CANCELED

Abstract:

The Harry Ransom Center is an archives, humanities research library, and museum at the University of Texas at Austin. Its primary emphasis is the study of the literature and culture of the United States, Great Britain, and France. In addition to manuscript, book, photograph, art, and film holdings, the Center also houses the computers and disks of authors such as Norman Mailer, Terrence McNally, and Michael Joyce. Since 2005, the Center has been developing strategies to preserve these born-digital cultural heritage materials, provide researchers with access to them, and incorporate them into exhibitions.

The proposed paper will provide an overview of the Ransom Center’s digital preservation program and describe the challenges of incorporating born-digital materials into the Technologies of Writing exhibition in 2005 and the Mystique of the Archive exhibition in 2008. In particular, it will consider how to create a display case about a hybrid work, or one for which drafts exist in a variety of analog and digital forms. A discussion of some of the ethical issues that arise in the process of capturing and preserving born-digital archival materials, and the potential relevance of these questions to how and by what means born-digital materials are displayed in a museum setting, will conclude this exploration of the “digital divide.”

Session Info

• Type: Individual Paper
• Keywords: born-digital, cultural heritage, ethics
• Relevance: Curators, museum staff, and other information professionals who are thinking about how to incorporate born-digital materials into exhibitions.

Speaker Bio

Gabriela Redwine is an Archivist and Electronic Records/Metadata Specialist at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Tx.