Matrix is happy to announce the publication of “Preserving the H-Net Email Lists: A Case Study in Trusted Digital Repository Assessment” by former Matrix archivist Lisa M. Schmidt, currently the Electronic Records Archivist for Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections. This publication is the result of a two-year project to assess and improve the preservation of the academic email lists of the H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online consortium using the Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist. In 2007, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) awarded a grant to MATRIX to assess the H-Net email list archives as a trusted digital repository. Matrix hosts the H-Net consortium on its servers. The H-Net email lists provide a record of more than twenty years of academic discourse on humanities and social science research likely to be useful to future scholars and thus worthy of preservation.

According to Schmidt, “The study of the H-Net email list system as a preservation environment marked the first formal application of the TRAC to email list archives and demonstrated the successful audit of a repository functioning as a live access system. Those who manage LISTSERV-based and other email lists containing scholarly discourse, such as JISCMail, and even list managers for lists that document less formal dialogue, such as the Society of American Archivists’ Archives and Archivists (A&A) discussion list, may find the results of this study useful in creating and improving the preservation practices for their list archives.”

“Preserving the H-Net Email Lists: A Case Study in Trusted Digital Repository Assessment” appears in the spring/summer 2011 issue of The American Archivist (74:1) and is available online from The Society of American Archivists.

Matrix is pleased to report the recent presentation of “Podcasting the Past: Africa Past and Present and (South) African History in the Digital Age” by Peter Alegi, Michigan State University historian and co-host of the Matrix produced podcast Africa Past and Present. This presentation was part of the 23^rd biennial meeting of the Southern African Historical Society, which took place from June 27-29, 2011, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.

 Reflecting on several years’ experience hosting Africa Past and Present, “Podcasting the Past” explores the role of podcasting in the production and dissemination of historical knowledge about Africa and South Africa in a global context.  Drawing on a variety of primary and secondary sources, the paper examines technical aspects, issues of audience and access across the digital divide, podcasting as a new form of scholarly publishing, and the impact of podcasting on teaching about Africa. Africa Past and Present represents an unusual example of changing trends in the academic disciplines of history and area studies in the digital age; shows feature interviews with eminent scholars and persons, commentary on current events, and issues and debates of relevance to Africans at home and abroad, all seeking to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences. The paper concludes that podcasting can be a powerful technological tool with which to democratize knowledge, enrich classroom learning, and propel the “increasing incorporation of ‘Africa’ and ‘Africans’ within the new streams of academic and even popular discourse.” 

 Africa Past and Present is co-hosted by Michigan State University historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb and produced by Matrix. An online digital archive of all shows, as well as links to multimedia resources and collections of relevance to African experiences can be found at http://afripod.aodl.org/.

Africa Past and Present is co-hosted by Michigan State University historians Peter Alegiand Peter Limb and produced by Matrix.

Episode 55 features Derek Peterson (University of Michigan) on the politics and practice of archives in East Africa, the precarious state of some archives, and exciting possibilities of preservation and digitization at Mountains of the Moon University in Uganda; “homespun” historians in Recasting the African Past and Mau Mau prisons in Kenya; and his forthcoming book Pilgrims & Patriots: Conversion, Dissent, & the Making of Civil Societies in East Africa.

MATRIX is very happy to announce the publication of Archaeology 2.0: New Tools for Communication and Collaboration.  Co-edited by Eric C. Kansa, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, and Ethan Watrall (MATRIX Associate Director and Department of Anthropology Anthropology Assistant Professor), the volume explores how the web is transforming archaeology and is the first in the new Cotsen Digital Archaeology series published by UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.

