1. The Virtual Archive and National Memory:
Toward A Comparative Study of the Digital Library Models in North American and European Setting
Marija Dalbello
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

2. European vs. American Context ________________________________________
Centralization (European)
National infrastructure within government legislation; projects; top-down approach; involvement of governments and ministries of culture, managing cultural heritage
Dispersal and Consolidation within a public policy framework (American)
Transinstitutional and cross-Institutional partnerships; National Information Infrastructure (NII) (Telecommunications Act of 1996); decentralized, competitive and cooperative; grant-driven; bottom-up approach with minimum government involvement; evolutionary growth and selection
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

3. Theoretical Perspectives
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Theory of Cultural Production
digital library’s role as cultural agency; American institutions--the sites for the production, dissemination, and appropriation of cultural capital
Cultural Authority
Library and the social reproduction of culture (Raber 1997)
Memory Institutions and the Invention of Tradition (Digital continuity, managing the record of the past)
identity shaped by memory institutions; retrospective orientations in current digital library projects are sites for building national identity and “invented” traditions (Fentress & Wickham 1991; Confino 1997; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983)
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

4. Model for the study of digital library as cultural agency (aspects)1
text
audience 2
context 3
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

5. Research Questions ________________________________________
Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?
Institutional Contexts and Funding Patterns
Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?
Techniques of Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
Repositories of Fragmented Record or Emerging Memory Narrative?
Organizing Metaphors, Spatial and Temporal Markers of Identity
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

6. Developing A Study of Digital Library Projects3
institutionalization
(Who?) 2 1
narrative coherence (How?)
organizing metaphors (What?)
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

7. The Method: Content analysis ________________________________________
ARL (Association of Research Libraries) Digital Initiatives Database
Web-based registry for descriptions of digital initiatives (408 registered projects) (
Descriptions of federally funded cooperative projects defined in the DLI (the Digital Libraries Initiative) Phase 1 and 2
Virtual Library, ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR), and descriptions of projects of the National Digital Library Federation
Limitations of content analysis from existing sources
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

8. Selection Criteria for Digital Library Projects
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projects with "retrospective" orientation (i.e. those presenting a view of the past)
significant initiatives that achieved some sort of institutionalization and may be deemed to have or will have a significant cultural impact
projects in the public sector
projects that reflect a distinctly “American” approach because they deal with cultural heritage, i.e. culture as conceptualized in the context of national policy
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

9. Research Questions ________________________________________
Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?
Institutional Contexts and Funding Patterns
Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?
Techniques of Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
Repositories of Fragmented Record or Emerging Memory Narrative?
Organizing Metaphors, Spatial and Temporal Markers of Identity
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

10. ________________________________________
Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?
________________________________________
Funding contexts (Saracevic & Dalbello 2001, in print):
funding of governmental and non-governmental organizations
funding of practical developments from similar sources
funding from academic and public institutions
funding for new implementations in their realm from professional and scientific societies and subject-specific institutes
funding from publishers to enter the new age of digital publications and access
funding for putting their treasures in the digital domain from historical societies, archives, and museums
funding from collaborative contributions to provide for the common good in the new Internet (the tradition of "free information")
funding for knowledge organization systems in industrial settings
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

11. Findings: Institutional contexts
Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?
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Findings: Institutional contexts
National (a: digital library initiative phase 1 and 2)
National (b: Library of Congress, The Making of America)
University (Special collections & Archives)
Public libraries
Society / subject specific Institutes
Publishers
Historical Societies / Archives / Museums
Galleries, Bibliographic Utilities, Schools
Trans-institutional, Collaborative distributed digital archives
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

12. Findings: Institutional contexts
Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?
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Findings: Institutional contexts
(355 projects in 133 institutions)
National (a: digital library initiative phase 1 and 2) (2)
National (b: Library of Congress, The Making of America) (91)
University (Special collections & Archives) (177)
Public libraries (17)
Society / subject specific Institutes (6)
Publishers (2)
Historical Societies / Archives / Museums (29)
Galleries, Bibliographic Utilities, Schools (3)
Trans-institutional, Collaborative distributed digital archives (23)
Other (5)
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

