Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Alex Karras
Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Digital Commonwealth Vice President Alex Karras

The Digital Commonwealth awarded free attendance to the annual conference this year to student, Maxwell Lisanti.  We are happy to present Maxwell’s report on the conference today.

My Takeaway from the 2019 Digital Commonwealth Conference
By Maxwell Lisanti, MLIS Candidate ‘19, Simmons University

I am weeks away from finishing my MLIS degree and Archives Management concentration at Simmons University, and it was not until this 2019 Digital Commonwealth conference that I had had the opportunity to attend a professional conference. Not sure what to expect beyond speakers and name tags, I entered with an open mind.

Two presentations in particular stood out to me, as they followed similar currents of race, access, and archives. First, Eben English’s Luncheon Keynote Address, “Digital Commonwealth Repository Systems Update: Wooden Anniversary.” I have accessed Digital Commonwealth’s digital collections frequently in both academic and casual settings, and was interested to see how the collection had grown, and how it was accessed and used by patrons. What truly struck me was when Eben cycled through the top 20 most accessed items from the whole year (excluding the viral M.C. Escher collection). Most were innocuous – state maps, pictures from the molasses disaster, political cartoons – but there were two that stood out. At number nine on the list was a Ku Klux Klan application form from UMass Amherst’s W.E.B. Du Bois Papers. This sent a bit of a shiver throughout the room, and we whispered amongst ourselves, hoping to justify a reason for its popularity; surely it was academic or purely casual curiosity? The uncertainty behind the numbers was alarming, and Eben expressed about the same opinion.

The fourth item on the list, with 1,018 views, was a photo of a lynching in California from the Leslie Jones Collection at the Boston Public Library. Going off of the presence of this disturbing image (which was thankfully fully censored), Eben discussed the responsibility that we have as information professionals to provide users with context (this is something that I wrote in my notes repeatedly) for images like the Lynching Photo.  A lack of context can turn people into “objects, rather than subjects.” Are we, as a majority white profession, reproducing inequality by acting as the stewards of these images? There is no way to determine who accessed an image and why; as we whispered about before, these reasons could be purely academic. But the risk that these images are being misused, or that a lack of context is encouraging that misuse, is and should be alarming. The solution to this issue, or one of many, is greater collaboration between libraries/archives and the communities that are represented in their collections.

Digital Commonwealth 2019 Conference
Digital Commonwealth 2019 Conference

I found that this theme was again repeated in Whitney Battle-Baptiste’s brilliant presentation, “Visualizing W.E.B. Du Bois: Bringing Archive into the Digital Age.” A large portion of Whitney’s work focuses on bringing young black middle and high school students into the W.E.B. Du Bois Archives at UMass and allowing them to interact with history that is rightfully “theirs”. Simply interacting with the items at the archive was enough to get many repeat visits from the students, and spark an interest in history, specifically black history. Whitney pointed out, quite correctly, that much of the representation of black people and black bodies in archival collections is through the lens of slavery and racist violence; images of slaves, slave rosters, lynchings such as the one shown in the Digital Commonwealth collections. Whitney spoke of the inherent trauma of accessing these violent and disturbing images as a black person, and how we as archival professionals need to be conscious of the material we have in our collections and, as Eben said, the context in which that material exists. Whitney encouraged us as information professionals to “be in dialogue” with the communities represented in our collections, and receptive to what these communities tell us.

Digitization has opened up the collections of many archives and libraries to the larger general public, and these two presentations energized me to continue to work towards using digitization as a tool to connect with marginalized communities and to create collections that are inclusive of new and necessary viewpoints.

The Digital Commonwealth awarded three students free attendance to the annual conference this year.  All three have written blog posts about their experience.  We are happy to present the third of these reports today.

Jacob Loberti  is our third student correspondent.  A sophomore at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, Jacob is majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Business.

An Undergrad on a Mission: Attending the Digital Commonwealth Annual Conference to Survey for an Independent Study

Creativity and Accessibility - Digital Trends in 2018
Creativity & Accessibility – Digital Trends in 2018

On Tuesday, April 10th I attended the 12th annual Digital Commonwealth conference at The College of the Holy Cross. I differ slightly from the regular attendee as I come bearing a different lens, that of a budding computer scientist. I decided to attend the Digital Commonwealth conference as a result of my independent study at Wheaton College. My independent study is a so-called Special Interest Group (SIG) project designed to be an interdisciplinary course of study amongst my other classes this semester. My two other group members and I have titled our SIG this semester, “3D Modeling to Virtual Viewing: Digitizing Wheaton’s African Collection”. In this project, we used a technique called photogrammetry to create virtual models to preserve Wheaton’s Permanent Collection.  We found this conference to be quite relevant to what we had been working on since the beginning of the semester. When we first arrived at the Digital Commonwealth conference, we were presented with a delicious continental breakfast (we would later be served a warm lunch) to tide us over until the welcome remarks.

