Assignments

Unless otherwise noted, all assignments will turned in via Box. Grades will be delivered through Sakai.

Participation/engagement (30%)

• Attendance and participation (10%). Students are expected to be active, prepared members of this seminar. Willingness to engage with unfamiliar concepts and technology is essential. Unexcused absences will reduce your grade by one percentage point.

• Lead one class discussion (10%). In pairs, you are responsible for leading discussion for 30 minutes of class. Discussion dates will be assigned the second week of class. See Discussion for more.

  • 2 points for selecting an article on time.
  • 2 points for selecting a relevant article to the topic of the week.
  • 2 points for demonstrating an understanding of the selected reading.
  • 2 points for attempting (not necessarily succeeding) to engage every member of the class.
  • 2 points for creativity and leadership in bringing the class to a deeper understanding of the topic.

• Lab reports (10%). Each week we will experiment with web archiving tools and related technologies during lab time. You will be required to submit a brief lab report with the results of the in-class exercises. See Labs for more details.

Paper 1: Your Personal Archive (10%)

What is in your personal archive? What kind of story do your digital artifacts tell? What physical records to do you produce, keep, and discard? Of the digital records you create, what survives? How does social media lose or preserve memories? And, as Molly Sauter writes in “Instant Recall,” “how do we remember when apps never forget?” In this paper, you will to track, document, reflect, and speculate on your personal archival record and its effect on your personal and collective memory. This is an exploratory paper, so questions are encouraged, but you should still seek some kind of conclusion through thoughtful analysis and reflection.

For instance, if someone inventoried my home, they would find several boxes of printed, annotated journal articles from college and grad school. What does this say about me as a person? As a librarian? While deep psychoanalysis isn't necessary, what would a historian write? What could a historian write? Is there enough to tell the story of your life or are their major life events or facets of yourself that are missing from the objects you might leave behind.

• 1 point for on time delivery of assignment. Save to your Box folder.
• 1 point for appropriate filename (no spaces, includes last name, includes date, includes assignment identifier).
• 1 point for appropriate length and formatting (4 pages, MLA 8, 1 inch margins, double-spaced, 12 point font).
• 1 point for absence of major typos, grammatical errors, and unclear writing.
• 1 point for clear structure - think intro, conclusion, and topic sentences.
• 1 point for surveying your physical or print archive. Imagine inventorying your belongings for insurance reasons. What do you have at school? At home? Do you collect anything? Do you keep ephemera or throw it away (movie tickets, postcards, etc.)
• 1 point for surveying your digital archive. Go beyond the files on your hard drive. What accounts (social media or otherwise) do you have? Can you download your account data? Do you delete emails or save them? Do you keep backups?
• 1 point for reflecting on the effect of this archive on your memory. What is the effect of "outsourcing the contents of our minds to ... objects" (Rumsey 1)?
• 1 point for speculating on the future life of this material. What will you bring to your first apartment? What will you still have if your phone died right now? What will you show your kids?
• 1 point for incorporating an external source in a meaningful way. Don't use external sources to speak for you, rather use it as evidence for your own idea or to prompt your own analysis.

Paper 2: Collection Encounter (10%)

In order to gain a solid grounding in the basics of archival principles, you will be given the opportunity to encounter an archival collection in Leyburn Library’s Special Collections and Archives. In small groups, you will be asked to document the physical and intellectual qualities of the collection. Take some time to review the collection before digging into the assignment. I recommend taking notes on paper or in a shared document. Your group can divide up the questions or answer based on everyone's notes.

You should address the following questions (.5 points each):

• What is this collection? (Give a basic inventory, remarking on anything especially unique or notable.)
• What is the extent (often expressed in linear feet)?
• What type of material does it contain?
• How is the condition of the material? Has it been well-preserved? Does it need preservation/conservation? How can you tell?
• How is it organized? Does the order appear to be original? How can you tell?
• What is the provenance? (You might have to ask someone in Special Collections).
• Who are the creators? How much can you learn from the material itself vs. secondary research? Are there voices missing from the story this collection tells?
• Check out the finding aid online at archivesspace.wlu.edu. Is the description complete? Does it need improvement?
• Who might find this collection useful?
• Think back to Cook. How does this collection serve as evidence? As memory?

• 1 point for on time delivery of assignment. Save to your Box folder.
• 1 point for appropriate filename (no spaces, includes last name, includes date, includes assignment identifier).
• 1 point for appropriate length and formatting (4-5 pages, MLA 8, 1 inch margins, double-spaced, 12 point font).
• 1 point for absence of major typos, grammatical errors, and unclear writing.
• 1 point for clear structure - think intro, conclusion, and topic sentences. You can include section headings if that helps.

Born Digital Archive Project (50%)

Annotated Bibliography (10%)

It's time to start preparing to create your own web archives. The first step is to survey the web to see what might already exist on your topic of interest. What collections are already out there? Are there gaps? Updates needed? Can you take inspiration from an existing collection?

Remember, you're looking for 4-5 collections of born digital materials (not necessarily material that has been digitized from print). Usually this takes the form of collections of captured websites. Additionally, you will be asked to find 1-2 scholarly articles that help add context to the collections you've chosen. You are encouraged to select a disciplinary lens from which to view your topic. Are a historian of games? A philosopher? A literary historian? An art historian?

