From A Shared Authorityto the Digital Kitchen and Back by Michael Frisch
A shared authority, in contrast to sharing authority, as the author Michael Frisch exposes upon, is the difference of an action that the collective we, in this case the historians, do in comparison to something historians and the general public have or something that “is,” such as a collective responsibility. He stresses the importance of public history engagement and the inherent interpretive nature and creation of significance involved with the creation and consideration of oral and public history. He provides an example of this in a radio program that kept separate two groups of people; railroad workers and the academics who were discussing their jobs and race-relations in such. Frisch points out that all of them had valid and interesting points to discuss, but that something was lost by not having the two groups enter into and exchange together. He calls this an “instructive resonance” and the slight difference between “experience” and “expertise”, two words that share a common root.
Oral history should be received as a primary source of history. Frisch explains that it is his goal to make oral history reachable my numerable people, archivists, researchers, users, public presentations, and civic and community engagements. It should be able to be perceived on all levels and present each listener or viewer with something valuable. He goes on to explain how the advancement of digital technology has improved upon traditional oral history recordings in that digital recordings allows for more freedom for the researcher. Whereas before with audio tapes of different formats made searching recordings tedious, digital recordings allows for digital indexing, annotations, cataloguing, keyword-search functions, and the exportation of excerpts with relative ease.
Frisch expresses a desire for formats that are more open-ended and creative. He likens this to ‘exploring’ rather than ‘searching’, searching implying a direct, linear, and somewhat foreknowledgable approach. He discussing the benefits and difficulties of transcription alongside the benefits of digital transcripts that searchable. He ends his article with and example of the widely popular NPR -hosted StoryCorps. He has sharp criticism for StoryCorps as it isn’t designed to be traditional oral history, but rather designed for emotional appeal and soundbites, what StoryCorps designates “driveway moments.” I would add that products like StoryCorps, while not as valuable perhaps to professional oral and public historians, provide access to oral history to those who might have not otherwise encountered it, and maybe can serve to draw them to further study.
Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology: Public History Meets the Digital Divide by Andrew Hurley
Public History’s main goal is the animation of enlightened civic activism
Leverage historical knowledge on behalf of social change (since the 1970s), empowering marginalized populations, reconciling group animosities, fostering multicultural tolerance, energizing grassroots politics,
Uncensored, open-access realm of cyberspace
Hurley discusses the enthusiastic embrace of digital technologies for use in digital histories, in particular those disciplines like oral history that has, since the 1970s, championed historic preservation of marginalized communities, social change, grassroots politics, and promoting globalism and multicultural understanding contrasted with the socioeconomic disparity of those with and without internet and computer access. Low-income populations have a much lower tare of computer usage. This creates a digital divide between those with computer access and literacy and those who do not. “Technology that was supposed to democratize knowledge and bring people together was having the opposite effect.” Concerns about equality were lessened somewhat by the advancements made in easily accessible Wi-Fi and mobile computing devices. A production and participation digital divide persists as refinements on the original divide.
Hurley then reviews his and others’ work with 3D modeling and digital history engagement of museums in order to create virtual environments of historic aspects St. Louis and other places, later released in beta form in 2010. He explains the difficulty in getting funding and in designing the rights programs, often costly, in order to create three dimensional displays for museums in order to enhance on-site museum visitor experience and digital renderings so that online visitors could enjoy similar experience from their own home consoles. The digital divide along socioeconomic lines meant that much of their work was viewed not by the marginalized communities but by wealthier and whiter communities. Eventually they turned to more traditional public history methods in order to make their work more accessible to people of color and poorer communities, such as door-to-door flyer distribution for advertising. The author cautions that digital historians should focus less on what is new tech and instead shift their focus on what technology might improve what they are already doing.
Access for All by Sharon Leon
Leon expands on Hurley’s article on the Digital Divide amongst socioeconomic groups, agreeing that selecting the newest technology for your public history project may not always be the best option, suggesting instead that the historian or designer should research community demographics and access to technology in the earliest stages of development. Amongst low-income and rural groups, more people are accessing the internet solely by mobile telephone computing devices. This presents unique challenges in operating systems, platforms, and content. Leon suggests that public history work should be designed to be “streamlined with optimized images, styles, and media.” Mobile web browsers necessitate that work be rendered in the least resource-heavy way possible and will likely result in making the work more accessible to more people.
Digital Community Engagement Across the Divides by Lara Kelland
In covering her work with the Parkland Project, the author discusses how lived experience and oral histories have reshaped and redefined how the history of the Parkland neighborhood is remembered. The area is mostly home to low-income and people of color, and in the 1960 suffered from systematic racism, poverty, and public and civic neglect. Despite years of work in digitizing their history, there has been little engagement or positive response to calls for more public engagement. Kelland suggests that the digital divide may be a contributor to the silence, and suggests more face-to-face strategies may prove to more effective in garnering the public engagement she seeks.
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