Workshop on Electronic Texts · Library of Congress
WELCOME
MICHELSON also reiterated her three principal arguments: l) Electronic texts are best understood in terms of the relationship to other electronic resources and the growing prominence of network-mediated scholarship. 2) The prospects for electronic texts lie in their capacity to be integrated into the on-line network of electronic resources that comprise the new working context for scholars. 3) Retrospective conversion of portions of the scholarly record should be a key strategy as information providers respond to changes in scholarly communication practices. ****** +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ VECCIA * AM's evaluation project and public users of electronic resources * AM and its design * Site selection and evaluating the Macintosh implementation of AM * Characteristics of the six public libraries selected * Characteristics of AM's users in these libraries * Principal ways AM is being used * +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Susan VECCIA, team leader, and Joanne FREEMAN, associate coordinator, American Memory, Library of Congress, gave a joint presentation. First, by way of introduction, VECCIA explained her and FREEMAN's roles in American Memory (AM). Serving principally as an observer, VECCIA has assisted with the evaluation project of AM, placing AM collections in a variety of different sites around the country and helping to organize and implement that project. FREEMAN has been an associate coordinator of AM and has been involved principally with the interpretative materials, preparing some of the electronic exhibits and printed historical information that accompanies AM and that is requested by users. VECCIA and FREEMAN shared anecdotal observations concerning AM with public users of electronic resources. Notwithstanding a fairly structured evaluation in progress, both VECCIA and FREEMAN chose not to report on specifics in terms of numbers, etc., because they felt it was too early in the evaluation project to do so.
AM is an electronic archive of primary source materials from the Library of Congress, selected collections representing a variety of formats-- photographs, graphic arts, recorded sound, motion pictures, broadsides, and soon, pamphlets and books. In terms of the design of this system, the interpretative exhibits have been kept separate from the primary resources, with good reason. Accompanying this collection are printed documentation and user guides, as well as guides that FREEMAN prepared for teachers so that they may begin using the content of the system at once. VECCIA described the evaluation project before talking about the public users of AM, limiting her remarks to public libraries, because FREEMAN would talk more specifically about schools from kindergarten to twelfth grade (K-12). Having started in spring 1991, the evaluation currently involves testing of the Macintosh implementation of AM. Since the primary goal of this evaluation is to determine the most appropriate audience or audiences for AM, very different sites were selected. This makes evaluation difficult because of the varying degrees of technology literacy among the sites. AM is situated in forty-four locations, of which six are public libraries and sixteen are schools. Represented among the schools are elementary, junior high, and high schools. District offices also are involved in the evaluation, which will conclude in summer 1993. VECCIA focused the remainder of her talk on the six public libraries, one of which doubles as a state library. They represent a range of geographic areas and a range of demographic characteristics. For example, three are located in urban settings, two in rural settings, and one in a suburban setting. A range of technical expertise is to be found among these facilities as well. For example, one is an "Apple library of the future," while two others are rural one-room libraries--in one, AM sits at the front desk next to a tractor manual.
All public libraries have been extremely enthusiastic, supportive, and appreciative of the work that AM has been doing. VECCIA characterized various users: Most users in public libraries describe themselves as general readers; of the students who use AM in the public libraries, those in fourth grade and above seem most interested. Public libraries in rural sites tend to attract retired people, who have been highly receptive to AM. Users tend to fall into two additional categories: people interested in the content and historical connotations of these primary resources, and those fascinated by the technology. The format receiving the most comments has been motion pictures. The adult users in public libraries are more comfortable with IBM computers, whereas young people seem comfortable with either IBM or Macintosh, although most of them seem to come from a Macintosh background. This same tendency is found in the schools.
What kinds of things do users do with AM? In a public library there are two main goals or ways that AM is being used: as an individual learning tool, and as a leisure activity. Adult learning was one area that VECCIA would highlight as a possible application for a tool such as AM. She described a patron of a rural public library who comes in every day on his lunch hour and literally reads AM, methodically going through the collection image by image. At the end of his hour he makes an electronic bookmark, puts it in his pocket, and returns to work. The next day he comes in and resumes where he left off. Interestingly, this man had never been in the library before he used AM. In another small, rural library, the coordinator reports that AM is a popular activity for some of the older, retired people in the community, who ordinarily would not use "those things,"--computers. Another example of adult learning in public libraries is book groups, one of which, in particular, is using AM as part of its reading on industrialization, integration, and urbanization in the early 1900s.
One library reports that a family is using AM to help educate their children. In another instance, individuals from a local museum came in to use AM to prepare an exhibit on toys of the past. These two examples emphasize the mission of the public library as a cultural institution, reaching out to people who do not have the same resources available to those who live in a metropolitan area or have access to a major library. One rural library reports that junior high school students in large numbers came in one afternoon to use AM for entertainment. A number of public libraries reported great interest among postcard collectors in the Detroit collection, which was essentially a collection of images used on postcards around the turn of the century. Train buffs are similarly interested because that was a time of great interest in railroading. People, it was found, relate to things that they know of firsthand. For example, in both rural public libraries where AM was made available, observers reported that the older people with personal remembrances of the turn of the century were gravitating to the Detroit collection. These examples served to underscore MICHELSON's observation re the integration of electronic tools and ideas--that people learn best when the material relates to something they know. VECCIA made the final point that in many cases AM serves as a public-relations tool for the public libraries that are testing it. In one case, AM is being used as a vehicle to secure additional funding for the library. In another case, AM has served as an inspiration to the staff of a major local public library in the South to think about ways to make its own collection of photographs more accessible to the public.