Here's how it works:

1. Browse the web, starting with the places listed below, looking for web archives. You don't have to have a clear idea of your topic yet, but you should have some inkling.
2. Make a list of all the sites/collections/articles you find that seem interesting.
3. From that list, select 4-5 web archives and 1-2 scholarly sources. Minimum of six sources.
4. Start with a citation for the collection/source. Format it according to MLA 8 or the citation style of your selected discipline.
5. Write 1-2 paragraphs of summary, assessment, and reflection for each source. See the Purdue OWL guide for good guidelines on the content of your annotated bibliography.

Places to start your research:

• Internet Archive
• Archive-it
• Smithsonian
• Library of Congress

Point breakdown:

• 1 point for on-time delivery of assignment. Save to your Box folder.
• 1 point for appropriate filename (no spaces, includes last name, includes date, includes assignment identifier).
• 1 point for appropriate length and formatting (1-2 paragraph annotations, MLA 8 or other, 1 inch margins, double-spaced, 12 point font).
• 1 point for absence of major typos, grammatical errors, and unclear writing.
• 1 point for every annotation that includes a BRIEF summary, a thoughtful analysis of the of the source, and a comment on the usefulness for your project. (6 points)

Proposal (10%)

In 2 pages, propose a topic for your web archives project. Your proposal should introduce the topic, survey its web presence, provide justification for preservation, and include a preliminary list of URLs for archiving. You should reference the research conducted in your annotated bibliography. As a reminder, your project will live on in perpetuity on the publicly accessible Archive-It website. This is your chance to add something to the historical record!

• 1 point for on-time delivery of assignment. Save to your Box folder.
• 1 point for appropriate filename (no spaces, includes last name, includes date, includes assignment identifier).
• 1 point for appropriate length and formatting (MLA 8 or other, 1 inch margins, double-spaced, 12 point font).
• 1 point for absence of major typos, grammatical errors, and unclear writing.
• 2 points for a thorough introduction to your chosen topic. What is the event, subculture, fandom, collection, piece of culture that you wish to preserve? How does that topic manifest itself on the web? How dynamic are the websites? As Owens says, what are the "significant properties?"
• 2 points for justification for preservation. What makes this topic worth preserving? Who is your audience? What type of researchers will find it useful in the future? What are some potential research questions that this collection/topic could answer?
• 2 points for preliminary list of URLs (4-6?). Write a sentence or two about your selection. Why this site? Any potential challenges like dynamic content or media? Do you foresee any privacy, copyright, or ethical issues?

Web archives creation (20%)

Using the Archive-It platform, you will create a collection of web content. Archive-It is a service that many institutions use to capture web content for themselves and anyone browsing the site. Working with Archive-It is a process that we will explore for the last half of the course. In addition to the live training we will receive on March 8th, you will be expected to consult the documentation and video curriculum.

Specs:

• You are limited to a data budget of 8GB per person.
• You should plan to capture approximately 10 websites (seeds). I am flexible on the quantity if you can provide justification for more/fewer. Please document this in your report.
• You are expected to conduct test crawls of your chosen sites and perform quality assurance. This takes time! Plan accordingly. (It took 45 minutes to crawl 5MB of one website)
• You are expected to compose relevant Dublin Core metadata for your individual sites and whole collection.
• You will turn a report of your activities in the Archive-It platform to your Box folder. The report should document your work on each site with the following:
  • Why this site? What's the context? Did you learn anything new about it through the capture process?
  • Scoping rules applied.
  • QA work - What worked? What didn't? What surprised you? What steps did you take to improve the capture?
  • Frequency - Ideally, how often should this site be captured?
• You will earn approximately 2 points per site - 1 for thorough metadata and 1 for the report content.

The completed project is due 4/6 by 5pm. Save your report to your Box folder and make sure your Archive-It collection is public.

Project reflection (5%)

In 3-4 pages, reflect on your experience in this course, including any changed perceptions or behaviors relating to the Internet, technology, and the archival record. Address the following:

• How has your relationship with your personal archive changed?
• How was working with the Archive-It platform or other technologies in the course? What was challenging? What was worthwhile?
• What have you learned about archival principles and digital preservation? What do your classmates, friends, parents need to know?
• What would you say are the major ethical challenges of capturing born digital archives? Use an example from the readings or your own collection.
• Finally, make a prediction. As a digital native, where you think technology will be in another twenty years? How will it affect archives and preservation? Are you hopeful or pessimistic? Respond to one of our major texts (Rumsey, Owens).

Reflection due 4/13 by 5pm.

Presentation (5%)

You will have 10 minutes to share your project with the class and to generate discussion/feedback on your work so far. Since projects are not yet due, this presentation will serve as a final review of your work.

Spend 5 minutes on the following:

• Introducing your topic and your motivations.
• Brief overview of the sites you selected.
• Most exciting vs. most challenging or frustrating aspect of the project.

Spend 5 minutes on the following:

• Come up with a question for your audience. What aspect of your project would you like feedback on? Does your metadata need help? Maybe your crawl turned out wonky? Can someone else identify a gap in your archive? Are there ethical issues you are concerned about?

Specs:

• 1 point for evidence of preparation (for your own presentation + reviewing other students' archives)
• 1 point for a concise, time-aware presentation.
• 1 point for a cogent summary and overview.
• 1 point for identifying a relevant question for your audience.
• 1 point for participating in other students' presentations.

Last name A-J presents 4/3; Last name K-Z presents 4/5.