The Devil is in the Metadata

This week I was not able to go into the office to work on new data sheets, so this blogpost will mainly consist of  metadata and theory which is what I've been reading this past week. By now you have probably stopped reading and I can't blame you and if you know someone who would want to read all these books and journal articles dealing with all these abstract concepts please let me know so they could do this instead of me, but alas, dear reader, you have stopped reading and can't help me.

But honestly, somebody come help me

Moving on, I was definitely at a loss when it came to finding the necessary articles/books to supplement my hands own learning through the internship. I previously took a Digital History course this past Spring semester where I learned the difference between digital humanities and digital history (a field within digital humanities). However, both disciplines are inextricably link, and through a new methodology, argues Joshua Sternfeld, Senior Program Officer at the NEH, could create a set of shared terminology for the evaluation of "digital historical representations", including GIS, digital archives, and mobile apps. This is known as digital historiography.

Digital historiography is defined as "...the interdisciplinary study of the interaction of digital technology with historical practice."(Source) Using selection, search, and metadata as the foundation, digital historiography will help in assessing the effectiveness of digital historical representations in terms of communicating historical knowledge.

...what?

And because I know that you have stopped reading, I can stop acting like I know what any of that means. Granted I believe I have a general idea, but as a baby graduate student I always assume that I know nothing, and that whatever I do know are fairy tales and fallacies concocted by a lying brain fairy.

For the purpose of this post, and the eventual 15-20 page historiographical paper that is due at the end of this internship, I'm going to articulate my understanding so that I can improve on it later.

Me thinking about that paper tbh

I believe what Sternfeld is arguing is that digital historiography as a theory would allow historians, digital or otherwise, to have an ethical set of guidelines in which to evaluate digital mediums of history. Digital historians need a way to communicate things like apps and geospatial renderings of a 18th century farm house in a way that is scholarly, yet accessible to their colleagues and others who do not work in the digital realm. Historians have long worked in the medium of monographs and physical books, but now with the advent of certain technologies, it is imperative that historians begin using the digital to not only display their work, but use technology to further their work in ways that were not thought possible even a decade ago.

So, yeah. That's all I got.

Still not the Beyonce of metadata, but I'll get there one day.