Re: [-empyre-] In the year 2525 - Using the web archives

[The Paul Annears <the.paul.annears@gmail.com>]

To see my recent contribution as constructive or destructive is to
miss the point.  To see it as 'my' contribution is to miss the point.

I quoted Rachel Carson for a reason, to remind those who need
reminding (most of us, surely) that although the 'technopositivist'
viewpoint is clearly shared by many it is a suppurating bubble in the
process of bursting.  Of course Ms Carson was not the first to notice
what was going on and there are other people refusing to share this
grand folie collective.

There are in fact other viewpoints beside the 'technopositivist', and
this ethos that we on this list share (if we were living differently
we would not be on this list) is not the only possible one.

When this POV is superseded the bits that are left floating in the
aftermath of the tsunami will be what has been 'archived' - by chance
- and the artifacts and fossils that have been unearthed from earlier
'archiving'  will be visible again but only to those with eyes to see.

In any specialist discussion between experts it may be necessary to
talk in the jargon of the trade, a sign language for the deaf, but the
discussion must have a wider purview to be other than the pleasurable
murmurings of co-conspirators.

Remember Nietzsche (I hate to quote, I prefer to think): '...the
question is: how to view scholarship from the vantage of the artist
and art from the vantage of life.'

APA




On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:37:35 +1100, Paul Koerbin <pkoerbin@nla.gov.au> wrote:
> Well folks, despite the fact that our impulses are apparently absurd and
> that we are doomed upon this mortal coil - thanks for constructive
> contribution APA - we will I guess try to salvage some small amount of
> dignity in the face of the catastrophe by pursuing our small works
> diligently, lest, to paraphrase Kafka, the bony structure of our own
> foreheads prevent us from moving at all.
> 
> I would like to find out how people think the archives of online
> resources will or may be used. To a large degree we who are working to
> build these archives are just doing what we can and expecting and hoping
> that their content will be utilised. However it would interesting to
> hear how others, especially the creators of works, think web archives
> might be used now or in the future.
> 
> I attended the first meeting of the International Internet Preservation
> Consortium Researching Requirements Working Group in London in September
> last and heard a lot from researchers whose interest is the study of the
> Internet per se. This was quite a revelation since their perspective was
> not one that saw content as necessarily of primary interest; or at least
> there were other dimensions that were just as important to them. That
> is, they were intersted in such things as:
> the context of the resources as much interest as the content;
> the ontology of the web;
> the sociology of the web and how it was/is used at any given time;
> how the web is annotated by the bloggers and so on.
> So much of this is not captured  in or derivable from the sorts of
> archives we are currently building. I found this fascinating but I also
> wonder if this is a bit misleading too. Is this the interest of a small
> number of researchers whose subject is the web? The reality of working
> in a library with a working online archive is that the requests we are
> aware of are still very much for the content (and I mean textual or
> visual content) and I suspect (but don't know) that people seeking this
> content don't care much if the font is different from the original or if
> the fancy Flash intro doesn't work, provided they can get to the text or
> image. Artistic creations are obviously going to be a different case,
> but I am thinking more generally and most of the content of the web we
> are archiving at the NLA is textual and visual content with a certain
> amount of multimedia.
> 
> Anyway, would be interested on people's thoughts and speculations about
> the use of web archives now and into the future.
> 
> Paul
> 
> Paul Koerbin
> Supervisor
> Digital Archiving Section
> National Library of Australia
> 
> (02) 6262 1411
> pkoerbin@nla.gov.au
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 


-- 
The Paul Annears
www.xxos.net