Indexes as Evaluative Tools

When I began my Ph.D studies, my graduate advisor gave me a valuable piece of advice: you will not have the time or energy to pursue every good idea you have. This is not only solid life advice regarding personal time management but holds very true for "oral history in the digital age". Not every recorded oral history is destined to make it into a PBS documentary--most won't. With a good index, or sometimes just a decent inventory, one can make choices about what material is strongest and where, when, why and how it should be put to use in any of the increasing multi-media avenues available. 

Meaning Mapping for Ballparks, not Bulls eyes

In a number of our projects, we have had difficulty training our clients and partners NOT to get too specific by trying to imagine every possible future user while creating the controlled vocabularies and multi-dimensional indexes. (When we did this on an early project we ended up with an “out-of-control” controlled vocabulary.) The but the indexing process is not about naming things, rather sorting them into a collection of baskets of meaning we create. The structure of baskets can grow, change, expand or contract over time (an "iterative" process) and provide a lot of retrieval power and more than ample browsing power.

A misleading concept that Google reinforces in the digital age is the idea that accessing multi-media is about hitting bulls eyes or getting home runs. But one of the most underrated features of Google is not its powerful secret engine for retrieval that we will never understand, but the way it now leverages 10+ years of our “near misses”.  Google’s correlative database gives us a quick list of potential things we meant, but, like many others users, have misspelled or mis-Googled and eventually found. Even Google knows that searches are actually less about searching, and more about matching meaning to users’ desires. "Browsing" is still a mode of operating on the web and "Googling" is something different--more specific. We remember and embrace the promise of the web as a place to explore and browse...

Michael Frisch and "A Shared Authority"

Michael Frisch does not yet have a Wikipedia entry to himself, unlike Don Ritchie and Alessandro Portelli, our other favorite oral history rock stars. We really have to get on that one of these days....

Thanks to a recently published book, however, Letting Go? Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, there is a new Wikipedia entry that expounds on the concept clarifies what is meant by the iconic title of Mike's seminal book, A Shared Authority. Mike is quoted under the "Criticisms" section of the Wikipedia page "Shared Historical Authority".

Representation of recordings through Annotation

Our practice of Oral History content management, which we often refer to as digital indexing, began by questioning the assumption that recordings must be transcribed word for word before they can be used.  In the database-driven environments we work in, summary annotations are much preferred to full transcription. The work of the annotator is at the heart of digital indexing and we continue to reiterate that full transcription is always an option if the need is there and time and resources allow. Here are some random musings about annotation...

• Annotation is about representing what is on a recording in a text format.  In this sense, it is no different than a transcription.
• An annotation needs to describe passages of audio adequately enough to lead a user to that passage. Defining the users well may be as important or more important than the specificity with which the annotation represents the passage.
• An annotation can be enhanced by using strategic vocabulary words within the prose of the annotation. Thus full text searches will get hits on that digital object (passage of audio or video). 
• All annotations are subjective, and that is totally okay. It is all part of recognizing, defining, and composing toward an audience of users. Our subjectivity saves them time.

Multi-Dimensional Indexing: A Dynamic Process

Traditional cataloging and indexing might typically be bounded in scope--like in the case of a collection catalogue or an index is developed for a particular book.  But oral history collections and other digital collections are often associated with active projects that are growing over time. If the indexing process is strongly content-informed, and the content is changing dynamically over time, then the indexing process must not only be an iterative one, but a dynamic one as well.

What does this mean for our controlled vocabulary development process? In order to begin to capture the breadth and diversity of a collection via an index, the more content used to contribute to its development, the better. But how much of the content should inform the index, and when? Is it okay not to reevaluate the earliest indexed material and code it up with the evolving framework?

Multi-Dimensional Indexing: An Iterative Process

Developing and refining a catalogue or index is an iterative process that includes cycles of brainstorming, organizing, arranging, testing, reorganizing, editing, and publication. Iterative means we expect to go back and adjust work done earlier in the process, informed by things we learn later in the process. This may seem inefficient if we are comparing to other types of work. But indexing is more like writing or music composition, where the goal is quality content and the product comes as a result of a number of drafts. Although some brilliant artists create and compose well spontaneously, others require multiple revisions of initial drafts. In indexing, we behave more like the latter artists, revising significantly our first attempts based on an evolving conception of what's important or feedback from an audience.

Digital Humanities Discussion

In November I'll be attending the American Studies conference in San Juan and will be on a panel talking about Digital Humanities in graduate education. Although our primary identity at Randforce is more in Digital Indexing than digital humanities, we've worked with people like Mark Tebeau at Cleveland State and folks at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University--who run THATcamp and have developed Omeka--and generally have a lot to say about this diverse and emerging field. As part of the ramp-up to the conference I've been invited/encouraged to post and comment on this blog:

Digital Dimensions of Grad Ed in Am Studies

Check it out to join or view the discussion... The session is co-sponsored by the Graduate Education Committee and the Digital Humanities Caucus of the American Studies Association. Thanks to Rob Snyder for inviting me to join that panel!