{"id":2538,"date":"2011-11-18T16:48:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T16:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjhblog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2011\/11\/18\/from-access-to-integration-summary-session\/"},"modified":"2011-11-18T16:48:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T16:48:00","slug":"from-access-to-integration-summary-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2011\/11\/18\/from-access-to-integration-summary-session\/","title":{"rendered":"“From Access to Integration” Summary Session"},"content":{"rendered":"

November 10–second day of the conference.\u00a0Summary Session led by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett<\/strong>, Program Director, Core Exhibition, Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, and University Professor, New York University<\/em><\/p>\n

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett began the “From Access to Integration” summary session by saying that this conference was a worthy, fitting and appropriate way to celebrate the Center\u2019s ten-year anniversary. Later, she added that we could have done the whole conference online, but we didn’t, because face-to-face interaction still has enormous value. \u201cWe don’t want to create a robotic field of knowledge,\u201d she said. \u201cThe experience of us here should be a reminder to us that \u2018online\u2019 is not a substitute for everything we ever did face-to-face.\u201d<\/p>\n

The goal of the conference was to explore ways in which we might create a global resource for enhancing knowledge of Jewish history, and Kirschenblatt-Gimblett \u00a0said that she came away from the event \u201cquite optimistic.\u201d But identifying next steps and future directions is a daunting task, and it was one that she thought should be shared with several of the panelists and all of the conference participants. She invited all to participate in this discussion of ways to address the issues raised in the two-day meeting of the minds.<\/p>\n

The first issue Kirschenblatt-Gimblett raised was the major shift in the culture of repositories. \u201cThere must be historians in this room who remember the days before digital access, and they tell wonderful archive war stories,\u201d she said, and then shared one of her own. She remembered that when she was doing research in the \u201870s, in an archive that will remained unnamed, \u201cthere was an archivist whose specialty was torture\u201d\u2014someone who would say, \u201cI found something wonderful that\u2019s perfect for your project,\u201d and then abruptly end the conversation without releasing the material or any other information.<\/p>\n

Even to this day, there is still in some quarters a reigning \u201cculture of withholding,\u201d and there are still those researchers and scholars who guard what they believe to be badges of honor associated with mining material in inaccessible archives\u2014as though it is a competition over who has found the most arcane material in the most accessible places. Controlling access has been the archivists\u2019 power. Changing from the power of the archivist to a culture of open access \u201cis not just a shift. It is a tectonic shift,\u201d Kirschenblatt-Gimblett said.<\/p>\n

G\u00fcnter Waibel, who spoke in the evening session on the first day of the conference, made a valuable distinction between talking about \u201cwhat we want to accomplish\u201d and \u201chow, exactly, we\u2019re going to accomplish it.\u201d Kirshenblatt-Gimblett took up this distinction and defined the \u201cwhat\u201d as the goals to digitize as much as possible and to maximize access. But she also said that she\u2019d like to push her colleagues beyond this particular \u201cwhat.\u201d Is there something additional to take us beyond access\/integration and toward what might be completely transformative?\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are some serious challenges. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett identified one as the obsolescence of the technology. It happens very quickly. Technology is a \u201cmoving target.\u201d Something she said she didn\u2019t hear too much during the conference was the challenge of resistance\u2014essentially, a situation where the resources and tools are moving so quickly that they are outpacing scholars\u2019 abilities to use them. From her own experience in her department, she has found that scholars want as little technology as possible. They don\u2019t have the time or inclination for the learning curve that is required to do much more than get the material \u201cfast and easy.\u201d There is a lot of work to be done to build the capacity in the scholars for making the best possible use of these tools and resources.<\/p>\n

Kirschenblatt-Gimblett \u00a0identified what she called the \u201ctakeaway\u201d of the conference. \u201cThe takeaway is that data does not equal knowledge,\u201d she said. There are many steps from data to knowledge or data or meaning. \u201cOur mission is to create a global resource for enhancing knowledge of Jewish history\u201d\u2014and that does not mean only the aggregate of data or information. Scholars are the key. Investing in them and their capacity to make full use of technology resources is a high priority. And much of the discussion of partnering, collaboration and integration has focused on partnering with institutions on projects. That\u2019s different from the range of scholarship. (When scholars teach, they\u2019re making new scholars. It isn\u2019t as though teaching is somehow separated from scholarship.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

She stated that integration means, on one level, taking a lot of disparate projects and resources and somehow bringing them together. The focus of this conference was \u201cthe potential of integration: increasing awareness, networking, collaborating and establishing uniform standards.\u201d The next step is to form an association or program to create a global resource, however it may be configured. That process of integration should be twofold: on the one hand, bring everyone together, and on the other, strengthening the smaller projects so that they don\u2019t get swallowed up or find themselves without resources to leverage.<\/p>\n

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett then returned to the word \u201ctransformation.\u201d What does the word mean here? What is the transformation that we\u2019re after? If we were to take the definition for granted, our efforts would be producer-centered, or coming from those who are creating these databases and tools, and focusing on the transformative effects of digitizing more and more materials and providing greater and greater access. But that mission is just the tip of the iceberg; digitization and access can\u2019t be the full picture of what \u201ctransformation\u201d means.<\/p>\n

And is that enough\u2014to be transformative? If so, what is it transformative of? What is, precisely, to be transformed? Where is the tipping point from quantitative (more and more, better and better, access) to qualitative? Kirshenblatt-Gimblett reminded conference participants of the importance of putting these questions not only to colleagues sitting in the room, but also to the scholars who are supposed to benefit from all of these developments.<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cIf we were to look specifically at institutions\u2014archives, libraries, museums and universities\u2014and see how this works, these new technologies, particularly in relationship to their wonderful collections, actually change the [institutions\u2019] function, culture, relationship to constituents. And there can be an exponential effect.\u201d She added, \u201cWe should consider it in two regards. We have considered it in regard to the digital end of the spectrum, but not the bricks-and-mortar end of the spectrum. What is the role of the bricks-and-mortar library in the age of the digital resources accessible from anywhere?\u201d<\/p>\n

The bricks-and-mortar library serves several roles, in Kirshenblatt-Gimblett\u2019s point of view. If we dismantled libraries, we would lose the face-to-face interaction with people who really know their materials. It\u2019s not just about what you can teach yourself online. \u201cLibraries have always been social places, and they have continued to have a social role. Nothing you can do online will replace encountering a special collection in its analog form.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett then raised another question: In what ways does the meeting place between technology and scholarship produce not only new knowledge, but also new forms<\/em> of knowledge? When we talk about the field of digital humanities and the intersection of new technologies and scholarships, can we talk about where it is going? Can we look at both the collection side and the scholarship side to discover transformative potential?<\/p>\n

She then invited panelists G\u00fcnter Waibel, Douglas Greenberg and Anne Kenney to join her for the rest of the summary session. Other conference participants also shared their questions, thoughts and insights in a lively question-and-answer conclusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

November 10–second day of the conference.\u00a0Summary Session led by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Program Director, Core Exhibition, Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, and University Professor, New York University Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett began the “From Access to Integration” summary session by saying that this conference was a worthy, fitting and appropriate way to celebrate the Center\u2019s ten-year anniversary. Later, she added that we could…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1249,1248,1250],"class_list":["post-2538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-cjh-a2i","tag-from-access-to-integration","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}