>> Abbie Grotke: Hello
and welcome, everybody.
I'm Abbie Grotke, Assistant Head
of the Digital Content
Management Section
in the Library of Congress
where I lead the Web
Archiving Program Team.
I'm delighted that you've joined
us tonight for #WhyWebArchiving:
Preserving Internet
Content for Research Use.
This evening's event is kicking
off the International Internet
Preservation Consortium,
otherwise known as the IIPC,
The events this week are all
virtual and completely free
and co-hosted this year by
the Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress recently
celebrated its 20th year
of web archiving since 2000.
We've made available over
29,000 web archive items
on the loc.gov website in 85
event and thematic collections.
Web archiving collections
at the Library
of Congress contain digital
materials from almost languages.
While my team provides
program and technical support,
the collections are developed
by subject experts all
over the library and
many of our divisions.
Web archiving is just one aspect
of the library's varied
digital collections efforts.
Before I hand things
over to our moderator
for our panel discussion,
I have a few housekeeping
notes to share.
This event is being
recorded and livestreamed,
and it will be available
on YouTube
for 24 hours after the event.
An edited version will be
made available at a later date
on the LoC and IIPC channels.
We encourage you to submit
questions of the panelists
and the moderator by
using the Q&A icon
at the bottom of
the Zoom screen.
You can ask the questions
anonymously if you'd like.
You may also upvote
questions that look
to be of interest to you.
The chat is also open and
we encourage you to use it
to engage with other
participants
and share information
and say hello,
like many of you are doing.
We will not be monitoring
the chat for questions.
However, again, please be
sure to use the Q&A for those.
please be courteous in the Q&A.
And while using the chat,
we will share a link
to the IIPC code code of
conduct for your information.
Lastly, if you would like
to use closed captions,
click the CC button
in your menus bar.
Now on to the show, I'd
like to invite on camera
and introduce my good
web archiving friend
and colleague Ian Milligan,
Associate Professor of History
and Associate Vice-President in
Research Oversight and Analysis
at the University of Waterloo.
Ian is our moderator for
this evening's event.
Hey, Ian.
>> Ian Milligan: Thanks so much.
>> Abbie: All right,
take it away.
>> Ian: So thanks so much,
Abbie, and so great to see
so many familiar
names in the audience.
So I was asked just to put a few
quick framing remarks together
for this event.
And I started by
thinking, you know,
what will we call a
historian studying something
like the COVID pandemic,
in 10, 20 or 30 years?
They're going to
be using the web?
How else would they learn
about our news ecosystem?
Our social media feeds, the
information and misinformation
that shaped the world.
We will be calling
them a web historian,
or will we just call
them a historian.
And that's because the web and
its archives lie at the heart
of the future of well, almost,
I think any study that's looking
back to the mid 1990s, or later,
that if we as a society
want to do justice
to understanding almost any
dimension of our society,
culture politics, since the
mid -1990s, we're going to have
to draw on access and use
web based primary sources.
And that means we're
going to have we're going
to have researchers that need
to use all of this information.
And we need to find a way to
preserve all of that data.
Now, that's why we have events
like the International Internet
Preservation Consortium,
an international gathering
of libraries, archives,
and other memory organizations,
as well as scholars,
researchers, curators,
activists, thought leaders
and beyond to think about
how we collectively can rise
to the challenge of being able
to tackle our memory
in the future.
It's interesting to reflect
that web archiving itself has
a surprisingly long history,
which is sometimes really
neat because we still think
of the web as new media.
In 1996, Internet entrepreneur
Brewster Kahle started the
Internet Archive in a
tiny house in the Presidio
of San Francisco, that Little
House on the Prairie stage
of web archiving, beginning
to save large quantities
of the internet onto tape.
And two years later,
in October of 1998,
the Library of Congress received
with triumph and fanfare,
a donation of their
own first web archive.
It came with a statue, it was
two terabytes and 63 inches,
half a million archived pages.
And that seemed big then, but
now it's something that all
of us could carry
around in our pockets,
which underscores just how
complicated this world is.
That web archiving is,
we're going to learn
from our colleagues and
in our discussion tonight
and for the conference that
follows this opening event,
is complicated, that
we take so much
of the internet for granted.
But just think about how
much of an interplay it takes
to display even one website.
If you went to loc.gov, you'd
see images, you'd see links,
the ability to go to Instagram,
or Pinterest, or Twitter
or YouTube, you can
zoom into documents
and into the tiniest
smudges on a page.
But if I go to loc.gov,
tomorrow,
it will be different
than it was today.
And it will be different
than it was yesterday.
So what does it mean
to preserve loc.gov?
Do we preserve it every day?
Do we preserve it every
month, every week?
Every second?
What does it mean that I use
my laptop to view the webpage
and I made these
remarks and checked it
with my iPhone this morning?
What if it's interactive?
We might want to look at
previous versions of the Library
of Congress' page
through a web archive,
often through the Wayback
Machine named after Rocky
and Bullwinkle's machine
from that cartoon,
which lets us see these older
websites as they once were.
Or we might want to think
about viewing them differently,
looking at them as text,
or all of the images
or all of the pictures.
That the possibilities are
limitless, but also terrifying.
As the amount of data
we're talking about,
in these conversations,
scales to levels few could
have imagined two decades ago,
hundreds of billions of archived
pages, hundreds of petabytes,
and a petabyte is
itself 1000 terabytes,
which is itself 1000
gigabytes, which hurts my head
when I think about it.
So in 20 years, when we look
back at COVID, and other events
that are sweeping our world
today, this is the kind
of landscape we're going to
be leaving our researchers.
So we will need librarians
and archivists
and memory professionals
to help preserve
and steward this
material, and scholars
to imagine what we
can do with it all.
So at this point, my goal in
these short opening remarks was
to just introduce problems,
which I will then walk away from
and leave all of these problems
and thoughts with our panelists.
And so what I'd like to do
now is introduce our panel
that will be joining us today.
So I asked them to come
up onto the virtual stage,
so you can see their
faces as I introduce them.
And I'll introduce our
four speakers in the order
that they'll be speaking.
So our first speaker
tonight is JJ Harbster.
JJ is Head of the
Science Reference Services
in the Science Technology
and Business Division
at the Library of Congress.
Her first introduction to
web archiving was in 2005,
nominating content for the
Hurricane Katrina collaborative
web archive, and she has
been involved with collecting
and preserving websites
ever since.
Our second speaker
is Beth Osborne,
a librarian at the Law
Library of Congress,
in addition to providing
reference, research,
and instructional services
in the area of US law,
she has been involved in web
archiving for the Law Library
for the past four years.
Prior to entering the
field of librarianship,
Beth was an attorney in the
New York State court system.
She is currently on
a supervisory detail
to the US Copyright Offices
Outreach and Education section
and returns to the Law
Library this summer.
