Archival Storytelling: Remembering Our Digital History

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Original abstract

In When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Reshaping Our Future, Abby Smith Rumsey argues that memory is required for survival and impacts not only the survival of a species but of that species’ culture. Needed in this “Age of Matter,” as she calls it, are documentation practices that address the way in which physical and digital memory systems can be combined and harnessed to preserve human experience (13). This paper addresses Rumsey’s challenge. Using the physical and digital archives held in The NEXT’s collections, it introduces archival storytelling as a method for documenting and, thus, remembering our digital cultural history. Specifically, it uses the physical and digital archives belonging to the trAce Online Writing Centre as a case study for the archival storytelling methodology. trAce’s physical archives are contained in Box 24 of The ELO Collection, one of 32 associated with the ELO and held in the Archive Room belonging to the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University Vancouver. The artifacts discussed in this paper have been donated to the organization by Sue Thomas, trAce’s founder, and Helen Whitehead, who worked with Thomas at trAce as editor and associate director. Likewise, digital files were given to The NEXT with permission from Nottingham Trent University (NTU), where trAce was located, and by Thomas as the organization’s founder. Physical artifacts include those dating back to trAce’s origins––that is, 1995––to when the organization concluded its operations at NTU in 2006. Below is a complete list: Artifact #1: A booklet––32-pages stapled together and in pristine condition––titled “trAce: selected internet resources for writers” Artifact #2: Incubation conference programs, dated 2000, 2002, 2004 Artifact #3: A flyer entitled “Positive Images” and subtitled “young writers competition 2001” Artifact #4: A “certificate of excellence” for “Adventures in Cyberspace” Artifact #5: A mousepad with the trAce logo Artifact #6: A booklet bound by spiral for “The Writers of the Future” Artifact #7: A booklet, entitled “Commemoration of Ten Years of Artistic Innovation at trAce” The electronic files are found in various folders in a copy of the archives held on hard drive. These seven artifacts and digital files, taken together, tell future audiences the story about visionaries who recognized the Web’s potential impact for creating and sharing human expression and how community could be built online and at-a-distance among those with a shared commitment to creative expression. It reminds us of how the Web evolved from 1.0 to 2.0, the way naming conventions became standardized over time, how particular systems emerged and then fell out of favor. As importantly, it shows us that even with tools like the Wayback Machine, we cannot rely on websites alone for documentation due to deprecation of domains, weblinks, software, and hardware. trAce’s own website, for example, used a variety of systems and software like ColdFusion and Dreamweaver to produce dynamic content. Unless one has access to ColdFusion 4.5 used for the site, for example, much of trAce’s files in the digital archives are inaccessible. Likewise, AI systems like ChatGPT that pull data from the Web are also unable to provide accurate records needed for holding on to our cultural history. It lists, for example, a different person as editor of the “Commemoration” booklet. What is left to us are the physical and digital archives that we generate and maintain. Both are needed to fill gaps in our stories, in our digital history, and, perhaps, if we follow Rumsey’s argument, in the stories we are able to tell in the future.

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