SCHLESINGER LIBRARY OPEN WORKSHOP – All are welcome, No RSVP Required
Radcliffe Workshop on Technology & Archival Processing
April 4, 2016, Knafel Center, 1:30-5:00pm
Please join us for the Radcliffe Workshop on Technology and Archival Processing, April 4, 2016. The afternoon program will bring together scholars, archivists, and computer scientists for a problem-solving event. Participants will be asked to consider the relationship between archival processing, technology, and digital humanities and how digital humanities may be slowly but profoundly changing archival processing methods.
Workshop Schedule
April 4, 2016 (Open to the Harvard Library Community)
1:30-1:40pm Welcome and opening remarks
1:45-2:30pm Plenary session – Matthew Connelly, Professor of History, Columbia University
“If [we] do not adapt, we may one day find ourselves buried beneath an avalanche of electronic records, far too many to cope with using traditional methods.” –Matthew Connelly
Columbia University History Professor Matthew Connelly examines the relationship between government accountability and the impact of the digital archive on the study of history through his teaching and collaboration with academics. In his seminar, “Hacking the Archive,” Connelly focused on the ‘digital turn’ in history, where historians now have access to unprecedentedly large and rich bodies of information generated from the digitization of older materials and the explosion of 'born digital' electronic records. Connelly argues that ‘big data’ poses a massive challenge to democratic accountability but the information revolution has also provided citizens with the means to address these serious challenges.
2:30-2:45pm Questions and discussion with audience
2:45-3:00pm Coffee break
3:00-4:00pm Session 2 – “Connections and Context: A Moderated Conversation about Archival Processing for the Digital Humanities Generation”
Connections and Context will consider how Digital Humanities are slowly and profoundly changing the worlds of archival science and scholarly research. Scholars working with big data, born-digital, and digitized materials are using new research methods and are approaching the archive in entirely innovative ways. At the same time, archivists are grappling with how to provide meaningful description and access when data is everywhere but context can't fit in the screen. This session will examine how new types of research methods might inspire archivists to rethink the tenets and tasks of their profession and question how technologists, scholars, and archivists might forge ahead in a collaborative way to improve access and context.
4:00-4:30pm Questions and discussion with audience/Closing remarks
LOCATION:Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20160404T173000Z DTEND:20160404T203000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR