The PhD Colloquium Series invites you to join the March 22 meeting, when Sharon Ringel will discuss her new work examining how the National Library of Israel is creating digital archives. Ringel spotlights how digitization plays an important part in deciding the stories we will be able to tell about ourselves and others in the future, as well as how technology is changing the nature of archives and libraries.
As always, the colloquium acknowledges the continuing support of the Sevellon-Brown Fund.
Since 2007, the National Library of Israel (NLI) -- Israel’s foremost site for preserving knowledge and culture -- has been undertaking processes of digitization, designed to turn the Library into a center of digital information. Using ethnographic methods, her work asks how digitization of archives and scanning practices are implicated in the narratives we will be able to produce in the future. Her fieldwork followed the practices of archival workers, the role of technologies, and the representation of materials during each stage of the digitization process. First, curators select the archival materials designated for digital preservation. Next, these materials are scanned and converted into digital formats. Finally, the internet interface through which the digital objects can be accessed is created. The study illuminates the ways professional discourse regarding digitization at the NLI focuses on technical issues and skirts serious consideration of political and social assumptions and ramifications.
Sharon Ringel is a Ph.D. from the University of Haifa, a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Journalism School and a Research Fellow at Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Her research focuses on digital archives, media history, and memory and communication technologies.
