I have been assigned the Oral History article. This week I was able to somewhat narrow down what I wanted to focus on for the article. I really want to find more information about oral history in foreign countries. One obstacle I have found already with this is that this information tends to be in foreign languages. Thankfully, I still have been able to find a few sources and plan to find more. I also want to edit the block quotes since they are an unfavorable citation method.

Another way I want to improve the article is to add material about digital preservation and archaeology. I actually learned about oral history while taking an archeology/anthropology course in undergrad. I feel that adding how oral history relates to archeology can help make the article more relevant. Archaelogists use oral interviews and testimonies to remove the ambiguity surrounding historical objects. I had forgotten about this until looking for sources, where I found a bunch relating to archaeology.

We also had to create a bibliography and post to our article’s Talk page this wekk. I wonder how effective this is since these pages don’t seem very active. Though I am able to edit the article with Lauren, I do really not expect collaboration or feedback from anyone outside the course.

I have been assigned the Data Curation article, which has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale (a fair rating in my opinion), and Mid-importance on the importance scale (I think it could gain importance if it were of a higher quality). There are several potentially confusing aspects to this article.

For example, it does not include a link to the Digital Curation page anywhere (this is a content gap), although the reverse is true. While Data Curation and Digital Curation are not interchangeable, they are related, so I do think they should both link to each other. Andy, since you’re working on the Digital Curation article, I’m curious what your thoughts are on this?

The Data Curation page is less library-specific, and its opening definition much broader, than the Digital Curation page. While the Data Curation page is listed under the Information Science category, it is also listed as within the scope of the WikiProject Computational Biology. Unlike the Digital Curation page, the Data Curation page is mainly about data in non-library contexts, but does go on to cite a definition from the University of Illinois’ Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

The sentence “The exact curation process undertaken within any organization depends on . . . how much noise the data contains . . .” is not clear about what it means by “noise”. Does it mean superfluous data, data that can be discarded? More precision would be helpful here.

There are also some positives about this article, such as the number of links to other Wikipedia articles. The link to the Data page is especially important because, to learn about Data Curation, it is essential to first understand the definition of data itself. However, the broad definition of curation does not link to the Wikipedia page on Curation (another content gap), though the Curation page does link to both the Data Curation and Digital Curation pages.

I fixed some of the grammar in the Data Curation article, but I’m still reading through all of the related linked pages, continuing to identify content gaps or overlap, and making notes of references to add to cover these gaps.

I have been volunteering at the Maryland State Archives for a few months and the Director of the Special Collections department recently posed a question said she’d asked of each of the many MLIS students who have worked there over the past few years, always getting a different answer. The question: “How do you define digital curation?” Having so recently revisited Yakel’s article “Digital Curation” (2007), I gave the definition from the text almost verbatim: “Digital curation is the active involvement of information professionals in the management, including the preservation, of digital data for future use.” The Director nodded, pleased with this answer, although she wasn’t specifically familiar with this definition from Yakel. She also said she hadn’t heard this exact answer in previous conversations. I suspect this answer appealed to her because its first emphasis requires active engagement with information professionals. In an archive that manages both physical and digital collections, with a great deal of legacy technology (for better or for worse), within an often slow-moving government institutional context, she did not need to ever have heard of Yakel to appreciate the strength of the definition.  I share this anecdote because I think it represents an interesting interaction between theory and practice, and highlighting the difference between defining and doing an activity.

So in comparing that definition to the one currently given by the Wikipedia article: “Digital curation is the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection and archiving of digital asset,” we encounter one example of a digital library topic area on Wikipedia that is generally representative of the field but could use more nuance and support. Furthermore, I agree with the previous blog post that this article relies too heavily on information from the Digital Curation Centre, which while strong and valid, may represent a UK-specific viewpoint and stand to benefit from more discussion of fundamentals from a variety of sources. By contrast, the Digital Preservation article seems both deeply and broadly researched, with sufficient details and citations to support each section. (I think we already mentioned that the “start-class” designation here is confusing.)

