The Force of the Crowd
Crowd-sourcing is a great idea. The idea of tapping
multiple people with diverse backgrounds both professionally and personally is
brilliant (who first thought of it? --- maybe began with a teacher who assigned
group projects). It depends on volunteers, however. In my experience, working
with volunteers also requires that you offer incentives or carrots, something that
induces participation. If not, you might get a few people who are a bit crazed, some who have too much time on their hands, or some who always have something to say to
show others how smart they are. Whether that helps the “conversation” is
debatable. As in school group projects, there is usually someone who takes the
lead, someone who carries the research load, and someone who does little.
I could not find much crowdsourcing on NoVa sites. Things
asking for comments, but…
An idea for Virginia history: A crowdsourcing project for a
property in Alexandria that was bought by the city of Alexandria, the
Murray-Dick-Fawcett House, could be done before the property opens as a museum,
especially because that date is indefinite. Participants in the Vernacular
Architecture conference this Spring had many comments about the house, but they
are not being compiled anywhere. The house is unique architecturally, since it
was built in 1772 and many things exist from that time. But architectural
historians do not agree on things about the house. Getting their input now is crucial
to both the house history and documentation.
PEOPLE VERSUS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
This unit asked a question: Who decides what should be
preserved, and what not?
Which websites should be preserved? I went to Wayback
machine to see 2012 websites for my neighborhood, randomly cached (www.mantua.org) . Not much there. Worthy of
saving if other records are available? Plus, as I know from living here, that
info was compiled by a public relations firm after an oil leak tarnished
the name of the neighborhood. I don’t think it needs to be preserved.
About blogs worthy of saving: Can and should the federal
government have the right to preserve everything it wants to, not Google and
commercial enterprises? Cat is out of the bag – companies did this before government.
Random thoughts” About “meta schema” – that is robots, not
people. This is artificial intelligence making sense of our data.
About code – does standardized code threaten genius? Maybe.
Migration of files is important for future. WordPerfect
files gone as an example.
The Memory Project, by ancestry.com and The Holocaust
Memorial Museum, is an effective way to capture history before those who lived
though the Holocaust are all dead. This goes to the museum’s collections for
free. It links to ancestry’s DNA test kit, optional.
But this link for the Geographic Project also goes to a
site for buying a DNA kit https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/
The Smithsonian Transcription Center has more than 1,000
“volun-peers” contributing. The sheer volume of what is being transcribed,
including much Civil War-era stuff, is astounding.
Reclaim the Records https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/
uses the Freedom of Information Act to get records that. This site is by and
for historians, genealogists and others who want to keep public info free. –
gated info that should be kept public! Only New York for now, but with help
could be national. Nothing is on their “to-do” list for Virginia. https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/to-do/
BAD LINKS: from Historical Transcription Assignments
and
https://shop.nationalgeographic.com/collections/sale which
is supposed to go to the Field Expedition Mongolia page. If you type those
words in the Search box, you go to
https://shop.nationalgeographic.com/products/geno-2-0-next-generation-genographic-helix-dna-ancestry-kit-u-s-delivery where
for $99.95 on sale you can get a DNA test.
It was good we saw the project cached on YouTube!
PRESERVATION
From Cohen and Rosenzweig:
“For now, you are the best preserver of your own materials. Pay attention to
backing up, and try to create simple, well-documented, standardized code. After
covering those basics, you might search for a preservation “partner,” an
institution that would be interested in saving your website or its constituent
materials after you can no longer provide the attention (or financial
resources) …”
This goes back to the
question of what should be preserved, and who makes the decision?
A few days ago, my
daughter, whose husband Luis Vicente died in February of brain cancer, was told
about this blog:
The blog was mentioned at
a memorial workshop for her husband last week in Leiden, in the Netherlands, by
a friend of Luis. Luis got his PhD in Leiden, worked there for a while, and
then went to the University of California Santa Cruz for his post doc work.
That is where he met my daughter. The University of L held a linguistics
workshop in his honor, as a memorial. My daughter, who was married to Luis for
almost 8 years, did not know about this blog. Of course, we all went to look at
it for the first time when she told us it existed. Loved the part about why he
never wanted to return to Spain to live, although some of his school was financed
by the Basque government.
While it is mostly comforting
to read this now and understand Luis better, will this live on blogspot forever?
Will Luis’s now 4-year-old daughter access it at some point? Is that good or
bad?
I guess we should be
careful about we post on blogs and anywhere online. They live forever, unless
some decision is made, commercially or by the government, to take then down.
I sure hope this blog does
not live long after I do.
MY PROJECT UPDATE
Please go to this
with password
to see a project called Loudoun County Historic Cemeteries.
I have 21 cemeteries, but this will be just 20. Am working on fixing photos that
will not load, and will fine-tine the descriptions of each cemetery. It is unknown
how many actual burials are in each cemetery, because most are active – people are
still being buried there. Many of my project photos have not focused on names
and living people, because I was told by one caretaker that I would need
permission for that from the Board of Trustees. I think I got some representative
photos of each cemetery, and have many more photos from most to choose from.
This is just a representative sample of 20 historic public cemeteries.
The Balch Library database is outdated. Numbers of graves etc, cannot be gleaned from here.
Well, wiped out all of my comments when I clicked on the link to check out your project. Should have known better.
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