Copyright and Preservation

I intend to use county courthouse records for my web site.  The purpose of the web site is to put those records about free persons of color in antebellum Virginia into some context about how the laws of Virginia affected family life of free non-whites.  Therefore, I do not expect to have copyright issues since I will be using government records.

Since this is not a records collection or research site, I do not expect the site to contain a lot of records.  The idea of the site is induce reflection not collection.  Therefore, I fully expect to type the records and use meta-data for search by name, county/city, type of record, etc.  I would certainly consider using XML if I found tags that would be helpful.

This is not a site that I would expect to be preserved.  All the records will continue to be in county courthouses and the Library of Virginia.

Preserving Digital History

This week’s readings were like my high school Latin–I remember nothing about it because it is just not something I am really interested in pursuing.  The Rosensweig article did not leave me with any real sense of guilt about not wanting to think about how archivists do their work whether on paper or digital.  The book chapters did a good job of explaining the concepts, but the NINCH Guide would have been just as readable if it had been in Latin.

I have spent some time thinking about archives while I was working with the government.  We considered digital archiving of records.  The technology at the time was too unreliable, and no one in their right mind wanted to be responsible for going through the mass of paper created by a government agency.  Therefore, we continued with our old methods of sending some paper to be archived, and the remainder was destroyed.  The prevailing feeling was that once something was gone, no one would miss it.

I certainly feel the same way about most of the “information” on the internet.  Some is worth preserving, but most of it will not be missed.  The question remains is who will be the “decider” about what is important?  Lots of people made those decisions in our agency, and I believe lots of people will be involved in the non-public sector.  Will it be saved with data tags and in XML format?  Who knows?  I believe it will be impossible to find an international standard.  As an example, at work I was involved as the banking agencies attempted to have banks submit their quarterly financial information in an XBRL format.  XBRL is a business reporting format derived from XML.  Deriving the tags for a finite number of items was a huge task.  Once it was finished, the American banking agencies and banks were on board, in a way.  Our project did not include international accountants nor did it include the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC).  Multi-national banks have to report information to foreign banking authorities so international cooperation would have been preferable if this project was to work as proposed.  The SEC just announced that it is going to require its reports in an XBRL format.  I can only imagine how their tags will screw up the work done by the banking agencies.

My philosophy is to preserve what you have in a manner that makes sense for your interest group.  Some young geek will figure out how to make it interactive in the future.  Meanwhile, don’t destroy the paper that you may need in the future until digital archiving advances past its infancy.

For my book reports this week, I chose Ivanhoe and Romeo and Juliet.  I was far more impressed with Google Books than I was with Open Library.  The Google copies were easier to read, highlighted the terms I used in my search and offered line markers every ten lines.  Reading required scrolling down which was unlike reading a book.  The Google copies showed markings in the book from previous readers which I found unnecessary but not distracting.

Open Library allowed two pages to be viewed at once as if you were reading a book.  It showed all the flaws in the book so some pages were missing some of the type.  Primarily, for me their copies were much harder to read.  Open Library had a “Help” function which I clicked on and could not get turned off.

I cannot imagine trying to read an entire book from either source, but that may just be a function of older eyes.  I also dislike using a mouse to scroll through a document while I am reading.  The movement on the screen eventually gives me motion sickness, and I have to stop for a while.

My week’s experience with Digital preservation again reminded me of Latin.  Veni, Vidi, but I just could not get that Vici thing.  I guess I will have to leave those worlds to be conquered by others.