13. Discussion ________________________________________
Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?
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Discussion
Strong presence of frameworks defined by traditional approaches to collection development in special collections and archives (predetermines uses; obscurantism; static and passive collections; digitization of materials, less contextualization)
Library of Congress - leadership and new approaches to collection development in the digital environment (contextualization, multimedia, collaborative efforts)
From dispersal to consolidation: Increasingly focus on collaborative efforts (1998+)
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

14. Conclusions ________________________________________
Who is Involved in Creating the Record of the Past?
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Conclusions
Limited number of players; consequently, dominant models and those receiving most funding are not the most innovative
Major contexts (universities’ special collections & archives provide least innovative approaches but build strong presence in digital libraries)
Increasing presence of public libraries
“Community memory” projects
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

15. Findings: information object / representation / delivery
Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?
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Findings: information object / representation / delivery
Originals: images, documents (published and unpublished), sound recordings, artifacts
Digital Formats: primarily scanned images, but also formatted electronic text, multimedia to lesser degree; bibliographic information & databanks
Delivery methods: web exhibit, limited use of databases served on the web, retrieval via structured text
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

16. Findings: Modalities of narrative presentation
Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?
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Findings: Modalities of narrative presentation
Topicality (narrow subject focus)
Biographical approach to organizing historical discourse
Event-based approach
Commemorative
Picaresque and episodic (pre-narrative)
Self-reflexivity
Focus on local history
Localization using physical metaphors (streams, architecture, landmarks)
*Narrative = ability to tell a story
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

17. Preliminary Findings ________________________________________
Repositories of Fragmented Record or Emerging Memory Narrative?
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Preliminary Findings
Period best represented:
Subject focus: Historical periods / events / people
revolutionary war
civil war
African-American experience
local history
natural history
history of technological inventions
architectural styles
musical forms
evolution of print forms
biography
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

18. Conclusions ________________________________________
Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?
Repositories of Fragmented Record or Emerging Memory Narrative?
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Conclusions
Simplicity of narrative presentation techniques
Story is a picaresque voyage through linear displays meandering around framed images of objects, figures, or landscapes; Floating signifiers rather than signifiers eliciting coherent readings
Contextualization via localization, uniqueness, diversity (Glocal? = obscurity or diversity?)
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

19. Conclusions ________________________________________
Information Maze or Coherent Historical Narrative?
Repositories of Fragmented Record or Emerging Memory Narrative?
________________________________________
Conclusions
For all the emphasis on the retrospective content (the historical) as noted feature of the digital library activities in the communities of practice related to memory institutions (archives, libraries, historical societies, museums, etc.), they are weak in relating historical content and locked within their existing paradigms of discrete collections
Challenges: to make these discourses public and globally accessible (glocal); build new ways of including viewers; forge partnerships
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

20. Conclusion ________________________________________
A recent evaluation of the National Digital Library Initiative at the Library of Congress (2000), states that:
It is an impressive agglomeration of text and images but the problem is in the delivery of narrative content. If digital libraries springing up in various institutional contexts are as yet unconnected masses of fragments of data and visual information, they are obviously suffering from a lack of purpose. As a matter of public accountability for these new forms is to recognize whether they are accomplishing what they proclaim.
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001

21. Future Research ________________________________________
In areas of: text, audiences, and context
Text: Expand study using the same research questions to the “National” initiatives in Europe
Audiences: Viewing process study audience responses; study situated viewers, tap into interpretive strategies (how determined by “protocols of viewing” and “horizons of expectation”) rather than cognitive science approach
Context: Interviews with policy makers; how do “national” libraries’ initiatives relate to projects in the public and private sector; funding nodes for European context
Copyright Dalbello
LIDA 2001