For my article assignment, I’m excited to be working on Community archives. There are loads of great ideas listed on the Talk page for potential new content. The section called “Issues” is particularly rich:

• Digitization as a way to build or link community archives
• Digital divide re: community members accessing their own material
• Archival training
• Community representation in the profession
• Ethics of access
• Capacity challenges (i.e. funding, disaster planning)

Furthermore, I have identified four other sources to evaluate from the Intro to Archives and Digital Curation Fall 2017 syllabus. Also, since I questioned the use of one of the articles (Woodward) as a citation, I will examine whether that one is worth replacing. I did check to see if anyone responded to my Talk comment about that, but have not seen any answers yet.

I am taking on the article on TRAC (Trustworthy Repository Audit and Certification). It’s just a stub of an article of interest (but not much) of the WikiProjects Libraries and WikiProject Digital Preservation working groups. What I find interesting about it is that trustworthiness ought to be of concern but isn’t. Why not? It is deemed of Low Importance to the WikiProjecs Libraries group, and unrated beyond “stub” by the WikiProject Digital Preservation Group. Despite its stub status, TRAC is still more documented on Wiki than other measures of trustworthiness such as the Nestor system (an alternative) or the Trusted Digital Repository (TDR) Checklist (its replacement). It also lacks any named person as a major contributor; instead, it was developed in committee by organizations (OCLC and CRL/NARA). Last, it really needs a section on how TRAC has been implemented and adapted in real life contexts. There are a number of scholarly articles that explain how different repositories and scholars have received and interpreted TRAC (including this one by class favorites E. Yakel and A. Kriesberg!)

Ironically, the TRAC article itself has a trustworthiness problem. The strongest and most useful part of the article appears to be not its text, but a infographic illustrating the “family tree” of standards to which TRAC belongs. It clearly and succinctly lays out the influences on and of TRAC. That is problematic in and of itself because it was created by a user without any references or guide. A further look at the references also shows a shallow pool of sources that rely on institutional blogs as citations. The information doesn’t look wrong per se, but it does not conform to the standards of quality reference that Wikipedia lays out.

Coming from a history background, it feels a bit off to rate primary sources, such as the institutional web site or blogs describing the process of making the standard, as lesser than secondary sources. However, this article illustrates why building directly off of the raw evidence is problematic: it necessitates analysis that is unvetted (like the TRAC family tree). Citing academic publications potentially insulates Wikipedia from biased analysis and misinformation.

I’m still unsure of the approach I should take in expanding this article. For example, CRL (Center for Research Libraries) has the full checklist on its website; should I cite it? On one hand, it’s literally the most direct piece of information a user could find to let them know what TRAC is. On the other hand, it seems to violate Wikipedia’s preference against using institutional websites as sources. Another tack that I am debating is creating pages for Nestor and TDR so that TRAC could be contextualized more fully. However, I don’t know if that goes beyond the desired ambit of assignment, or if there is a good reason why this hasn’t been done by the invested WikiProject groups. I think I still need to do more to familiarize myself with the topic and the page’s culture before I feel comfortable mucking around with it.

I read through the Digital Curation Wiki page and, while some passages resonated, a lot of sounded unfamiliar. I think this is due in a large part to content, perhaps, or text being cut and pasted; not contextualized and presented in “easy to understand” language as suggested by the “Editing Wikipedia” brochure.

For instance, in the opening, overview paragraph, the passage, “Enterprises are starting to use digital curation to improve the quality of information and data within their operational and strategic processes” feels wedged into the rest of the text. I think there is value and insight, but it’s not quite clear what are “enterprises,” and how digital curation “improves the quality of information and data.” What does that mean? This can be a bit off-putting to someone not an MLIS student or professional.

The Yakel article, “Digital Curation,” we read in Week 2 (and in other courses and tends to be often cited) notes that “digital curation is becoming the umbrella term for digital preservation, data curation, and digital assets and electronic records management.” I think it would useful to readers to include a section about how it’s been diffilcult to pinpoint an exact definition, give excerpts of the various definitions that have been offered by various communities, and how the definition evolves as technology evolves. Including the above cited Yakel quote would be useful to include.