Our third speaker is Ben Lee,
a fourth year PhD candidate
in the Paul G. Allen School for
Computer Science and Engineering
at the University of
Washington, the other UW
where he is a National Science
Foundation graduate research
fellow in machine learning.
He recently served as a
2020 innovator in residence
at the Library of Congress and
the Willner Memorial Fellow
in the Stroum Center
for Jewish Studies
at the University of Washington.
Previously, he was the inaugural
Digital Humanities Associate
Fellow at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum,
and a visiting fellow in
Harvard's history department.
And then last but not least,
our final speaker tonight
will be Dr. Amelia Acker,
an assistant professor at the
University of Texas at Austin
in the School of Information
where she leads the
Critical Data Studies Lab.
Her research on data archives
and preservation has been funded
by the National Science
Foundation and the Institute
for Museum and Library Services.
In 2016, Acker was
awarded early access
to the Obama White House
social media archive,
and has since then
studied preservation
and access issues related
to social media data.
Ackers current research focuses
on cultures of mobile computing,
emerging digital preservation
models data literacy,
social media data archives, and
metadata standards for exchange
between private and
public archives.
Previously, Acker worked as
a librarian and archivist
and a mobile app developer.
And when she's at
home in Austin,
you could find her
biking, bouldering,
or swimming about town.
So thank you to all
of our panelists.
And with that, I
will invite all of us
to turn off our cameras
except for JJ,
who will lead off our
conversation tonight.
So thank you.
>> JJ Harbster: Thank
you, and hello everyone.
I'm really enjoying to seeing
where everyone is from.
This is truly an
international conference.
And so it brings me a
lot of joy to see all
of the geographic
locations in the chat.
So to introduce myself,
I am JJ Harbster.
I am the Head of the
Science Reference Section
at the Library of Congress.
And when I was posed the
question, why web archiving
as a librarian, and now
a champion of librarians,
or a supervisor, but I like
to consider myself a champion
of librarians, I spent many
years and those years were
through trial and error of
how to integrate web archiving
in traditional collection
development activities.
And so part of my job is to
help the library develop the
science collections.
And so I like to ask
myself questions like,
this is a big one,
am I collecting
and preserving scientific
knowledge for Congress
for current users and
for future generations.
That is a very big charge
and a very big question.
But I also ask questions like
is there something at risk
of not being collected?
And what can I do about it.
So communication of
science, as everyone knows,
is expanded outside of this
realm of print, you know,
we ingest things that are born
digital, you know, in blogs,
and social media, and all
those other things, YouTube.
So there's so many
factors that prompt me
to archive something
from the web.
And oftentimes, it's
documenting a moment in time.
So the one of the good examples
is Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Or maybe there is a theme of
things that I'm collecting.
I truly love polar bears.
And so I have been
selecting content
that documents how these
beautiful animals more
than likely are going
to become extinct,
probably in my lifetime,
which is very sad.
So I'm collecting all sorts
of material about polar bears.
I also collect materials, I also
collect material that's afraid
of getting lost, there's
some sort of risk involved.
And that led me to do
the Science Blog Archive.
And let's see, I would just, I
have little prompts to keep me
on track, because I
have five minutes.
So through the years, what
I've now come under come
to understand about web
archiving is that sort
of my style and purpose
of archiving tends
to go more towards the
thematic or the event based,
and I see myself more as a
curator than a librarian.
And, you know, because like, as
a librarian, and at the Library
of Congress, I can't collect
and preserve everything.
I feel like that's
a romantic notion
and nobody can achieve that.
I don't think that's achievable.
But what I can achieve is, is a
curated, represented collection.
And so that's kind of where
I have gone that direction,
I've gone to that direction.
So you know, taking a
snapshot of a moment in time,
or identifying represented
content that tells a story,
answers a question - those
are the sorts of things
that I'm trying to do when I'm
when I'm archiving for the web.
And I think I probably, am
I at my five minutes, Ian?
>> Ian Milligan: I haven't been
keeping very strict timing.
>> JJ Harbster: Okay, I'll
just quickly share a couple
of the projects that I've
worked on, over the years.
One of the projects, which is
my baby, I consider it my baby,
and I treat it like a baby
is the Science Blog Web
Archive project.
I started that almost
working on that project, I've,
I've kind of, I started
understanding more
about science communication,
how information is distributed,
how it sort of organized
and that sort of thing.
But one thing that happened
unexpectedly happened
with that collection
is that I noticed I was
because it's been
almost 10 years now
that I was documenting some
early careers of science writers
that now have very big, big
jobs in science writing.
But I was collecting their blogs
when they were just
starting out.
So that was a very unexpected
thing that happened with that.
I also led an Earth Day
2020 Web Archive project
that was Earth Day
was turning 50.
Little did I know that in
2009, when I was creating
that project, that there was
going to be a global pandemic.
And we would be on lockdown and
2020 I still decided to continue
with that project with
the Earth Day 2020.
And again, something
unexpected happened
that I started documenting
the first digital Earth Day,
which was not my
intention from the start.
The last project
that I'm working
on right now is the
Coronavirus web archive.
And in that, with that
archive, what I've been focusing
on is not only is balancing the
the science and the business,
industry policy stuff with more
human stories, and how I got to,
to that was when
I started thinking
about historical pandemics.
And I started, being in
science, I started reading
up on historical pandemics,
especially the influenza
of 1918.
And I was really noticing
things that authors were citing,
topics they were focusing
on, there was a lot of talk
about mask wearing and such.
And so I thought it
was really important
when we were creating this web
archive that we really needed
to balance that science
and, and policy and business
with very human stories.
And so the impact
of everyday lives
and what those people
were doing.
And so we did a lot on what
we call Corona cuisine,
or something, you know, cooking
and fashion, and religion,
performing arts, you
know, all of that kind
of really human stuff
that makes us human.
So I will stop now and
give the floor back to Ian.
>> Ian Milligan: Wonderful.
Thanks for kicking us off JJ.
Beth, I'll turn it over
to you for your remarks.
>> Elizabeth Osborne:
Hi, thanks, Ian.
And like everybody else, I'm
so happy to be here and talk
about web archiving from,
you know, my perspective.
I am a librarian.
I'm a law librarian
and my background
as an attorney informs that.
And, you know, I come to you
today with the perspective
of somebody who's
also a curator like JJ
and I have been doing
this for about four years.
But the I did not
start this archive.
The archive has been in place
since before I assumed
responsibility
for the collection.
And so that was interesting
in and of itself, since I kind
of took over from something that
had been started by other folks,
you know, in a different
time period.
But, you know, so we're
talking today about, you know,
what is the value
of web archiving
and nd what are its
potential uses.
Why do we archive legal blogs?
- that's, you know, that's
my area of expertise.
The Law Library decided to
participate in web archiving,
kind of, like JJ said,
to preserve at risk
born digital content.
