorsed the following topical sessions:

1. Dissemination/publication
2. Visualization
3. Interactivity
4. Digital Images/Text/Sound/moving pictures

We expressed skepticism on the value of focusing a topical session directly on collaboration as it seems a truism that cooperation is good and it is difficult to obtain. [However, there were many useful observations about collaboration, how it happens and between whom. "Distributed Scholarship" might serve as a more useful alternative phrase to describ collaboration]. We were not supportive of the idea of having a facilitator teach collaborative skills.

D. Suggestions for presentations:

-Paula Petrick volunteered to present on interactivity but would like to do so in collaboration with someone from another field. Other field committees should suggest partner for her.

-We discussed asking Steven Murray to co-present with someone from visual studies on visualization

E, NEXT STEPS

1. Fill in survey gaps.
2. Write survey summary
3. Develop structure/agenda for field meetings
4. Working with other committees, agree on topical sessions
5. Working with other committees, identify presenters from within the participant list.

Respectfully,

Lindy Biggs
Mark Kornbluh
David Green

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