The Stack of Scholarship: Ayers’ Experiment
Prof. AlvaradoMDST 3703/7703
25 September 2012
Business
• Quizzes graded– Questions, see me
• Comments– By Monday evening– Please write comments, not posts, for the
responses to the readings
Review
• Thematic Research Collections– Remain bound to the metaphor of the library and
the book– Partly due to remediation
• Other examples– Blake Project– World of Dante– House Divided– Princeton Dante Project
BLAKE ARCHIVE• Figure types• Comparison viewer
WORLD OF DANTE• Maps• Annotations
PRINCETON DANTE PROJECT• Commentaries• Voice
HOUSE DIVIDED• Contextual mass
These sites seek to evoke world through
contextual mass
What do they mean by “world”?
World models like these are “embedded” in textsSites like World of Dante use images, maps, and glossaries in relation to texts to evoke these worlds
When we tell stories, we also create worlds
Our worlds express worldviews, theories of the world, that are
culturally constructed and historically specific
Historians tells stories too
Histories are written from various theoretical perspectives
and motiviations
The Great Man theory of history
Historical Materialism
Things do get complicated, though
The Promise of the New South
Ed Ayers, 1993
What is “open narrative”?
Open vs. Fixed Narrative
• What is open narrative?• Why does Ayers propose it?• What did critics say of Promise?• How does Ayers defend himself?• Does the book have a thesis?• Is Ayers’ task similar to that of the historian
of the web?• Are the periods connected?
Open Narrative
• Open narrative is not about being unsure of the facts
• On the contrary, it results from the control an excess of facts—“hyperempiricism”
• It’s purpose is to expose the complexity and irony of history, not the absence of historical truth
• It’s goal is to evoke the world of its subject, not impose that of the author
Open narrative is “postmodern”
Against “metanarratives”For complexity
Related to intertextuality
Picasso’s Guernica (1937)
Open narrative allows the historian to create …
To move away from this
Did Valley of the Shadow achieve these goals?
No, Ayers put too much faith in the database to produce the
desired effects
The Differences Slavery Made
Created in response to criticisms of VOTS
But also an experiment in the academic essay
“an applied experiment in digital scholarship”
What is the specific problem that TDSM tries to solve?
What was the experiment about?
To give full access to the scholarly argument
But also to compensate for the lack of argument in VOTS
The task is to relate the ARGUMENT with the DATA
Why is this so hard?
Rationalization Effect:What is an (historical)
argument?
Why do databases and hypertext complicate matters?
Arguments and narratives are linear and non-random
Readers expect to follow a logical or causal sequence of ideas
Databasesare random
Databases are “random access”It does not matter which order you
read them
They are meant to be searched and “queried”
How does TDSM handle the relationship between narrative and
data?
How does it handle the relationship between the fixed linearity of the
narrative and the non-linearity of the data?
Darnton’s Pyramid
Concise account
Expanded versions of
aspects
Documentation with interpretive essays
Theoretical and historiographical material
Pedagogic material (Commentaries, etc.)
TDSM’s “Prismatic” StructureHistoriograp
hy
Points of Analysis
Evidence
Summary of Argument
VOS
Technology
• XML is used to organize content– The is is made from one big XML file, 24,000 lines long– XML used to markup sources and argument
• XSL is used to transform content– We are not learning XSL, but it is similar to CSS but
more powerful• GIS is used for map data– Geographic Information Systems– Allows maps to display statistical data
More “rationalization”
• Historians use three kinds of information– Narrative (T)– Historiography, or secondary sources (E)– Evidence, or primary sources (D)
• Historiography and Evidence organized in databases– Documents, tables, maps, etc.– Libraries, Bibliographies, Digital Collections
Categories are used to organizesource content
• Geography• Politics
– Election of 1860– Political activtivists
• Economics– Commerce– Crops– Labor– Property
• Social structure• Race• Culture
– Religion– Education (“school”)– Urbanization (“Town Development”)
• Information and communications
Missed opportunity?
Categories are a large part of what worlds are made of
Ontologies
Figure Types in Blake
Does the site fulfill the goals of open narrative?
Does the form match or help the content?
Criticism
• Worst of both worlds?– Neither random access nor rich narrative– Exploits neither the potentials of a real library or a digital
library• Still document-centric– Subject matter remains buried in the documents
• Not well connected– Terminal nodes not cross-linked– No cross-site searching
• It’s strength is in the integrity of the materials– But criticized for being difficult to use
More Criticisms
• Nothing inherently hypertextual about the site– Readers are shunted into paths
• Thesis is not that complicated– Modernity and slavery not opposites
• Why not put exhibits inline?• Why not show points of comparison in context?– Need for transclusion
• Why explain relationship in historiography? Why not create links or use tags?
The Stack of Scholarship
ARGUMENTS
MAGIC MIDDLE
COLLECTIONS
The Stack of Scholarship
ARGUMENTS ESSAYS HYPERTEXT
MAGIC MIDDLE
COLLECTIONS LIBRARIES DATABASES
The Stack of Scholarship
ARGUMENTS ESSAYS HYPERTEXT
MAGIC MIDDLE Work,Memory
Programs, Maps, etc.
COLLECTIONS LIBRARIES DATABASES
The Stack of Scholarship
ARGUMENTS ESSAYS HYPERTEXT
MAGIC MIDDLE Work,Memory
Programs, Maps, etc.
COLLECTIONS LIBRARIES DATABASES
The goal is to excavate and expose the connections between the levels