And so the archiving
of legal blogs fits
within that, that mission.
Web archiving ensures that these
collections will be accessible
to future generations
or we hope they will,
future generations
of researchers.
And we do this because
blogs are temporary.
They can go in and out
of existence, you know,
at the drop of a dime.
They're relevant to
the legal profession,
they can be very niche,
so they can be very
on another very specific topic.
The third thing is,
they're being cited
for their legal analysis
by courts.
And when we talked about law,
we talked about primary sources
of law, which is a case
law is an example of that.
That's coming from the courts.
And then we also talk
about secondary sources.
So a secondary source
is something
that informs those
primary sources.
So we would consider legal blogs
to be a secondary source of law.
The legal blogs enhance the Law
Library's collection, you know,
the Law Library of
Congress, their mission is
to provide access to
an unrivaled collection
of US foreign comparative
and international law.
And so, we believe
that the archiving
of legal blogs is
important to this mission.
So I mean, one of the things
that I talk about a lot
when I talk about the
collection that I work on is
that I love the fact that the
blogs are kind of several types
of a, it's several types
of information, right?
It's an overlapping
attributes of like the
because of a medium
and the content.
So the legal blogs are a
source of information, right?
In this case, legal
scholarship and analysis,
bloggers are pushing out,
you know, kind of newer ideas
or discussing areas where the
law is changing, you know,
emerging law, and they have
the ability to publish quickly.
And then there's also
drawbacks to that, you know,
in terms of authoritativeness,
and long term relevancy,
the depth of their analysis,
and the gender of the author.
So all these things are
kind of in comparison
to more traditional forms
of legal scholarship, like,
you know, law reviews, or,
or kind of more peer
reviewed publications.
And then two: blogs are a
form of social media, right,
it's an avenue for discourse.
And they typically invite
engagement and critique
in the form of comments
or responses.
So it's more interactive
than your traditional secondary
source, like a treatise or,
you know, something that
doesn't really invite responses.
And, of course, there
are websites, right,
that's the third thing, which
is interesting in and of itself,
because the physical
design and the layout are,
they're important to the
conveyance of the message.
And fourth: they're a
brand for some people.
They're a form of advertising,
they're a form of marketing.
A lot of these blogs are written
by law firms for the purposes
of marketing their services.
And, but also, the
field is also, you know,
heavily dominated by academics
who have their own brand to sell
in terms of relevance,
prominence,
and quality of research.
So all four of those things sort
of come together
in a legal blog.
And so that's, that's where
I'm interested, I don't know
which of those things
necessarily is going
to be interesting to
researchers in the future.
Are they going to be interested
in you know, the physical design
of a legal blog, are they
going to be interested
in the content help, they're
interested in the content,
that would be the,
like, my biggest hope.
But I think, you know, because
had to be sort of comfortable
with that ambiguity, you know,
I have made it my goal to try
to make sure that I
have cast a wide net,
and that we cast a wide net
and bring in to the collection,
blogs that are diverse,
represent a variety of topics
and voices, present a consistent
level of intellectual debate.
And that could be in danger of
being lost to time or neglect.
You know, along those lines,
I also had to get comfortable
with, you know, a willingness
to reassess items that
maybe are in the collection,
and are no longer in scope
or have become defunct.
So I think one of the best parts
about web archiving is I get
to look at those things, you
know, I go through my reviews.
And if I find that it can be,
you know, the crawling period is
over the website is defunct,
the blog is no longer useful
or no longer in the scope
of the collection, you know,
I get to free up room and bring
in new content, and new voices,
and new blogs into
the collection.
So that's what you know, that's
what I really love about it.
And that's, you know, what
I got out of web archiving
and why I think it's important.
>> Ian Milligan: Wonderful.
Thanks so much, Beth.
And I'll go to our
third panelist now,
Ben Lee, thank you again.
>> Ben Lee: Thanks.
Hi, everyone, it's very
nice to see you all.
And I'm really excited to be a
part of this conversation today.
So I'll give a little bit of
background on my own research,
and then perhaps talk a little
bit about what I see to be
so exciting about web archives,
especially from the perspective
as somebody in computer science.
My research generally,
what I'm interested in,
and as Ian mentioned, you
know, I'm working on my PhD
in Computer Science at the
University of Washington,
is really how we do what
I might call computing,
cultural heritage,
how we really think
about doing projects involving
machine learning in order
to improve access, or
facilitate search and discovery
for cultural heritage
collections.
So thinking along the lines
of libraries, archives,
museums, memory institutions.
And along these lines, I
think what I'm interested
in particular is really
some questions at scale
about how we search over
massive collections.
My dissertation is
largely centered
around a project called
newspaper navigator,
which I began with the
Library of Congress
through their innovator in
residence program in 2019.
And the goal of this
project is really trying
to reimagine how we search over
millions of newspaper pages,
in particular from Chronicling
America, which is maintained,
by the Library of
Congress, now at the time,
had about 16 million digitized
historic newspaper pages.
And so one of the real
challenges that we wanted
to ask was, first,
how could we try
to extract this visual
content at scale?
And then second, how can we
reimagine searching over it?
So we released a dataset and
then also a search application
that allows you to search
not only by keyword search
or by facets, so looking by
state or by date of publication,
but also to search by visual
simularity using some underlying
machine learning mechanisms.
And so I say all this because
I think, despite the scale
that emerges through Chronicling
America and thinking through,
you know, around a
terabyte of data from all
of the digitized newspapers,
as Ian mentioned, when we start
to level up and think about web
archives, as we move toward,
you know, a single petabyte let
alone hundreds of petabytes,
the questions become, I think,
really fascinating from a number
of different perspectives,
especially computationally
in terms of how we
even make some
of these search affordances
possible,
and then what we can do
with machine learning.
I do want to just mention a
little bit in terms of, I think,
to be one of the exciting things
about web archives in terms
of how it highlights so
many different disciplines.
Here, I'd point to, I
think, even to Ian's book,
"History in the age of
abundance", and all of his work
in terms of describing how
web archives will of course,
change the contours
of historical research
in the future, and even
currently in the present.
And I'd add all the work in
computational social sciences
and the digital humanities,
but also from computer
science and STEM as well.
For those of you who
might be aware of some
of these bigger machine
learning projects
that train what I call
foundational models
around like GPT-3 and
these really large,
machine learning models, pretty
much all of them are trained off
of web archives as well.
And I think that presents a
really interesting opportunity
to try to really imagine how we
search over these collections
and understand their
composition,
because it really affects
how we train these models,
and think about them
from a computer science
perspective as well.
And so I mentioned that I think,
really the the exciting frontier
of web archives,
for me personally,
is thinking about these kinds
of search and discovery systems
that scale and how
we can really think
about whether archives
are unique in this case,
not just in terms
of how big they are.