Copyright

• I was watching Fox and Friends at my gym the other morning after the debate.  For the few moments I was watching, they conducted a rather one-sided discussion about how liberals and the mainstream media had done a disservice to Joe the Plumber.  The friends were alleging that liberals were investigating Joe and invading his privacy.  The clear message was that only people such as Fox and Friends cared about the interests of Joe.  Having been in the class, I immediately thought, “there is democracy in the new media.”  Fox News is free to say what they want and people may watch if they want.
• Unrelated to Fox and Friends, I have been following the financial meltdown, and I have thought back to my last years at the FDIC when the free market advocates took over the agency.  The free marketers believed that our supervision program was detrimental to banks so they slashed the time that bank examiners could spend at a bank.  Inside the FDIC we cynically called the new program drive-by examinations.  Banks were freed to react to the market without worrying about over-zealous federal oversight.  We also watched as the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan encouraged the movement of lending from banks to mortgage affiliates.  These affiliates were not under the direct supervision of bank supervisory agencies like the FDIC and were not funded directly with bank funds.  Therefore, with little or no supervision from the Federal Reserve, these affiliates were able to loosen lending standards, sell their packaged loans through Freddie or Fannie, and  in turn be financed by “sophisticated” funding mechanisms created on the free market of Wall Street.  What a great idea!  Who needs bank examiners?  By now, I hope we all understand there can be excesses in the free market.
• This week we had the opportunity to read about the evils of copyright laws and how democratization of ideas and free markets to disseminate those ideas will create a wonderful new world.  Please refer to my first two bullet points for my opinion of how well the wonderful new democratic, market driven world has worked in the realm of news media and financial markets.  Of course, the world of knowledge creation will be entirely different according to our authors.  We know that Rupert Murdoch would never engage in a hostile takeover of Wikipedia and spin his ideas into this new knowledge base.  We know that free markets will never try to take advantage of society’s lack of sophisticated knowledge of history to create misunderstanding about our heritage.
• Copyright laws are not the entire answer to keep us safe from those who would rewrite history for their selfish purposes.  If that were true, Southern elites could have never created the myth of the “lost cause.”  But, it is important that we never forget the importance of well-researched scholarship in writing our own history.  Columbia University’s experiment with the Teacher’s College Record seems to be a creative solution to balancing scholarly recognition with wider distribution.
• As long as the discussion of copyright focuses on the tensions of creator and publisher, the important questions of how to keep the integrity of history research in a new media world will not be answered.  There is already too much information being distributed to the world.  What history scholars need to consider is how to distinguish real scholarship from a Wiki page.
• As long as the discussion is about fair use of other persons’ creativity or ideas, the more important discussion about how to recognize new research or creativity will be delayed.  The creator of Cabbage Patch dolls did not need Disney’s permission to find a new childhood phenomenon twenty years ago.  Let Disney keep Mickey Mouse. Creativity and intellectual development come from new ideas, not from transforming other person’s ideas.
• Laurence Lessig wrote about his concerns over concentration of creativity in a few corporate hands.  Concentration issues should be addressed by anti-trust laws and Federal Communication Commission standards.  Both areas have been weakened by free marketers who had unlimited access to Washington over the past few years.
• The internet has challenged us to think about how and by whom information is distributed.  It allows for a much wider range of thought, but we have become addicted to the idea that anything we find on the internet should be free.  For the most part, we get what we pay for because the vast majority of information on the internet is not worth reading.  Scholars need to find gateways that allow a wide distribution of information at a modest cost.  If it is worth reading, it is worth a few dollars to have access to it.

Lengthy Blog Post

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	Free Persons of Color in Antebellum Virginia	Picture
Background   Virginia Laws   Demographic Data   Stories   Links   Contact Us	In 1860, Free Persons of Color were ___  percent of the total population of nthe state, but they were neither allowed privileges of full citizenship nor accepted as full members of society.  Their stories tell us much about the racial struggles that later Virginia would face after the Emancipation Proclamation.   In particular, free persons of color faced significant challenges to maintain their family life.  They faced economic discrimination, hurdles which made keeping their families intact difficult, and state law that required any former slave to leave the state if freed after 1806.  This site tells some of their stories. Please contact us if you would like to add to this archive documenting the struggles of free blacks in antebellum Virginia.

 

The proposed web site, “Free Persons of Color in Antebellum Virginia,” will serve as an informational site about family life of freed non-whites in Virginia in the period before the Civil War.  The site will provide some general background about understandings of race in Virginia in that period, laws that impacted those who were called free persons of color, demographic information, and stories of how family life of free persons of color was affected by discriminatory legal, economic and social structures of the time.  Descendents will be asked to share their understandings of family life as passed down through their ancestors stories.

Since the majority of blacks in Virginia in the period before the Civil War were enslaved, far less energy has been spent on understanding the lives of former slaves who were living in the state in the antebellum period.  Although freed from slave labor, these people faced no hope of full citizenship while enduring economic and legal discrimination.  These factors impacted the family life of free persons of color.  This impact has not been fully considered in the study of antebellum Virginia.

