Archives, Access, and Gwendolyn Brooks (The Digital Kind)

When I received the news I was chosen to represent The University of Iowa to the national digital humanities community as a HASTAC Scholar, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I am in my second and final year of the master’s program in the School of Library and Information Science here, which means I have an interest in just about every possible subject related to digital forums for learning and growing. Libraries house a diversity of knowledge, whether they represent physical buildings filled with books and journals or digital environments connecting remote users to PDFs and eBooks.

Libraries are thus situated between the humanities and technology. The traditional mission has been to archive and provide access, but these roles have been changing as technology advances and needs for interconnectedness, collaboration, and creativity increase. I am honored to be a part of the cohort of library and information science professionals redefining roles in this profession.

I’ve had the privilege of working as a graduate assistant for the Virtual Writing University Archive, spending a year learning about digital libraries in research universities. We’ve dealt with the traditional questions of what to archive, but now with a twist. Virtual storage allows a seemingly unlimited amount of space for digital formats. This digital age has prompted new questions for archivists and caretakers of knowledge delivery systems.

Here’s a digitized recording of a 1980 reading by Gwendolyn Brooks--who wants to know about this and how can we let them know where it is? When the majority has access to vast storage space, there’s so much potential for finding the most fascinating--or the most banal--items. Libraries haven’t traditionally been positioned to showcase collections on an international scale. Now, physical boundaries don’t box us in.

Or take the quality of preservation question. We might have a digitized conversation between an author from Zimbabwe and a poet from Singapore discussing their perspectives on their respective political regimes, but the original recorder captured the sound of the wind more than the sound of their voices. Who might still be interested in that? You have to love the dedicated documentarians who see how precious these present moments are and what they might lend to our future fascinations, no matter what obstacles come up.

These are not terribly complex questions, but they do have implications for how we connect seekers of information with havers of information, which is a core purpose of our efforts here. Digital humanities initiatives have the potential to connect like-missioned individuals with different expertise and expand the possibilities for learning. With such diverse talent, options become opportunities.

I am thrilled to be a part of this.