The volume’s description reads:

How is the Web transforming the professional practice of archaeology? And as archaeologists accustomed to dealing with “deep time,” how can we best understand the possibilities and limitations of the Web in meeting the specialized needs of professionals in this field? These are among the many questions posed and addressed in Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration, edited by Eric Kansa, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, and Ethan Watrall. With contributions from a range of experts in archaeology and technology, this volume is organized around four key topics that illuminate how the revolution in communications technology reverberates across the discipline: approaches to information retrieval and information access; practical and theoretical concerns inherent in design choices for archaeology’s computing infrastructure; collaboration through the development of new technologies that connect field-based researchers and specialists within an international archaeological community; and scholarly communications issues, with an emphasis on concerns over sustainability and preservation imperatives. This book not only describes practices that attempt to mitigate some of the problems associated with the Web, such as information overload and disinformation, it also presents compelling case studies of actual digital projects—many of which are rich in structured data and multimedia content or focused on generating content from the field “in real time,” and all of which demonstrate how the Web can and is being used to transform archaeological communications into forms that are more open, inclusive, and participatory. Above all, this volume aims to share these experiences to provide useful guidance for other researchers interested in applying technology to archaeology.

The digital edition of the volume is especially important because it is open access (hosted by the  University of California eScholarship service) and being made available freely to the scholarly community and the public under a Creative Commons BY-SA (By Attribution, Share Alike) license.

The volume’s c0-editors went so far as to a prepare a unique copyright statement in order to provide both context and rationale for why the open access edition of the volume under this specific CC license:

This volume carries a Creative Commons BY-SA (By Attribution, Share Alike, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) license. In short, this means that others can freely distribute, remix, and build upon the contents of this volume, provided two very important conditions are met: the original author receives proper attribution (especially citation) and all subsequent works carry the same license. We chose a Creative Commons license primarily because of our deep concerns in the sustainability of sharply escalating costs in scholarly publishing. These costs make it increasingly difficult for educational institutions, our col- leagues in commercial archaeology, students, and members of the interested public to (legally) obtain peer-review publications. Please note that the Creative Commons BY-SA license allows for commercial use, as well as free distribution both inside and out- side of the Academy. Permissions for commercial reuse does not, however, mean commercial appropriation. The “copyleft” philosophy embodied by this license enables this work to move in many contexts, but any adaptation or enhancement of this work must be shared back, openly, with the community. Finally, because this license requires proper attribution in any subsequent duplication or adaptation, we hope this volume helps build exposure and recognition for our contributions, and that our colleagues follow in this example. With enough accessible and open data (“data” that includes content like this book), we open up more opportunities for text-mining, tagging, aggregating, linking, visualizing, and hopefully better understanding. 

The print edition of the volume will be available for purchase from UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.

MATRIX: The Center for the Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences is currently seeking an experienced and talented student user experience designer to start immediately.  The successful candidate will work on a wide variety of digital projects for deployment on the the web and mobile platforms.

Required

• Excellent demonstrated experience with modern principles of visual design, user interface design, and layout.
• Excellent demonstrated experience with standards-based HTML and CSS
• Experience with PHP and MySQL
• Experience with Javascript, including JS frameworks and techniques such as AJAX, JQuery, and/or Mootools.
• Experience designing and developing WordPress templates
• Ability to work well collaboratively or independently
• Ability to take initiative and meet deadlines.

Beneficial, but not required

• Mobile design and development experience (iOS or Android)
• Experience with HTML 5 and CSS3
• Knowledge of source code/version control software
• Experience with WordPress plugin development

To apply, please send your resume, cover letter, and online portfolio link via email to Ethan Watrall (watrall@msu.edu).  The position will remain open until filled.

How do you preserve information of continuing value and make it available for anyone who might want to use it? Those are the challenges faced by archivists, and teaching students the craft and science of archiving is a tricky business. It has become even more challenging with trillions of digital objects – both born digital and digitized – needing persistence.