But in terms of the
ability to try
to do interesting new mechanisms
for searching over text
and images jointly, how
we can use webpage layout
as an interesting way of trying
to serve as recommendations
for search in general.
And so here I'd mentioned
projects
like Archives Unleashed,
but also thinking
through these kinds
of general challenges
and what machine learning
might offer us, I'll mention
that I started some of this
work with Trevor Owens here
at the Library of Congress and
thinking through how we can try
to search over born
digital government PDFs.
So in particular,
leveraging the Library
of Congress's wonderful datasets
in the 1000 .gov PDF data set.
And I know there was a question
in the, in the Q&A already
about the places to get started.
And I think some of the
Library of Congress datasets
for born digital collections
are a great starting point,
just to think through
some of the questions
of how we actually try to search
over these materials
using mechanisms other
than just keyword search.
So this includes things
like visual similarity,
where we uncover all
sorts of, you know,
interesting PDF documents,
you know, containing maps
or containing redacted,
heavily redacted documents
that might not be
surfaced if we just look
at the metadata that
were provided.
And then I think I'll
wrap up my section here
by talking a little
bit about, you know,
who would these the audiences
be for these really kinds of,
you know, massive search
and discovery systems
that I envision and
talk so much about here.
And for me, I think there's
there's one question, of course,
which is the research
perspective,
and I'd mentioned all
the disciplines involved.
I also think there's a really,
really compelling curatorial
component of this too,
for subject matter experts
in terms of, you know,
if you inherit a born digital
collection, or a web archive
to try to provide a finding
aid or some descriptions
for where do we even
begin if it's too big,
and I think being able to use
some of these new, you know,
novel computer science
affordances,
to be able to understand
the broader contours
of some patterns that are
emerging, give at least a place
to begin to bootstrap up.
And then lastly, of course,
I've mentioned, I think,
for the general public, being
able to think through new ways
of searching and
discovery materials,
sort of per the larger goal.
And I think cultural heritage
these days of thinking
about serendipitous search, and
also just generally new ways
of searching web archives
are certainly fit this mold
very well.
And I really hope that as
the research develops here,
around search and discovery,
it really brings new people
to the collections as well.
So with that, I'll go
ahead and turn it over.
>> Ian Milligan: Wonderful.
Thanks so much, Ben.
And then I'll turn to Amelia for
our last speaker of the panel.
>> Amelia Acker: Great.
Thanks so much, Ian.
And thanks for the organizers
of this event, LoC and IIPC.
And I'm really excited to
be here with the panelists
for the web archiving
conference.
So yeah, I'm an information
scientist who researches
and teaches about how digital
preservation approaches are
changing and how that impacts
the way we understand society
and how we know ourselves
with these new tools,
as we create digital information
more and more online.
And so in my research,
I'm really trying
to examine the methodological
and ethical challenges
of collecting and analyzing
and preserving data at scale,
especially from our
new information
and communication technologies,
like social media platforms,
mobile apps, and the
wireless networks that we use
when we're connecting
with our mobile phones
and using all these new tools.
And so as an information
scientist who relies on data
from the internet to do my
research, I'm really concerned
about the rise of increasingly
privatized platforms
of information infrastructures
that we're now using
to create personal records,
corporate documents,
even government communications.
And what internet researchers
and web historians like Ian
and Ben know is that
the information
that we create today
really does need
to have really important
thoughtful people
like yourselves thinking
about how to save it,
because the stuff
that we create today
in networks is really
radically ephemeral.
And it's really difficult for us
to rely on platforms to preserve
and provide access to this
information over time.
So for empirical and
historical scholarship,
we're really facing
a replication
and reproducibility crisis.
Because we don't
have access to things
like social media
data in particular.
And that's why web
archives are so important.
So that's why we need
really visionary archivists
and web archiving efforts and
institutional leaders like LoC,
and other organizations
to preserve our digital culture
that's now just not only born
digital, but born
networked in systems
like the teleconferencing
software
that we're using right now.
So I thought I'd
use a few minutes
on why web archiving my section
and tell you a little bit
about a research study
that I supervised
with some master's students a
few years ago in a class I teach
on metadata, where we played
around with the Library
of Congress's web archive of
memes from meme generator,
which is this online site
that allows users to create
and publish memes to share
across networks online.
So at the i-school at UT,
I have the great privilege
of teaching all kinds of
information professionals,
archivists, librarians and data
scientists to learn how to sort
of play and leverage and
learn about metadata with lots
of different kinds of datasets,
but we're always looking
for historical and really
internet driven collections
to play with.
And LoC's web archive has
a lot of different kinds
of collections that
we play around with.
And in the course, I teach
students to use Open Refine,
and some of you may have
heard of this software before,
it's a great open source
toolkit that allows journalists,
researchers, data practitioners
to clean messy datasets,
but it also has really powerful
analysis tools, and features
that allow you to sort of parse
texts or identify languages
and bundle it up or locate
patterns in strings of text.
So you can group together
different kinds of trends
across structured data.
So Open Refine works really
well for metadata, or the titles
from memes - the text that we
find on top of the image macros.
So it's really great for
analyzing web archiving data
and datasets that are
derived from web crawls.
So in the metadata course,
we use LoC's archive
of meme generator and these
related public datasets
that archivists had
created information
from crawling the
whole site in 2012.
So my students were
very excited.
It's very old, vintage
memes if you if you if you
like and follow memes.
And so meme generator is sort of
like a printing press or means.
It allows people to copy not
just images, but also copy text
that lets you to update and
change them in different ways.
And vice versa.
And so you can see the
titles change over time,
it gives us a really
good insight
into cultural expectations
of humor, politics,
current events, and so on.
The public data set from the
meme generator archive is
about 57,000, unique
images or memes and it links
to archive versions
of those images.
So you can bring it into open,
refine and study these trends
across not only groups
of images,
but different kinds of texts.
So we were able to do time
series of changes in phrases,
we were able to detect
five different languages
across the dataset, and
work with this huge corpus
of what we call historic memes.
So that happy to share more
about that in the discussion.
But I just wanted
to talk a little bit
about my own experience using
web archives that already exists
in my teaching, and in research,
training new librarians
and archivists.
We publish our results
and we'll share this too,
I'll have the analysis
in an IEEE conference,
social media and society.
And if you want to check
it out, it's kind of fun.
But I just want to
remind researchers
and reference folks today
here at the conference,
to consider how often internet
scholars, our students,
and our colleagues don't
know about the web archives
that already exist of new
media or the internet now,
and we really need to
share and tell them
because internet researchers
have a bias towards collecting
their own data sets
and creating silos.
So we really need to publicize
and share different kinds
of scholarly and pedagogical
approaches to using
and reusing these collections.
Like the web cultures web
archive at LOC, which contains
like hundreds, probably 1000s
of really exciting archives
that are not only born digital,
but are born network records
that we're creating
together on the internet.