In the “New representational forms” section, it is unclear what the author means by saying it is hard to encode knowledge of skilled workers or artisans. What are examples of skilled workers and how might they or their work be digitized? This seems like a section to reference and incorporate information from Jeanette Bastian’s article “‘Play Mas:’ Carnival in the Archives and the Archives in Carnival: Records and Community Identity in U.S. Virgin Islands” which discusses expanding the definition of archives beyond the tangible to include the non-traditional records (performance, expression, experience, etc.). This also leads into the area of communities that limit digital access to records. I’m thinking specifically of indigenous groups and what limitations there are for specific audiences of accessing cultural and religious materials.

The “Digitization of print” section could use some examples (like, what kind of resources) and could be expanded to include the benefits/challenges of this. I find the section awkward (“epitomized to some degree” – a combo ultimate/limited language use) and thin.

“Sheer curation” is a new term to me. The example given does not help clarify the term. In fact, I find it more confusing. This whole section reads like an excerpt from a term paper or dissertation.

In “Channelisation,” I feel like the author has some specific example or examples in mind, but does not give them. Examples would help ground the definition in real-world uses that a reader could relate to. I immediately thought of YouTube, and how people can create a playlist of Prince videos that a user can let auto-play but I’m not quite sure if this is what the author means.

I am working on the article about Elizabeth Yakel due to my interest in working on the biography of an important figure in the field of digital curation. This interest stems from my lack of knowledge about these people. My professors must find them important enough to make me read some of their writings, but who are they to me? I want to have my own relationship with them and come to my own conclusions, and I want them to be more than just a name on a paper.

The big problem with article about Yakel is that it lacks insightful content. It is mainly just a listing of basic facts, like her job title, education, and awards (similar to her C.V.). For the most part, it does not tell why–why should I care about her if I am interested in digital curation? It is one thing to just see a list of awards and publications, it is another to assign value and meaning to them.

I would like the article to place her better in the field. What are her scholarly contributions? Why was she chosen for these awards, honors, grants? Ultimately, I want someone new to digital curation to be able to read her Wikipedia entry and understand why she is a person they should know, be able to locate a list of her important articles and writings, and be motivated to read more by her.

In considering the coverage of topics such as digital curation, digital preservation, content management, digital asset management, and others I find that the topic of digital preservation seems well represented, however the same level of effort does not seem to have carried over to some of the topics mentioned above that are often used interchangeably with digital preservation. This narrow focus on only the digital preservation article puzzles me a bit because I think there would be tremendous value to the layperson in describing how digital preservation differs from and relates to the other concepts. I think of digital curation in particular as being a more encompassing activity that leverages digital preservation expertise, but also takes a wider view of the entire asset lifecycle, and infuses the process with a mandate to improve the asset, not just preserve it. I think that distinction is either underplayed or missing in both articles.

I think the biggest content gap in the digital curation article is some description of the types of activities that go into digital curation. Yakel’s core concepts/activities list would be a good addition for the article to fill that need. Admittedly, someone did list the activities outlined in the DCC’s lifecycle model, however they originally seemed to be using them as a supporting statement in a section on digitization of analog materials. It did not make sense to me, so I separated the two topics and moved the lifecycle model to a new section tentatively called Methodology. I hope to revise this later with a broader reorganization effort.

If I had to guess at why the digital curation article was less developed than the digital preservation article I would guess that as a more narrowly focused activity, there may be more professionals that specialize in digital preservation specifically, whereas the process of digital curation spans multiple disciplines and may involve partnerships between multiple employees and departments. So, perhaps there are fewer professionals that feel they have the requisite expertise to speak on the subject holistically.

