2020 Internship Blog Post #14
This week, while working from home on all school work including my internship, I created a history bio for the Burnett House. It is mostly completed, and I am just in the editing stages. I have had one of my colleagues look over it to see what her thoughts were. I will also be editing it a bit further. I want it to be absolutely perfect. My supervisor on the STARS project wanted me to start on some readings on archives, several of which peeked my interest, with one specifically because of my love and newfound passion for digital tools as a method for historical preservation.
After this academic school year, I have really discovered a passion for archives and all the work that is done at them. I want to learn as much as possible about them because I am hoping to do a PhD in library science once I graduate from UCF. As I mentioned, my supervisor on the STARS portion of my internship has assigned some readings about archives. She said I can pick which ones interest me the most. I think I am so interested in digital tools because I was born in 1990. The 1990s were a time in which technology was developing rapidly. Now we live in such an advanced society. I know I talk about this a lot, perhaps too much, but despite the fact that we live in a digital age I truly believe preservation is more important than ever before. For example, all around the world we are currently experiencing COVID-19, also known as coronavirus. It is impacting the health and daily lives of everyone; my supervisors at Special Collections and the other library staff cannot even go into work for their own safety, which is most important. Consequently, those of us who are students or faculty who use these resources have an even harder time accessing documents that are only in print. So in this respect digital tools and our ability to access previously print-only media online is extremely valuable in times like this. However, two major things come to mind also as potential problems.
A major pitfall that people like public historians and archivists experience is the fact that digital tools have their limits. No computer will last forever, a program like Flash that has been influential since I can remember is slowly becoming obsolete and research will suffer if the Internet goes down. In many respects, it feels like we as a society don’t know how to function without our digital tools in this digital age. Another issue that is especially important in the current state of the world is coronavirus. My supervisor told me that many archivists were not allowed to bring any of their documents home with them to help upload them to servers. This is understandable, because this can severely damage the documents and artifacts. However, it presents us with a problem. Do all of these people have jobs and job security still? Is there a way to see to safe transportation of the documents and artifacts? What should be done? Should these objects be scanned and photographed so we can have access during this turbulent time?
The article from the reading list that my supervisor gave me that sparked some of these thoughts in my mind was entitled “Digital Doomsday Book lasts 15 years not 1000.” The title says it all. According to the article a computer was supposed to play a video of sorts, with the information from the original Doomsday Book created in 1086 by Norman monks. However, the discs they used and various other things make this digital version of this ancient book unable to be viewed. How do we preserve digital history and digital tools? Is it at all possible or will it eventually fail? Personally, I believe to my core that there should be a balance. Libraries and archives are extremely critical, but I also think it is important to preserve the documents digitally as well.
The University of Central Florida Special Collections and University Archives Website:
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