And as Ian said at the top
that we've been preserving
with web archives
for decades now.
So thanks, those
are my comments.
>> Ian Milligan: Wonderful,
thanks so much, Amelia.
And I might just as I
invite the rest of the panel
to turn the cameras on to
come back in, ask the audience
to give us that sort of
cavalcade of applause
for those four wonderful
presentations.
You know, for presentations,
I think, that have done
such an excellent job
of laying a foundation.
And I'm really in awe
of the amazing work
that these scholars are doing
helping to build collections,
helping to think about access,
reflecting on the
role in society today.
And you know, questions
of sharing, and education
and discussion that lie at
the heart of our community
of web archiving practitioners,
very broadly defined.
So what we're gonna do now is
I'm gonna kick our conversation
off for a few minutes.
And as I pose questions to
the panelists that I know,
a few people already have, just
again, a reminder, you know,
if you do want to add
to the conversation,
do click on that Q&A tab at
the bottom, ask a question
and will shortly begin asking
some of the audience questions.
But just as people put their
questions in, and so you know,
catch a breath, I want
to pose a question
to our four panelists here.
And that is that we've all
seen web archiving in the news,
I think quite a bit over the
last few months, you know,
with the Ukraine
crisis, certainly,
with political debates
in the United States,
with which has come
up today, you know,
the response to COVID-19.
And in the United States
in the world, you know,
Canada had its moment in
the sun a few months ago.
And like, these are wild
events, and just like, you know,
the legal blogs, lots
of transitory things,
lots of emotions, everything's
moving really, really quickly.
So I'm really curious if
the panel could reflect
on how you react to like
these big events happening
in real time.
So I definitely will will turn
to JJ and Beth for this first,
and then I'm curious as well, as
you know, maybe Ben's thoughts
on access and Amelia thoughts
around, you know, the memes
and the private platforms.
But JJ, what would you,
What's your thoughts on this?
>> JJ Harbster: I'm still trying
to process the whole
Coronavirus thing.
You know, working
on that web archive,
it feels like it's
never going to end.
And it's just keeps...
there's like another phase
or another something.
And I feel like I'm so lost,
not lost, maybe not lost.
It's not the right word.
But I'm so focused on that,
that I'm not seeing what
what else needs to be done.
Like what's happening
in the Ukraine.
And I would imagine, you know,
the library is very
international in scope.
And so I would imagine some
of our area study folks are
preserving Ukraine web content.
I would imagine.
I'm not currently
involved in that just
because Coronavirus
is still around.
I know there will be a
sort of end or will there?
You know, I know there has to
it has to sort of wind down
but I feel like it really?
It's been a very long two years.
For everyone, that is.
So we were collecting ...
we have about 85
active collections
on a range of topics.
I will pass it off to Elizabeth
she might be doing something.
>> Elizabeth Osborne: I
mean, I think, you know, Ian,
your question was how
do you react to it.
I mean, I would say like,
I try not to overreact
to the exclusion of...
- I hope I'm phrasing this
right - I try not to kind
of solely focus on that when
I when these events come up,
what I try to make sure is
that my collections have topics
and cover things that
are covering those topics
and ideas and, and if I can see
a gap because something arises
in current events, then I
kind of redouble my efforts.
So, you know, maybe
the collection was slim
on health law blogs.
So during the pandemic, you
know, we tried to refocus
and make sure that we were
getting like the newer voices,
different voices in
that perspective.
So I try not to ...
you know, my collections are
very pragmatic because they deal
with the law and, and
I try to make sure
that I'm just getting
enough voices in there.
And when these things
happen, it's time to look
at the collection and
see if there's gaps,
a very librarianship
approach to it.
>> JJ Harbster: And we've
done a lot of analysis
like Elizabeth was alluding with
the Coronavirus web archive.
So we were looking
at the various subjects
seeing how many, you know,
do we have gaps in say, what
what religions response was
or a specific religions
response.
And so, there was a lot
of analysis going on,
as we were developing, as
well as collecting content,
and things change,
directions, change,
scopes change, purposes change.
And I think it's good just to
kind of be aware and flexible,
and, and not be so anchored
to a certain purpose
and allow that flexibility.
>> Amelia Acker: One thing that
I have found really exciting is
that we're beginning to see
that web archiving
is becoming something
of a citizen science project.
We could probably go
back and mark it to one
of the the last presidential
transition, I think,
with some data rescue projects,
EDGI [Environmental Data
and Governance Initiative]
our colleagues
in Toronto made a big efforts
towards rescuing online data.
But we're seeing
that with SUCHO.
Someone's mentioned
that in the chat
with Saving Ukrainian Heritage.
And then with many of the early
COVID, tracking dashboards,
the COVID tracking project,
in many others started
with volunteerism efforts,
people really wanting
to save our online cultural
heritage and share it
for different kinds of things.
So from a cultural
perspective, it's super exciting
that increasingly, these tools
are being accessible and easy.
And you just need concerned
citizens or a group of people
who really want to save stuff.
And really rapidly
we can see informal,
to more formal web archiving
projects just happen really
quickly, which I think is
really, really exciting.
And maybe one of the bright
things that came out of,
you know, lockdown pandemic, and
suddenly switching to Zoom life
and Slack and these new tools.
>> Benjamin Lee: I guess the
what I might add, you know,
coming from the perspective
of other researchers
that I think it really
underscores the distinction
between digitized materials
and born digital materials.
That's the specific
immediacy of it all.
And I think it's really
compelling, I mean,
being able to get up and running
with, you know, a dataset,
and Google might say, under the
left language, have collections
of data or something like that,
in such a short turnaround,
I think is really compelling.
Digitization, I think, you know,
has its own certain cadence
or limitations in terms of how
long it takes practically to go
from a physical material
to into something
that you can use
in a digital realm.
And so for me, as a
researcher, I think,
one it's super exciting.
And so echoing what everybody
else has said here, but second,
I think, it also once again,
necessitates all sorts
of really interesting and
compelling tools that allow you
to get up and running
really quickly.
And, I think, that's
also a great opportunity
to rethink this also on the
computer science end too.
>> Ian Milligan: Wonderful,
thanks to the panel
for such a thoughtful
discussion.
One day COVID will end,
I had to knock on wood,
when I think JJ was saying
that, but certainly, you know,
a lot of going on and really
fascinating responses.
So turning to some
audience questions.
You know, Christopher Werner
asked a question directed
primarily at JJ,
but I think others
on the panel might have
thoughts on this as well.
And the question
from Christopher is:
if you can't collect everything,
how does one justify your bound?
What topics or events are
worthy of being collected?
How can we at this moment
predict what will not be useful
in the future?
So JJ, maybe I'll throw to
you for your first answer,
but I certainly think the other
panelists could think of this.
