"History 2.0: Remaking the Study and Preservation of History Using Collaborative Web-based Tools." Presented at BarCamp Boston 5 on April 17, 2010. This brief Ignite talk from April 5, 2012 discusses some of these same issues and contrasts the computer science versus library science approach to building platforms that provide access to content: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DnDFOcwVMo. My current project is The History List (www.TheHistoryList.com).

1. History 2.0
Remaking the Study and Preservation of
History Using Collaborative Web-based Tools
Lee Wright
lee@leewright.net
@leewright
Presented at BarCamp Boston 5 at MIT on April 17, 2010

2. Goals today
• The problem
• Current approaches and why they are
inadequate
• Requirements for a successful system
• Creating a scalable, lasting solution

4. Q: Why can’t I add
this to the historic
property report on our
house?
[The invitation shown on the previous slide is to a barn warming party. Our house
(c1780) was once part of a 100 acre farm and in 1918, due to an accident, the
barn and many of the out buildings burned down. The party celebrated the new
barn.]

5. [The entire official historic property survey write-up on our house is on the right.
It’s two pages drafted in 1995. The items on the left are just a few of the many
that we would like to add, including a current photo and a photo from the early
1900s, the article to the barn warming and the newspaper write-up afterword, and
picture of George Carpenter, who grew up in the house and who came by
unexpectedly one day and gave us these and several other photos. Note that our
house isn’t special, just old, but this illustrates the gap between “official records”
and the much richer local history that’s out there to be collected and shared.]

6. State
• Maintain control
• No motivation to evolve faster

7. Local
• 1000 historical societies in New England
• Most are all-volunteer
• Very few resources
• No tech resources
• Core older volunteers are . . .

8. Major private
institutions
• Collection-centric approach
• Maintain control
• Museum science/library science
approach
• Control = status

9. Federal
• Slow  No incentives
• Few good models
• Grants—behind the curve

10. Solutions?
• Local: Antiquated software
• Larger: Omeka collection-centric
• Reinforce old models
Dublin Core metadata
 Nomenclature:
“Buy the book” and “by the book”

11. Requirements
• Open
• Web-centric
• Built with existing technologies,
standards
• No technical skills to use
• Works with current staff (volunteer)
and process model
• No new hardware or software
• Cheap—or free

12. Vision
• Hosted platform for sharing and writing
about historical artifacts and local history
• Anyone can add text or images,
comments, links, tags
• Taps into any existing databases
• Serves as a collection management
system for institutions
• A set of pages can be skinned to create
an institution’s official document/site

13. Advantages
• Every institution, individual can use
• Crosses institutional and political
(city/state/region) boundaries
• Distributed scanning, uploading
• Taps into global community to identify,
provide context, contribute

14. Advantages
• No longer have to surrender control of
an item to contribute it to local history
• Provides a way for a community to
preserve and keep current their history

15. The imperative
• Items are turning to dust in boxes
• Aged volunteers who are best able to
provide context are dying
• Unlikely to reverse underlying trends
• Unlikely to marshal sufficient resources
for traditional approach
• New approach is unlikely to be created
from current industry players

16. Our choice
• The perfect professional approach,
which will only save a small fraction
• Or, preservation using new technologies
and a new model in order to preserve
much more
• If there are ever resources, better
scans and traditional metadata can be
added later

17. Contact
• lee@leewright.net
• @leewright
Updated January 2012:
New initiative: www.TheHistoryList.com
Platform for connecting people interested in history with
history-related happenings in their communities and
across the country.