By Miranda Donnellan<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Archives are not infallible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a librarian, this is a fact of life. But as a digital humanist, I am empowered to solve this problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For my Public Digital Humanities Certificate capstone, under the guidance of Cornell College\u2019s Professor Kirilka Stavreva, I created a digital archive highlighting the works of Jewel Bothwell Tull and a website designed to showcase relevant faculty and student research. Had time allowed, I had several other smaller projects in mind, all aimed at creating a comprehensive literary history of Cornell College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As with any project, there were challenges I expected to face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was working with metadata created by multiple people with varying experience levels, so cohesive formatting across artifacts would likely not exist. I had budget constraints, so I was building my archive on Presevica Starter, a purposely limited version of a great but expensive archiving program with a significant learning curve. And sometimes, I just had days where my archive would crash, nothing would upload, and even the idea of having metadata was a faint, hopeful memory. I knew I would face challenges like these and that they would take time to overcome, but I was confident in my ability to move forward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, I also encountered challenges I never expected, like when our IT department decided that the Cornell Archives website was a security risk and revoked access to all our digitized artifacts without warning. Thankfully, the artifacts I was working with had also been saved locally so I could continue with my project. However, it caused a significant time-sink as I now had to physically go to our archives and manually verify any information I had questions about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That isn\u2019t to say there weren\u2019t high points, though. I will leave this course with a much better understanding of archival processes and practical experience working with file types and programs I\u2019ve never encountered before. I have learned how to work with the strangest of curveballs, how to ask for help when it is needed, and how to plan for a project that extends beyond a classroom and beyond a grade. Although the project is not finished and probably won\u2019t be for a while, I have helped create the foundation for a tool that will help Cornell students for years to come. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, no, archives are not infallible, not even digital ones, but by creating new tools and resources, we might just keep them around a little bit longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Miranda Donnellan Archives are not infallible. As a librarian, this is a fact of life. But as a digital humanist, I am empowered to solve this problem. For my Public Digital Humanities Certificate capstone, under the guidance of Cornell College\u2019s Professor Kirilka Stavreva, I created a digital archive highlighting the works of Jewel BothwellContinue reading “The Literary Heritage of Cornell College: Creating Digital Resources to Support Our Community”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":6634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,42,11],"tags":[65,64,23],"syndication":[21,60],"class_list":["post-7627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-scholarship-and-publishing","category-pdh-certificate","category-publishing","tag-archives","tag-cornell-college","tag-digital-humanities","syndication-studio-home-page","syndication-studio-news","has-blocks","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7627"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7629,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7627\/revisions\/7629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7627"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=7627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}