>> JJ Harbster: I always say
I don't have a crystal ball.
So I don't know what future
researchers, historians,
scholars and alike will
need 50 years from today.
But what I do know is what
current, you know, historians,
scholars, what they're using
and what they're looking for.
And it changes.
You know, there's definitely ...
things ebb and flow.
One thing that really
helped us -
and I think it's a good
opportunity that to bring this
up - is with the
Coronavirus web archive.
One of our or a web archivist
created a rubric for us.
Because there was
so much information.
And we had a lot of things
to go through a lot of topics
because it's International,
the whole entire planet
was affected by this.
Every single living
being was affected.
And so we created a rubric.
And so whenever we
looked at content,
we would ask questions like:
does this have research value?
We also asked: can
this be easily crawled?
Is this something that
we can actually capture?
I think we had about 17
different questions we would
ask ourselves.
Also developing a scope and
a purpose, I think is super,
super vital to any collection.
But I think you also need to
reflect and revisit your scope
and purpose as you're going on.
So if it's a long term
project, like the Coronavirus is
in year two on this, we are
reflecting and doing analysis.
We're looking at where
we have gap areas,
but we're also asking
questions like ...
now we're pivoted towards, you
know, vaccines, and going back
to wherever the endemic phase,
you know, stuff like that.
And I'll share the stage
with my colleagues.
>> Ian Milligan:
Amelia, Beth, or Ben,
any thoughts to add to that?
>> Elizabeth Osborne:
JJ, you nailed.
It was a very comprehensive
response.
I mean, there was a couple of
questions in the in the chat
about scope and sticking to it.
It's a dance, right between
adhering to your scope
and also trying to think
outside your scope,
which is something
that, I think,
the people who are involved with
any collections work struggle
with but it's not
a perfect science.
And I think the most
important thing is:
don't work in a bubble.
I have colleagues and a lot of
other people who are involved
in my project, you
know, I may be kind
of calling it my collection,
but it's not my collection,
there's a lot of other people
who are involved in, you know,
looking at things
approving, discussing.
And, you know, we try to kind
of work collaboratively on that.
>> Ben Lee: I'd say, you
know, approaching this,
as a researcher, one of
the most compelling things
about web archives, for me is
oftentimes seeing the strategies
adopted in terms of
what's collected,
I think it's incredibly
useful, you know, once again,
maybe bringing this back
to other collections.
You know, oftentimes
one of the challenges
with newspapers is not even
that, you know, of course,
we have to accept that there are
all sorts of newspapers that are
out there that we'll
never have copies of,
or they're incomplete.
But part of the challenge
is not just even with having
that understanding, but not
knowing why certain materials
were decided upon to
be kept, you know,
hundreds of 100 years ago, what
the, what the process was like,
and what the genealogy is.
And so I think it's really
exciting to be at a time
where we actually can trace that
genealogy a bit more clearly.
And it, I think, really makes
it much more straightforward
to use web archives, at
least from that perspective,
and I think also will allow us
maybe 50 years down the road,
as JJ said, even though it
presents all sorts of challenges
about who knows what people
will be interested in,
at least we'll have
an understanding
of what the process was like.
>> Ian Milligan: Perfect, and
I see that I think Zinab asked
in the chat as well, about the
bias and selection criteria,
and then you discussed
that really well there.
So we have a question.
I see some up votes on it
so it's obviously a pressing
question for the community,
which is from Carolyn Frainger.
You know, she says,
It's a basic question.
It's not a basic question:
can anybody contribute
to web archiving?
How do you get started
with contributing
to web archiving as a whole?
So maybe, because,
you know, Amelia works
with students in this area.
Maybe Amelia - what are your
thoughts to that question?
>> Amelia Acker:
I'd like to think
that there are two kinds
of, sort of swim lanes
of web archiving: there's
macro efforts that we see
from huge organizations,
that's formal collecting,
lots of resources.
And then micro efforts.
That will be individuals,
small groups,
people doing it,
not for profit work.
Both kinds of swim
lanes are both types
of web archiving efforts
are just as important.
So there's lots of
different ways
that you can have one
click and be involved.
"Save-page-now" is a
great plugin that I use
with my students when
we're looking for things.
That's a way to contribute to
the Internet Archive tacitly
as you're encountering things.
You can also send efforts
or lobby our librarians
and archivists at Library of
Congress, and so on to say,
"please collect this
or give us advice".
But I feel like there's
a whole continuum
of ways to get involved.
At a professional level.
We train web, web
archivists, or web archiving
at the master's level, usually,
at least in US i-schools.
But there are many, like
workshops and programs
that you can learn about and
find out about are publicized
through different
professional associations
like this one as well.
I don't know maybe other
colleagues have ideas.
>> Ian Milligan: Possibly to
hear from JJ, Beth, or Ben.
Although I think Amelia,
you've laid out really well.
>> Elizabeth Osborne: Exactly.
Besides my professional
capacity,
I'm also just an
interested citizen.
And when I see things on the web
that I think should be captured,
I kept it, I try to capture
them on the Internet Archive
or use the features that
you talked about about.
So absolutely.
I mean, I think it's great to
have a coming from both sides.
>> JJ Harbster: And I often
share things I discover
that might not be
under my purview.
And I will send it to
somebody else going "Gosh,
I found this really great thing.
I think we need to preserve it".
So I participate
in that as well.
And I agree with
everything Amelia was saying.
>> Benjamin Lee: I might add
to that, from the perspective
of getting engaged with web
archives in terms of using them,
I think it's oftentimes
surprising how many people
engage with web archives, but
they might not be familiar
with the term or the
language behind it.
I mean, so many people use the
Wayback Machine or encounter it,
in their daily media
consumption.
And so in a sense, we're
already all using web archives.
It's just about the
right framing or language
for it sometimes, too, which
is, I think compelling.
>> Ian Milligan: That's a
really good way to put it,
and some good resources
in the chat, too.
So the next question we
got from the audience is
from Melanie Solomon, which
I think is a great question:
is anyone actively preserving,
"bad info" when misinformation
driven web content sites?
I suspect we can
all speak to that.
Maybe Beth?
I'm sure no law blog has ever
published misinformation but ...
>> Elizabeth Osborne: I think
we're passively doing it
in that collection, probably.
I mean, the thing about content
is that it's coming from a blog
or an individual is that
it's not always well vetted.
That's kind of the interesting
part of the legal blog,
that archive and things
like that, like, you know,
social media archives like that.
Is that - why are we saving
and how will this be useful?
There are some big
questions and, you know,
what is the impact of
saving going to have
on its reputation over time.
These are things I think about
from a scholarly perspective,
you know, and concerns I have.
But are there efforts
to, you know,
deliberately preserve that?