One notable session was certainly the keynote address, where Professor Joseph Nugent gave a presentation of his latest project, Joycestick, a “gamefiction” of Ulysses by James Joyce. I found this presentation fascinating and actually quite relevant to my group’s SIG project – except obviously done on a much larger scale with some great resources along with some graduate students at Boston College. Another session I found interesting was the networking session where my group partner and I got to speak directly with Professor Nugent. We showed him our SIG project and how far we had come since the beginning of the semester.  He seemed rather impressed. What I soon found out about Professor Nugent was that he was a truly genuine person; he was more than happy to share some of his successes and failures with us, along with some tips that we could use for success as we continued and wrapped up our semester-long project. Our talk with Professor Nugent was probably the highlight of my day.

All in all there was a lot going on April 10th, but I’d say there was definitely a common theme in the air of the 12th annual Digital Commonwealth conference. This theme was one of Evolution as the greatest archivists in Massachusetts gather to discuss and master the art of preserving their historical pieces beyond the realm of the physical, and to keep doing so for many years to come.

The Digital Commonwealth awarded three students free attendance to the annual conference this year.  All three have written blog posts about their experience.  We are happy to present the second of these reports today.

Our second report comes from Daniel Chivvis, a graduate student at the Simmons School of Library & Information Science.  His focus is on Information Technology.

A Glance at the 12th Annual Digital Commonwealth Conference

As a graduate student at the Simmons School of Library & Information Science, my main area of focus has been Information Technology. Consequently, I was thrilled to find out that the Digital Commonwealth Conference is held every year right here in Worcester, MA; a city that I not only reside and work in, but also love dearly. Upon arriving at the conference, I browsed through the network of vendors, met a plethora of new people, and collected a stack of business cards (of

Professor Joseph Nugent and Ulysses
Professor Joseph Nugent & Ulysses

which I have yet to fully sort through). All the while, and this would be the first common theme of the day, I helped myself to as many cups of coffee as possible. Low quality jokes aside, out of all the sessions I attended, there was never a dull moment.  I was impressed by every speaker. It is quite evident that the folks at the Digital Commonwealth are not only a tight-knit group of passionate professionals, but they are also welcoming to those completely new to the industry.

Let me begin with a brief homage to Professor Joseph Nugent’s Keynote Address: “Joycestick – Engaging Ulysses In a Virtual Reality Game.” As a James Joyce fan and general advocate of virtual reality technology, I was pleased to learn how an eclectic group of students at Boston College had managed to create something so beautiful and entertaining. Now, that is not to say that the exclusive purpose of Joycestick is to entertain. Rather, it serves a more important role: to educate in a way that is accessible to a wider audience. Accessibility, as a common theme repeated throughout the day, was highlighted as an attribute of visual reality technologies by Professor Nugent on several occasions. I could not agree more; virtual reality offers a unique window into the world of literature (or any other content) that has, up until the present moment, been limited to a privileged group of people. I hope Joycestick and similar projects continue to enter our pedagogical discourse, for what this group of developers is accomplishing is truly inspiring.

Professor Carolina Ruiz
Professor Carolina Ruiz

During the first breakout session, I attended Professor Carolina Ruiz’s “Concepts in Data Mining.” Here I learned the basics of data mining and how it can be used as a versatile tool by information professionals.   This session was perhaps the most impressive: Professor Ruiz articulated complex topics in a way that was accessible to those even completely unfamiliar with the topic. My only criticism is that the session ended earlier than it should have; Professor Ruiz had much more to say. I also found Eben English’s Luncheon Keynote Address: “Digital Commonwealth Repository System Update: Year in Review & Future Directions” useful in many ways. As someone new to the Digital Commonwealth, the address summarized the organization’s purpose and future aspirations. Looking at usage statistics—such as through Google Analytics—English presented invaluable data that was not only fascinating, but sometimes humorous. I look forward to hearing what he has to report next year.

Upon reflecting on the conference, I am reminded of its diverse group of speakers and friendly members. I have since been inspired to inquire about our own digital collections at the Worcester Public Library (where I play the role of both patron and employee). There is no doubt that I intend on remaining involved with the Digital Commonwealth.  I plan on attending all future conferences and keeping up with the latest news. The general consensus among the people I met was that the conference continues to improve every year. For this and other reasons, I cannot wait to see what is in store next year.