Carl Sagan’s WordPerfect files, simulations emailed to Edward Lorenz, a database application from the National Library of Medicine, a collection of science blogs, a database of interstellar distances; each of these digital artifacts have been acquired by archives and special collections. Born digital primary sources are no longer a future concern for archivists, librarians, curators and historians. As historians of science turn their attention to the late 20th and early 21st century, they will need to work from these born-digital primary sources. We have already accumulated a significant born digital past and it’s time for work with born digital primary sources to become mainstream. This presentation will give a quick tour of individual born digital artifacts toward two goals. First, I argue for the need for archivists, curators and librarians to reflexively develop approaches to establishing preservation intent for digital content grounded in a dialog with the nature of a given set of digital objects and it’s future research use. Second, for historians, I suggest how trends in computational analysis of information in the digital humanities should be combined with approaches from digital forensics and new media studies to establish historiographic practices for born-digital source criticism. I conclude by suggesting the kinds of technical skills archivists, librarians, curators and historians working with these materials are going to need to develop. Just as historians working with premodern documents require language and paleography skills, historians working with digital artefacts will increasingly need to understand the inscription processes of hard drives, the provenance created by web crawlers, and how to read relational databases of varying vintages.

1. SCIENTISTS'
HARD DRIVES,
DATABASES, &
BLOGS
PRESERVATION INTENT & SOURCE
CRITICISM IN THE DIGITAL HISTORY OF
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE

2. https://lj.libraryjournal.com/2017/12/people/qa-with-trevor-
owens-lc-head-of-digital-content-management/#_

3. The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation
https://osf.io/preprints/lissa/5cpjt/

4. Digital Sources & Digital Archives: The Evidentiary Basis of
Digital History https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/t5rdy/

5. Digital History Methods Seminar Blog, AMU Hist 677
http://www.dighist.org/

6. FIVE DIGITAL SOURCES
1. Carl Sagan’s Word Perfect Files
2. A disk mailed to Edward Lorenz
3. A Web Archive of Scientists
Blogs
4. A database of Extragalactic
Distances
5. An application for accessing
medical literature

7. TALK ROADMAP
1. Our assumptions about sources
2. The context collapse around
sources in 5 examples
3. How these problems are being
solved and the roles to be played

8. GOING
TO THE
SOURCES

11. KINDS OF SOURCES &
CONTEXTS FOR
COLLECTING
• Published vs. Unpublished
• Textual vs Artifactual
• Formats: books, journals, magazines,
archives, manuscripts, correspondence,
maps, photos, prints, film etc.
• Distinct Professional Traditions ->
Librarians/Archivists/Curators/
Folklorists/Oral Historians/
Ethnographers, etc.

12. IN AN BORN
DIGITAL WORLD
THESE CONTEXTS
ALL COLLAPSE

13. CARL SAGAN’S
WORD PERFECT
FILES

15. "No Day But Today": A look at Jonathan Larson's Word Files
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/04/22/no-day-today-look-
jonathan-larsons-word-files

16. https://www.loc.gov/item/cosmos000111

17. Pale blue dot : a vision of the human future in space : second draft
https://www.loc.gov/item/cosmos000044/

19. DISKS IN EDWARD
LORENZ’S MAIL

20. THE FINDING AID
https://lccn.loc.gov/mm2008085426

23. LORENZ ATTRACTOR

25. HEALTH &
MEDICINE BLOGS
WEB ARCHIVE

26. Developing a Health and Medicine Blogs Collection at the
U.S. National Library of Medicine https://blogs.loc.gov/
thesignal/2012/10/developing-a-health-and-medicine-blogs-
collection-at-the-u-s-national-library-of-medicine/

27. Life as A Healthcare CEO, Captured on 17:07:16 Jan 23, 2013
http://wayback.archive-it.org/2722/20130123170716/http://
geekdoctor.blogspot.com// Health and Medicine Blogs
Collected by: National Library of Medicine

28. Anthony Salvagno's Open Notebook
webarchive.loc.gov/all/20130807182556/http://research.iheartanthony.com/about-me/

29. THE
EXTRAGALACTIC
DISTANCES
DATABASE

30. Curating Extragalactic Distances: An interview with Karl
Nilsen & Robin Dasler https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/
2014/08/curating-extragalactic-distances-an-interview-with-
karl-nilsen-robin-dasler/

34. GRATEFUL MED

35. Final Report: NLM-Developed Software as Cultural Heritage,
Nicole Contaxis https://nicolecontaxis.wordpress.com/
2016/12/12/final-report-nlm-developed-software-as-cultural-
heritage/

36. Staff configuring Grateful Med, ca 1985 National Library of
Medicine #101648264 - https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/
catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101648264-img

37. Source code of ELHILL featuring the comment, “These cards
describe, God save it, the glorious citation file.”, 1995 National
Library of Medicine https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/
2016/04/28/grateful-med-personal-computing-and-user-friendly-
design/

39. HowTo Grateful Med https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/
nlm:nlmuid-101679914-sw

40. KINDS OF SOURCES &
CONTEXTS FOR
COLLECTING
• Published vs. Unpublished
• Textual vs Artifactual
• Formats: books, journals, magazines,
archives, manuscripts, correspondence,
maps, photos, prints, film etc.
• Distinct Professional Traditions ->
Librarians/Archivists/Curators/
Folklorists/Oral Historians/
Ethnographers, etc.

41. GOING FORWARD
1. Preservation Intent
2. Source Criticism
3. Need for collaborations between
scholars and cultural heritage
workers

43. REFERENCES ON LAST SLIDE
Blanchette, J.-F. (2012). Burdens of proof: cryptographic culture and evidence law in the
age of electronic documents. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Gitelman, L. (2014). Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents. Durham ;
London: Duke University Press Books.
Kirschenbaum, M. (2008). Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Montfort, N. (Ed.). (2013). 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1));:GOTO 10. Cambridge, Mass:
MIT Press.
Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: how search engines reinforce racism.
New York: New York University Press.
Owens, T. (2015). Designing online communities: how designers, developers,
community managers, and software structure discourse and knowledge production on
the Web. New York: Peter Lang.
Salter, A., & Murray, J. (2014). Flash: building the interactive web. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Sterne, J. (2012). MP3: the meaning of a format. Durham: Duke University Press.