I do think that some of the
citizen archiving projects
that are going to
Internet Archive,
and other organizations
are doing that,
it's just that that's not really
something that the Library
of Congress has set out
that I'm aware of has set
out to do in an assertive way.
We may be capturing content that
later proves to be inaccurate
or misinformation, but I don't
believe that there's a...
JJ is there any concerted
efforts to do that?
>> JJ Harbster: How
we approached it
for the Coronavirus web
archive, because there was a lot
of misinformation
or disinformation,
both was prevalent, and
we really didn't want
to nominate content to give
that misinformation authority.
Because if they get an
email from the Library
of Congress saying "we're going
to preserve your website",
we did not want that
to say that we agree
with the information
they're distributing.
So what we did is that
we approached a big sort
of misinformation aggregator, I
think it was called NewsGuard.
I could be wrong on that.
But it's a database of just
all sorts of misinformation
and where you find it.
So rather than going
to individual sites
that are providing
this misinformation,
we decided to use an
aggregator and I think
that was a really good
solution to that problem.
>> Amelia Acker: I can
speak to a little bit
about what some disinformation
and misinformation
researchers have been doing
in collaboration with platforms.
It's a real ethical issue
because if you save it
and preserve it in some
ways, it is an archive
of all the skullduggery that
people can reproduce, right.
And so some of the stuff
we actually do want removed
from the internet.
But perhaps we do want to
have researchers or students
to have access in some way.
So how to provide
access is really hard.
Twitter for a number of years
has been publishing datasets
of state backed operations,
misinformation operations,
and they published the accounts
and some of the reasoning
and metadata behind how
this is a malicious botnet.
Some disinformation researchers
have begun to have begun
to establish things
like data co-ops,
because the platforms remove
access from misinformation,
once it's been published after
a certain amount of time,
and there are a few
co-ops beginning to start.
Of course, we are still hemmed
in by the terms of service
with which we access the data.
So usually, the platform
APIs don't allow you
to share data once it's
been deleted or taken down.
So it's an area, that's
a really big concern,
especially for scholars of
political communication,
malicious content,
and disinformation.
And it's something that we
really need to think about:
how to provide access to some
of those, I don't know, secret,
sensitive content that we maybe
do want to provide access to,
but in limited sort of ways
or in gatekeeping ways.
>> JJ Harbster: I see the value
in researching that stuff.
It's just that we just didn't
want to give this authority.
You know, saying that we
think their content is good.
We were collecting it for
other reasons, I guess.
>> Ian Milligan: Perfect.
In my own work, I've
seen that in the 90s.
Right. When people put a stamp
on their website, say, hey,
this has been archived
by somebody.
That means my website matters.
So we have a question here from
Herbj rn Andresen who writes:
"as an archival science
professor, I find it interesting
that the term curation
is emphasized.
Well, appraisal might
signal both expectations
of accountability
and transparency,
and also more open approach
to successive recreations".
And then he's got the
question: "is there a risk
of web archiving being too
tightly connected to the views
and perspectives
of the collectors?
A risk that, of course,
is also relevant
to more traditional
appraisal work?"
So because I see JJ
smiling, I see Beth nodding,
maybe I'll throw
it to one of you
for your thoughts
on this question.
Maybe JJ, because
you're smiling the most.
>> JJ Harbster: It just
made me smile because just
as librarians, we're
always biased.
And depending on what
environment you are you're
trying to reach certain goals,
but but there's always going,
I'm always going to have a
bias towards a certain type
of information or a certain
topic or like the polar bears.
I'm really sad about that.
And it affects me and so I am
making sure to collect all sorts
of information about
polar bears.
So, I think, it's just, it's
something that's always going
to be there, I don't
think we should hide it,
we should sort of embrace it.
But I think also
you need to not -
I think Elizabeth mentioned
this - not to work in a bubble.
And I think you need
to be communicating
with your colleagues and sharing
and getting fresh new eyes
and different perspectives.
And, you know, being open
and receptive to maybe going
to some sort of other
type of information
that you were thinking "No, I
don't want to collect that".
But, you know, but
it's important to.
But it's always their bias.
>> Elizabeth Osborne: One of the
components of the question was,
you know, kind of focused
on the word duration
as opposed to appraisal.
I think we're doing both.
Because we are limited in
resources, just the fact
of evaluating for scope is
part of the appraisal process.
I mean, no one else is
inside my own brain.
But I'm doing the best that I
can, I would say when it comes
to that but the way
that I do that is
by inviting other voices,
trying to have a well
written clear public scope
and reasoning behind the
collection, and making sure
that other people in the
library are always aware
of what we're doing.
So that's the best...
I try to do the best
can, you know.
>> Ian Milligan: Perfect.
I think that's the
right approach.
And so I see we have another
question here is what scope
but I think we've talked
about the scope enough
so if we have time, I
might come back to that.
But I think we've at
least partially answered
that for our anonymous attendee.
And so I see Marlayna
Christensen has has an
interesting question
here, which is:
how do you facilitate
searching the web archives?
That she's struggling getting
people to use web archives
because of course,
it's difficult
to search for specific topics.
Ben, maybe I'll look to you, as
someone who's been, you know,
working on a lot
of these questions.
>> Ben Lee: Yeah, sure thing.
I mean, I think web archives,
in terms of searching are
really interesting, because,
in a sense, we're
already so familiar
with how we search the web
from something like Google,
and we have some sort of
fluency and what we might expect
from when we try
to search a system.
On the other hand, looking
back on web archives, though,
there's so many possibilities
for new ways of searching
that I think oftentimes might be
a little bit restricted in terms
of we all have this sort of
shared vision of entering text
into a box and seeing what
happens, because a lot
of exciting computer
science research,
information science research,
research in library science
as well, going back decades,
in terms of reimagining
how we do that.
I generally say that
I fully anticipate
as we move forward here,
these kinds of search systems
will become more expressive,
allowing us to do things beyond
just basic keyword search.
Really compelling examples could
include searching by image,
and obviously, like the Amelia
and others have spoken about,
how we can trace fidelity
or things like that through
and look at network analysis
and things of that nature.
And I think that all
falls under the domain
or purview of search as well.
And I'd say too we can
think of specific use cases
and government collections,
you know,
trying to retrieve different
document types by you know,
congressional seals appealing
or hearing or things like that,
can be really valuable too.
I mean, I actually think
we need to tie this back
to the previous collection
too, maybe the perspectives
that I might take on how we
access web archives is not just
even the bias of how we,
how they're collected,
or how we curate them.
And the big question
that emerged,
one that was just addressed,
but also for that person sitting
in front of the computer
trying to search a web archive,
there are all sorts of
other mediating layers
that occur here throughout the
search tool, and everything
as well, that imprint on
what they're able to find.
And I think looking at that sort
of closed loop is
really fascinating.
And I think trying to reimagine
what it's like to sit there
as the end user using
one of these systems
and compiling lists of
what are the specific kinds
of affordances that
are useful to people.