The focus of the project will be to tell some of the stories of family life among free persons of color in Virginia.  Because literacy rates among former slaves were low, written family records are not plentiful.  Historians find many of their sources in the archives of the county courts or petitions to the General Assembly.  Letters or other manuscripts dealing with family life are rare.  The site will provide a place where descendents or others may share their understandings of family life among freed slaves in Virginia prior to the Civil War.

The targeted audience is intended to be the descendents of free persons of color as well as other parties interested in Virginia history.  It will be challenging to find descendents because both blacks and whites of mixed ancestry may be reluctant to admit their background.  Therefore, the site will allow the names of ancestors only to be used to protect the privacy of their descendents.

This site will be developed on a simple technology platform.  Therefore, Dreamweaver and Photoshop will provide the basic design features.  A Virginia map will be used to present percentages of free persons of color in each county or city in the state, but I have no idea what technology is needed to present this information.

E-mail will be used to invite user contributions.  Because the site is asking for stories that are nearly 200 years old, it is unlikely there will be a volume of responses that will require anything more sophisticated.

Curtis Vaughn

Another Week in the New Media

Curtis Vaughn

This week’s readings and the podcast explored three topics that I think are worthy of consideration–Intellectual ownership of materials, the web and uses of secondary sources, and marketing.  All three raise interesting questions about the effectiveness of the new media.

Bell’s article about the new media and scholarship is interesting particularly since his article proves how difficult it is to read and retain material from a computer screen.  I cannot imagine trying to read a whole book sitting in front of a computer.  I am not sure that Bell has found the exact answer for why it is so difficult, but I am convinced that a fuzzy handheld device will not make the experience any better.  It seems to me that the new media is far more important in providing better access to primary sources.  Easier access to primary sources is an important step in the democratization of history.  Such sites as the 9-11 archive show the power of preserving primary sources.  Secondary sources seem to be more problematic on the web.  First and foremost, is the source of any importance?  If my ego would allow it, I could place the first paper I wrote at GMU on the internet.  It may or may not bring an audience, but since it was the beginning of a long learning process, I am certain it is of no historical importance.  At present, I don’t see a filter that effectively keeps poor work off the net.  Secondly, the internet brings into question the ownership of the secondary sources.  Many sites are created without the reader having any idea who has created the site or information in the site.  When material under copyright is placed on the net access is controlled which is contrary to the idea of democratization of history.  Material that is not under copyright laws seems to take on a life of its own just because it is on the net.  Third, because of the power of search tools, the message of the secondary source can easily be distorted by picking and choosing passages rather than looking at the author’s intended message.

This brings me to a segment of the podcast in which the panelists were discussing documents produced by the NIH having limited access.  The panelists seemed to oppose any limitations on access to these documents since NIH is publicly funded.  That seems like a bit of a slippery slope argument.  Couldn’t it be argued that any professor at a state university is in some way publicly funded?  Whose intellectual property is a document that has been created by an individual who has received funding from a public source?

Whether funded from a public or private source, I believe the most important thing about intellectual property is its value derived from research by knowledgeable people that has been scrutinized by equally knowledgeable peers. Therefore, it has something important to say about an area of study.  Whether we have new media or not, I believe that a standard of scrutiny by knowledgeable peers is crucial to the integrity of research.

This brings me to marketing web sites and my objection to web sites.  If I understand the process correctly, by next May we will produce a site that can or will be viewed by the public.  So far, I have not heard anyone ask, is what you are planning to do important to the study of history?  I am sensitive to that question because before I wrote one of my first research papers the professor here at GMU drilled into the class that it was not enough just to tell a story–we also were required to explain why the story was important.  Why is that standard dropped when it comes to web site development?  If the same standard was enforced in developing web sites, why would marketing be needed?

In spite of the democratization of information created by the web, I do not use the internet as an important source of information for anything other than sports.  The library electronic database is an exception.  If there were other safe areas I could go where the sites had undergone some scrutiny of knowledgeable peers who had asked such simple questions as why is the information contained in this site important to the study of history, I might be more enthusiastic about this forced march through the new media.