I was surprised by how involved editing Wikipedia is. Going through the tutorials on Wikiedu has been informative and I look forward to seeing what’s going on behind the scenes for more articles. This week’s tutorial on citations helped me see more of the features the “Edit” section of Wikipedia offers and I look forward to editing my first article.

I didn’t post any comments to an article’s Talk page yet, but I did read over the Talk page for Oral History. The article only has C rating and there have been discussions about lack of sources, underdeveloped sections, and a discussion on the proposal of merging the topics “oral history” and “oral tradition.” I agreed with a lot of what the editors were saying as I noticed these issues myself when reading over the article.

There are a good number of paragraphs in the article without citations. There are also long quotes cited from an encyclopedia. From what I have learned in the Wikiedu tutorials, this is not an ideal form of citation and should be avoided. Many of the sections are also too brief in comparison to the scope of the subject. I can see why the article is rated a C. Though there has been some effort into making a quality article, there is still not enough citations and information.

I use Wikipedia as a resource regularly, both as a way to answer questions that come up throughout the course of a normal day and also as a jumping off point for academic research into topics that are very new to me. In class discussion last week, we talked about how school kids are often taught that they should never reference Wikipedia in their research papers and I had almost completely forgotten that kind of bias exists. Although I consider myself a regular visitor to the site, that reminder forced me to acknowledge the amount of filtering and evaluating I do while reading a WikiArticle in order to identify useful, fact-based information and learn to ignore speculation and bad writing.

When I started using a more critical eye (instead of filtering past weak contributions), I noticed that most of the articles dealing with digital curation and digital preservation topics could use a decent amount of attention and improvement. At first glance, each one seemed to have a healthy number of citations given the article length, no glaring errors or omissions, and no major problems. However, much of the writing could be improved and some of the organization was confusing. “Digital Curation” seemed like it could use more introductory information and also seemed to very much represent information from the Digital Curation Centre. That is definitely a great resource that should be presented on this page, but other venues cover this topic and represent alternative methodology and viewpoints.

I ended up focusing mostly on “community archives” and had the experience of watching one of our classmates edit it in real-time, which was pretty great. That some of my initial feedback was immediately addressed by her contributions effectively demonstrated how much value can be added with each edit. The rest of my evaluation of the original content still ended up being pretty critical and I didn’t have many great suggestions for how to address every one of my concerns, but I expect I will revisit it again with some new ideas. I still feel a little tentative about editing Wikipedia, perhaps even more now that we’ve gone through formal training and had some of the desired rigor emphasized. However, the classroom exercises and sandbox activities have helped me gain confidence and I made contributions to both the article and the talk page.

I was struck by how easy it was to write and edit the Wikipedia entries; like many others in this class, I didn’t have much difficulty with the procedural aspects. It left more time to wonder about varying quality of the articles. Some subjects were clearly hubs of conversation and active dissemination of reliable information, such as the article on Digital Preservation and the biography of Margaret Hedstrom. Others, such as the community archives article or the Elizabeth Yakel biography seem disproportionately lacking, given the lively scholarly conversations around them that I have seen. I ended up adding a few citations to the community archives article because it seemed so obviously skimpy, with several assertions that lacked citations. I actually found that the community archives article was so neutral vis-à-vis the uses of community archives for activism and challenging institutional power structures as to be unhelpful. On a more hopeful note, I still don’t think I saw any obviously misleading or incorrect information even in the less substantive articles.

One issue that I saw as I compared the meaty articles to the thin ones was the level of connectivity within Wikipedia. The Digital Preservation article was robust because of the active community conversing within its edit page, but also presumably because of the network of articles in which it is embedded. It referred back to other pages that could lead readers and editors through multiple pathways to find the article. As Andy pointed out, the Digital Preservation WikiProject at least pays lip service to improving related articles. The community archives article, by contrast, was included in the archives category in Wikipedia, but had no other links to other Wikipedia articles that could lead readers there, or contextualize the term’s significance. As a WIkipedia use, I love falling down a rabbit-hole of linked associations and find my understanding of the subject compounds, rather than just adds up.