FREEMAN first raised several questions about using AM in a school environment. There is often some difficulty in developing a sense of what the system contains. Many students sit down at a computer resource and assume that, because AM comes from the Library of Congress, all of American history is now at their fingertips. As a result of that sort of mistaken judgment, some students are known to conclude that AM contains nothing of use to them when they look for one or two things and do not find them. It is difficult to discover that middle ground where one has a sense of what the system contains. Some students grope toward the idea of an archive, a new idea to them, since they have not previously experienced what it means to have access to a vast body of somewhat random information. Other questions raised by FREEMAN concerned the electronic format itself. For instance, in a school environment it is often difficult both for teachers and students to gain a sense of what it is they are viewing. They understand that it is a visual image, but they do not necessarily know that it is a postcard from the turn of the century, a panoramic photograph, or even machine-readable text of an eighteenth-century broadside, a twentieth-century printed book, or a nineteenth-century diary. That distinction is often difficult for people in a school environment to grasp. Because of that, it occasionally becomes difficult to draw conclusions from what one is viewing.
FREEMAN also noted the obvious fear of the computer, which constitutes a difficulty in using an electronic resource. Though students in general did not suffer from this anxiety, several older students feared that they were computer-illiterate, an assumption that became self-fulfilling when they searched for something but failed to find it. FREEMAN said she believed that some teachers also fear computer resources, because they believe they lack complete control. FREEMAN related the example of teachers shooing away students because it was not their time to use the system. This was a case in which the situation had to be extremely structured so that the teachers would not feel that they had lost their grasp on what the system contained. A final question raised by FREEMAN concerned access and availability of the system. She noted the occasional existence of a gap in communication between school librarians and teachers. Often AM sits in a school library and the librarian is the person responsible for monitoring the system. Teachers do not always take into their world new library resources about which the librarian is excited. Indeed, at the sites where AM had been used most effectively within a library, the librarian was required to go to specific teachers and instruct them in its use. As a result, several AM sites will have in-service sessions over a summer, in the hope that perhaps, with a more individualized link, teachers will be more likely to use the resource.
A related issue in the school context concerned the number of workstations available at any one location. Centralization of equipment at the district level, with teachers invited to download things and walk away with them, proved unsuccessful because the hours these offices were open were also school hours. Another issue was hardware. As VECCIA observed, a range of sites exists, some technologically advanced and others essentially acquiring their first computer for the primary purpose of using it in conjunction with AM's testing. Users at technologically sophisticated sites want even more sophisticated hardware, so that they can perform even more sophisticated tasks with the materials in AM. But once they acquire a newer piece of hardware, they must learn how to use that also; at an unsophisticated site it takes an extremely long time simply to become accustomed to the computer, not to mention the program offered with the computer. All of these small issues raise one large question, namely, are systems like AM truly rewarding in a school environment, or do they simply act as innovative toys that do little more than spark interest? FREEMAN contended that the evaluation project has revealed several strengths that were gained through the use of archival resources in schools, including: * Psychic rewards from using AM as a vast, rich database, with teachers assigning various projects to students--oral presentations, written reports, a documentary, a turn-of-the-century newspaper-- projects that start with the materials in AM but are completed using other resources; AM thus is used as a research tool in conjunction with other electronic resources, as well as with books and items in the library where the system is set up.
Concerning AM's strategy for orienting people toward the scope of electronic resources, FREEMAN could offer no hard conclusions at this point, because she and her colleagues were still waiting to see, particularly in the schools, what has been made of their efforts. Within the system, however, AM has provided what are called electronic exhibits- -such as introductions to time periods and materials--and these are intended to offer a student user a sense of what a broadside is and what it might tell her or him. But FREEMAN conceded that the project staff would have to talk with students next year, after teachers have had a summer to use the materials, and attempt to discover what the students were learning from the materials. In addition, FREEMAN described supporting materials in print provided by AM at the request of local teachers during a meeting held at LC. These included time lines, bibliographies, and other materials that could be reproduced on a photocopier in a classroom. Teachers could walk away with and use these, and in this way gain a better understanding of the contents. But again, reaching firm conclusions concerning the manner and extent of their use would have to wait until next year. As to the changes she saw occurring at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as a result of the increasing emphasis on technology in scholarly research, MICHELSON stated that NARA at this point was absorbing the report by her and Jeff Rothenberg addressing strategies for the archival profession in general, although not for the National Archives specifically. NARA is just beginning to establish its role and what it can do. In terms of changes and initiatives that NARA can take, no clear response could be given at this time.
GREENFIELD remarked two trends mentioned in the session. Reflecting on DALY's opening comments on how he could have used a Latin collection of text in an electronic form, he said that at first he thought most scholars would be unwilling to do that. But as he thought of that in terms of the original meaning of research--that is, having already mastered these texts, researching them for critical and comparative purposes--for the first time, the electronic format made a lot of sense. GREENFIELD could envision growing numbers of scholars learning the new technologies for that very aspect of their scholarship and for convenience's sake. Listening to VECCIA and FREEMAN, GREENFIELD thought of an additional application of electronic texts. He realized that AM could be used as a guide to lead someone to original sources. Students cannot be expected to have mastered these sources, things they have never known about before. Thus, AM is leading them, in theory, to a vast body of information and giving them a superficial overview of it, enabling them to select parts of it. GREENFIELD asked if any evidence exists that this resource will indeed teach the new user, the K-12 students, how to do research. Scholars already know how to do research and are applying these new tools. But he wondered why students would go beyond picking out things that were most exciting to them.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.