I am going to begin this blog by quoting a book that quotes another book. (Confusing IKR?)
Within the Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums, the authors Franklin D. Vagnone and Deborah E. Ryan begin their introduction with an excerpt from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned. Two characters within Fitzgerald’s work are discussing whether historic homes should be preserved when one of them gives an impassioned and critical speak about historic preservation. Stating, “‘Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they’re preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them…Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants’” (Vagnone & Ryan, 33-34).
At first glance this excerpt upset me as I felt like Fitzgerald’s characters didn’t understand the very real and very valuable purposes behind historical preservation. As I’ve talked about before, the scholar Cary Carson described historic house museums and material culture as a way to transport the present into the past, thus helping present audiences become invested in the stories of the past. I ardently believe in this philosophy and use it in my own research. As historians how could we just let something die??
As we saw in our readings for this week and as we discussed in class, simply put we cannot preserve everything therefore we have to be thoughtful about what we preserve. Dr. Otis’s article “Managing the Digital Backlist: Sustaining, Preserving, and Deleting Old Projects” shows digital historians how we can strike the balance on determining what to preserve. Discouraging the technological hoarding tendency of digital historians, Dr. Otis wants digital historians “to make hard decisions about where and how to allocate our scarce resources of time and money.” All humanists can relate to the harsh reality that there are more of us then there are funding resources. Yet as Dr. Otis and RRCHNM have demonstrated the way to maximize limited resources and preservation is through making a controlled plan grounded in accordance with the principles of their work. RRCHNM developed a preservation plan that addressed their humanistic and technological concerns. As Dr. Otis describes, when developing their plan, RRCHNM factored in the experiences of their audience, scholars of both present and future, and funders. Additionally, RRCHNM also outlined how to preserve the bare bones of their projects, maximizing the amount that can be preserved and these projects’ overall technological flexibility as technology changes (https://jessicaotis.com/digital-humanities/managing-the-digital-backlist/).
Clearly, in contrast to the grounding principles that RRCHNM used to think about what and who they were preserving for, Yahoo did not consider their audience when they decided to eliminate Yahoo Answers. While I personally had no idea what this was prior to reading the article, people were upset as they viewed Yahoo Answers as “a huge archive of the ways that people look for and try to provide knowledge” (Tiffany, https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/04/how-yahoo-became-internet-villain/618681/).
Digital historians have to grapple with the reality of long-term digital preservation otherwise the Yahoo situation will be the general standard. Digital history projects like the ones described in “Century-Scale Storage,” The Endings Project, and missions outlined by digital historians like Trevor Owens offer a path forward in navigating the unknown of digital preservation. Despite being pretty long-winded, “Century-Scale Storage” repeatedly emphasizes that the availability of continuous digital maintenance is the key to successfully preserving the archives of the digital world (https://lil.law.harvard.edu/century-scale-storage/). Advocating for a “culture of constraint,” designing projects that can be easily preserved and adaptable as technology progresses, and calling upon digital humanists to work with a variety of professionals in the preservation field, the Endings Project, as described in the introduction to “Project Resiliency in the Digital Humanities” has been designed with the goal of combining resources to ensure the long-term preservation of digital media (https://dhq.digitalhumanities.org/vol/17/1/000671/000671.html). All the points discussed in these articles are echoed throughout Trevor Owens’s The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation as he breaks down the field of digital preservation and makes it more easily digestible for a wider audience. Describing the basic guidelines, the dos and don’ts, and the potential of digital preservation, Owens wants readers to understand the ins and outs as well as the reason why we should care about digital preservation. If only the characters in Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned could have read our articles for Module 9! (Owens, 1-11).
Hi Ally! Great post. I loved the way you connected this week’s content to historic houses. We talked about this in our small group discussion as well, but it’s very interesting to compare the preservation of physical objects and digital objects. While these methods are vastly different, the significance of preserving each kind of object is not diminished. This post does a great job of highlighting the through line of preservation covered by our readings. I also found the quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald to be a quite interesting perspective! It’s given me something to think about in terms of how we approach preservation as historians (although I don’t think I agree with this character).
Hi Ally, great post! I have a similar philosophy as you and Carson. A key aspect as my work as a historian is to allow people today to gain an understanding of the lived experience of the past and to gain an appreciation (and overall interest) in it. I think that in the same way a historic house and physically transport someone, a well done DH project can do the same. However, all possible resources must be allocated to said DH project to allow it to be as successful as possible, leading to the need for critical decisions on what DH projects to sustain and what to let go. In a way, the methodical policies of the RRCHNM that Dr. Otis spoke about can help free the space for more impactful DH projects of the future.
Hi Ally! Loved this post and loved the quote you started off with. I have started to gain an interest in material culture as well and am often a supporter of preserving as much as possible. However, this week’s readings have successfully illustrated that choices have to be made. The Yahoo answers article reminds us that the decision of what to keep and what to let go of will not always be unanimous.