Professor Steve Cohen, who works at MATRIX and specializes in learning design and assessment, has been collaborating with Professors David A. Wallace and Beth Yakel at the University of Michigan School of Information to integrate digital archiving tools into their graduate courses. The project, PAVEL (Preservation and Access Virtual Education Laboratory) is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for two years. Recently Professors Cohen and Yakel presented results from the first year of the project at AERI (Archival Education Research Institute). To date UM students have found learning and using the tools an insightful experience. They report gaining insight into the complexity of the digital world that will be home to archived digital objects, and feel that knowing the tools will help them once they once they complete their Master’s degrees. Ultimately the PAVEL will produce a curricular models and an assessment strategy ,  for archiving programs around the world to follow when integrating these tools into their courses.

Partnering with Assistant Professor Candace Keller of the Department of Art & Art History and the MSU Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, MATRIX will be participating in a project to digitize endangered, culturally significant photography archives in Mali. Dr. Keller and Scott Pennington, Head of Digitization and African Projects at MATRIX, have been awarded a grant from the British Library’s Endangered Archive Programme to clean, digitize, catalogue, and preserve the negative archives of Abdourhamane Sakaly and Mamadou Cissé, among the earliest professional African photographers in Mali, West Africa.

These important, endangered archives contain rare visual documentation of traditional life (rural, ethnic-based customs, ceremonies, and artifacts), socio-political transformations, and processes of urban development in the Malian capital Bamako and its environs during the historical eras of French colonialism and political independence. Representing local perspectives, these images are significant for the social history and cultural heritage of Mali, the artistic legacy of these renowned photographers, scholarship on colonial and post-colonial histories, and studies of African art, culture, and aesthetics. Keller and Pennington will be traveling to Mali soon to begin training the photographers and project staff in digitization methods.

MATRIX is very happy to host the Michigan State University Cultural Heritage Informatics Fieldschool.

Taking place from May 31st to July 1st on the campus of Michigan State University and offered by the Department of Anthropology, the Cultural Heritage Informatics (CHI) Fieldschool, which is part of the MSU Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative, introduces students to the tools and techniques required to creatively apply information and computing technologies to cultural heritage materials and questions.

The CHI Fieldschool, which is taught by Ethan Watrall (MATRIX Associate Director and Assistant Professor of Anthropology) is a unique experience that employs the model of an archaeological fieldschool (in which students come together for a period of 5 or 6 weeks to work on an archaeological site in order to learn how to do archaeology).  Instead of working on an archaeological site, however, students in the CHI Fieldschool will come together to collaboratively work on several cultural heritage informatics projects.  In the process they learn a great deal about what it takes to build applications and digital user experiences that serve the domain of cultural heritage – skills such as programming, media design, project management, user centered design, digital storytelling, etc.

The CHI Fieldschool is built firmly on the principle of “building as a way of knowing” (of “hacking as a way of knowing as some have called it), a model in which students develop a far better understanding of cultural heritage informatics by actually building tools, applications, and digital user experiences than they do with passive analysis and commentary. The added benefit is that by building tools, applications, and digital user experiences, students also have the opportunity to make a tangible and potentially significant contribution to the cultural heritage community.

For more information on the CHI Fieldschool, please visit the Fieldschool website (http://sites.matrix.msu.edu/chi-fieldschool/)

MATRIX is pleased to announce the launch of a new website, Everyday Islam in Kumasi: Devout Lay Men and Women in Daily Life.

This growing collection of video interviews and photographs features the voices of Muslim men and women who live and work in Kumasi, the second largest city in the West African country of Ghana. Interviewees reflect on the ways Islam influences their activities at home, with their neighbors, and at work as traders, tailors, and teachers.  Gracia Clark, Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University, who made her field research freely accessible on this site, hopes this collection will contribute towards better understanding between Ghanaian Muslims and their neighbors in North America and in Africa.

Everyday Islam in Kumasi is part of the Diversity and Tolerance in the Islam of West Africa digital library.  Each collection in this digital library sheds much-needed light on how Muslims in West Africa accept religious difference and create productive interactions among Christians, Muslims, and followers of other faiths.

Funding for this project is provided by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education Title VI Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) program and by Michigan State University.