Digital Curation
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Teleconference with Craig Dietrich

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Introduction

00:00Introduction by Jon Ippolito.

Mapping as digital humanities technology

02:09Craig Dietrich on his neighborhood and maps as technology

05:45Hypercities: an caveat about dependence on corporate platforms

09:00Katrina Wynn on comparable mapping projects

10:25Neatline

Networked Archives

11:18Internet archive

"The interfaces for archives are not set up for creating narratives."

15:04The Critical Commons copyright workaround

"Critical Commons is a YouTube for copyrighted material." "Every movie clip in Critical Commons is accompanied by critical analysis, so as to qualify for sharing via fair use."

Archives for indigenous groups

20:25Mukurtu Archive and Local Context

"The Mukurtu Archive was created b emailing indigenous protocols between an anthropologist in Australia to a developer in LA." "The Mukurtu team has developed metadata standards to express cultural expectations of native peoples."

28:36What is metadata?

30:00Metadata for Traditional knowledge

"LocalContexts.org is like a Creative Commons for traditional knowledge." "The 'Verified' labels indicate that a group affirms an image or other cultural material does represent their culture."

Should information be free in all contexts?

34:00Is enforcement of cultural norms necessary?

36:15Katrina Wynn: how is access controlled?

"Traditional Knowledge labels are not enforced by legal copyright laws, but encourage voluntary appropriate re-use."

37:37Misuse of material from Shoah Foundation archive

Scalar as publishing tool that interfaces with archives

39:26Introduction to Scalar

"Even in the Mukurtu team there are different opinions on whether information online needs to be protected or free."

41:52Example of a digital edition: Ancient Monuments

"The NEH has a well funded 'digital editions' grant program to find unique way to put print online." "As easy as WordPress is for making a blog, Scalar should be for digital scholarship." "By building a rapid prototype for Ancient Monuments in Scalar, the team was able to show funders a sense of what their completed project would look like quickly and for free."

47:00Easily make a digital book with Scalar

48:15Linking to archives with Scalar

"Scalar's Add Media feature, which carries metadata with it, is one of the best demos of linked data I've seen"

55:10Tensor: a user-friendly archive lookup tool

59:18Round-tripping metadata

Interaction between Traditional Knowledge labels and Scalar

59:54Barbara Finley: does Scalar accommodate Traditional Knowledge labels?

63:16Katrina Wynn: how can metadata protect sensitive material?

Archival control over viewing material online

65:12Molly Carlson on Zaption, which inserts quizzes into video.

"Should archives control the players for video and other media?"

Game logic in publication systems

69:50Enforcing learning sequences via online tests

71:45Molly Carlson on standards-based education versus non-linear learning

Community annotation

73:07Hypothes.is, a community-based text annotator, integrated

The Next Big Thing is metadata

76:34Katrina Wynn: how useful is the Dublin Core standard?

78:03How funding has influenced the rise of metadata

78:34Scholarly contributions to archives via metadata

79:59Dublin Core and alternative metadata standards

Omeka and the Neatline plugin

81:46Diane on the Omeka Neatline plugin

Digital humanists as technological leaders

84:12Vectors version of Google Maps

85:11Tracking black ops flights with online maps

How to try Scalar or Mukurtu

87:57Installing and using Mukurtu

89:29Installing and using Scalar

90:21Reclaim hosting and Scalar

91:20Conclusion

This teleconference is a project of the University of Maine's Digital Curation program. For more information, contact ude.eniam@otiloppij.

Timecodes are in Hours: minutes

In this teleconference, Craig Dietrich joined students of the UMaine Digital Curation graduate program to answer questions about how culturally sensitive archives and linked data can break the monoculture of one-size-fits-all paradigms for access and publication.

Dietrich was the first lead developer of the Mukurtu Archive, a media manager based on the Warumungu community Dillybag that supports social practice rather than the legal and economic strictures exemplified by Digital Rights Management. Apart from his work with Aboriginal Australian communities, Dietrich has also contributed to open-source archives designed for Native American protocols.

A key member of the team that produces Vectors: A Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, Dietrich authored the Dynamic Backend Generator in 2005, a MySQL database manager and "intellectual sketchpad" that has been used by a variety of digital humanities projects including Public Secrets, Blue Velvet and Killer Entertainments.

In recent years Dietrich gained renown as Info Design Director for the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture, which produces Scalar, an online publication platform principally designed with Creative Director Erik Loyer. Unlike prevalent web-based content managers such as WordPress, which Wikipedia claims is used by almost a quarter of the most popular Web sites, Scalar's foundation uses the Semantic Web, which allows for sharing media seamlessly from archives such as the Internet Archive and Shoah Foundation.

His conversation with the University of Maine's online Digital Curation program was recorded on 10 December 2015.

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