The 9/11 Digital Archive is a powerful tool of collecting memories, images, oral history, and recollections of a massive event in recent history. The site, described by James T. Sparrow, is simple and easy to use. The portal format lets users and contributors easily navigate the site. Besides the surface level organization, the search bars are helpful to find a broad subject of topics/words. I don't think that I have really ever looked at a digital archive before. The benefit of something like this is that it can collect so many people's memories at their own discretion. However, it takes a lot of planning and careful consideration from the authors of the website about how to collect these objects. Using an open source format helps to ensure that the sources will be attainable in many years, once the format and coding of our technology has advanced past recognition.
Public historians have to adapt to this new format of attaining and collecting information. Public digital archives place a lot of value on the individual's experience. The people who create these archives have a responsibility to the historical profession but also to the public who submits and reads the content of the archives. The work of the historian in the future will become more digitized and less physical documents. Interpreting online sources will become a prevalent part of primary sources involved in research. With advancing technology, historians will need to be trained to discern between fiction and fact, and without contextual information always, they will have to rely on their training and competence to figure out how to portray the information they read. It is certainly a changing profession.
On a different note, visiting the Elkhart County Historical Museum again and then talking with Matt Schuld gave me some insight to how exhibits are set up and how to design one. It will definitely be a challenging project to figure out what parts of the East Lincoln neighborhood we want to include in an exhibit and how to represent them.
Yes, you rightly point out how much has to go on behind the scenes to make that place where people can post their memories! This is a brave new world of public history that we all will adapt to in some way. Do you think historians should try to control this or let it happen?
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