How do they want to
be able to search?
What are these kinds
of questions
that they have remain really
interesting questions, and,
you know, one that I'm
personally very invested
in that as well.
>> Ian Milligan: Awesome.
Thanks, Ben.
And Amelia, your
name check there.
So just want to see if you
have any thoughts on searching
with you, with your students
and these difficult
collections you're using.
>> Amelia Acker: Ben raises
this really good point
that we see everything
through the Google search bar.
And before the ascendancy
of the keyword,
there were all these other
ways of finding information
in objects, even webpages.
So my favorite thing to do
is to try and give students
or friends, my brother, for
example, a challenge a quest
to try and find a bit
of information of fact,
from one of the oldest
websites that they can find
on the Wayback Machine,
for example, or even going
to your library's
catalog and messing
around with the electronic
resources options.
And just seeing what the
world was like, even 5, 10,
15 years ago, really gets people
into a different way of thinking
about what is potentially
possible.
And I don't know, hat's one
thing that I try to get people
to think about is just actually
looking for information,
not through known
knowns, known keywords,
but trying to answer
it with stuff.
And just remembering
that the web is full
of all this different
kinds of stuff.
And web archives have those,
like amazing resources
like Wayback Machine.
I want to say the web cultures
collection at LOC has these sort
of like vignettes
like baseball cards,
and that was really helpful
for starting inspiring,
so that helps me when I'm trying
to get people excited about,
I don't know, researching and
using web archives as evidence
in there, I don't know,
scholarship, learning and so on.
>> Ian Milligan: Perfect.
>> JJ Harbster: Metadata
really, really good metadata.
>> Ian Milligan: Yes, metadata
is one of those critical words.
So we're nearing the
end so I'm gonna go
to a lightning round question.
So I'll see what people
think but really quickly,
because it's a big one from
Karen Liston, which is:
how do you avoid
duplicating your efforts?
So maybe Beth and JJ: how do
you handle when we're all doing
to make sure we don't all
click the same website
that a million times?
>> Elizabeth Osborne: If
we're duplicating our efforts,
in some respects.
I mean, that's like saying,
there's two collections
in the Library of Congress that
hold congressional materials,
whether it is I mean, there is
some overlap, and, you know,
putting them together
in a collection hopefully
is meaningful to that.
And so it's possible, we are
duplicating some efforts,
but when we co-locate those
things with like other things,
you know, and kind
of the original library sciency
type way, then, hopefully,
even if it's a duplicated
effort,
then it makes sense
to the researcher.
>> JJ Harbster: And yet, there's
definitely duplication going on.
One thing that I did during
the Coronavirus web archiving
project, which is still going
on, was to attend meetings
to read what was other people
were doing in this respect
in terms of web archiving, so I
couldn't understand everything
that was going across
this planet
but I was definitely trying
to be aware of what was going
on in the U.S., what was
going on in other countries,
in terms of web archiving, and
seeing where we could fit in.
But there will be duplication.
>> Ian Milligan: I see in the
chat that Amelia put "Lots
of Copies Keep Stuff
Safe" [LOCKSS] in it.
It dovetails with a giant
question that, unfortunately,
I don't think we'd have
time to get to tonight
about the succession planning of
the Internet Archive, etc. So,
you know, there's
value to this work.
But I want to ask the one last
question here really quickly
before we wrap up tonight's
event, and this came
from Dorcus Johnson, who is
a grad student at Kent State,
majoring in digital
humanities and archival studies.
And their question is: "having
taken an introductory DH course
acquiring many new
skills, how/where do I look
for internships to
advance those skills
and practice more beyond theory
and an initial DH project
potentially, with many things?".
So this is a big
question, I guess a good way
to end tonight's conversation,
you know, what do we do
when we all want to get
into this big field?
So who wants to tackle
that first?
Ben - do you want to tackle it?
And then we'll see.
>> Benjamin Lee: Definitely.
I definitely appreciate
the question too,
because I think I'm
certainly a relative newcomer
to the space compared to
everybody else on this panel,
and certainly many of
the attendees as well.
I mean, I think the one
of the best first steps
is just immersing yourself
in the community.
And I think the conference
over the next few days
is a really fantastic way
of doing that.
I know practically,
I think Abbie dropped
in some some resources in the
chat about LOC internships
and things like that as well,
which I think I personally
advocate, you know,
here I will make a
plug for being as close
to the collections
as you possibly can
to do your research.
And I think that's it's a
great opportunity, as well.
And yeah, I'd say finding these
kinds of active communities
where you can participate in the
research and also share ideas,
I think, even part of
the deduplication effort,
maybe in terms of a very
liberal interpretation of that,
in terms of research,
there's nothing
like meeting other people and
seeing what they are working on
and learning from them as well.
>> Ian Milligan:
Amelia, or JJ or Beth,
any quick parting thoughts on
how do we get how do we get
where we all want
our next generation
of practitioners to be?
>> Amelia Acker: Well, I was
gonna say you should check
out all the cool web
archiving projects and tools
and Ian is a great a
member of our community.
Archives Unleashed project
is a good place to start.
Conifer used to be called
Webrecorder, also, I think,
funded by Mellon, is big into
preserving digital art online.
The Programming Historian
is really cool.
Just maybe some of the library
and software carpentry
resources,
but just getting your feet
wet until it's learning
about the different tools
approaches, different ways
that Um, researchers and
librarians have partnered with,
you know, institutions,
philanthropies,
and so on is a great
place to start.
That's what I would recommend.
>> JJ Harbster: I think the same
thing and like going out there
and talking with people and
going to conferences like this
and or just watching YouTube
videos and get inspired.
I think just going out there
and and talking with other folks
about what's going on is a
great way to kind of set a path
that you want to go down.
>> Amelia Acker: And LC labs.
That's where I heard
about the meme archive.
So follow that.
Put that on your RSS
reader, tip into their blog.
They talk a lot about
all the different stuff
that you can do new collections
coming out, it's a great place
to see how other people are
using these collections as well.
>> Abbie Grotke: And
let us know when you do,
because we're always interested
in talking to the researchers
that are starting
to use our datasets.
So please be in touch if
you attempt to use any
of the stuff we've
put out there for you.
So with that, I think we
need to close the event.
Thank you so much to Ian,
Amelia, Beth, JJ, Ben.
This has been really fabulous.
So exciting.
Thank you to all the attendees
for the fabulous questions.
Look for the recording
available on loc.gov and IIPC
in the future, and
please do share it.
I also want to thank you to the
IIPC colleagues: Olga, Kelsey,
and Robin for your
tremendous support tonight.
Robin is on UK time so
we're really grateful
that she is here
with us tonight.
Late for her but we're really
happy that you all joined us
and this was a fabulous
conversation.
So thank you very much and
hope you have a good evening.