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historical_research_across_archives_collections.md

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Historical research across (audio)visual and textual archives and collections

Metadata

  • Status: Proposed
  • Type: Generic
  • Work Package: WP5
  • Research Coordinators: Norah Karrouche
  • Coordinators for CLARIAH: Jasmijn Van Gorp, Roeland Ordelman
  • Participating Institutes: EUR, VU, NISV
  • End-users: BA Geschiedenis and BA History and International Studies students at Vrije Universiteit (3rd year course: Global and Political History: 1500-present); RMA- and PhD-students at Huizinga Institute for Cultural History; Dutch cultural and political historians in general
  • Developers: NISV
  • Interest Groups: Annotation, Workflows, Curation.
  • Task IDs: (zero or more task IDs if this is addressed in existing CLARIAH-PLUS tasks)

Description

This use case is part of ongoing historical research into changing views and perceptions of North Africa, in particular through the study of Dutch travelers (curators of objects and sounds, writers and documentary film makers) in North Africa (1850-2000).

In terms of operationality, the use case focuses on:

  1. the use and curation of (non-digitized) micro-archives in the CLARIAH Media Suite and wider CLARIAH infrastructure and;
  2. the linking of non-audiovisual sources to the collections available in the Media Suite.

What is the research about?

I investigate the ways in which Dutch travelers have given meaning to and generated knowledge about cultural, ethnic, religious and national identities in particular historical (colonialism, decolonization) and local contexts (urban environments and rural areas) in North Africa.

French, British and Spanish travelers and their contribution to the so-called ‘categories of colonization’ in the region have been studied extensively in the past because of obvious colonial ties. Most historiographies on the production of knowledge in colonial societies focus on individual male actors tied to the colonial administration or army. The contributions on the knowledge of (the histories of) local societies made by (female) writers, artists and architects, and curators who operated outside of these formal and political structures remain mostly unexplored.

This research provides much needed insight into the construction of identities through cultural contact in North Africa between Dutch individuals and local populations, and the ways in which French, British and Dutch colonialism and decolonization impacted these processes. It challenges the dominant historiographical frame within which ties between North Africa and the Netherlands are studied: the era of labour migration and after. At the same time, this research takes a new look at Dutch (women’s) cultural history, architectural history and the history of collecting and preserving material culture and sound in the Netherlands. The research can be carried out on a case study basis (e.g. group of individuals, type of source, profession, gender etc.).

In the sources listed below, I hope to trace, analyse and understand (dis)continuities in the narrative production and meaning-making of cultural, ethnic, religious and national identities in between approx. 1850 and 2000. Relevant sources are stored at different archives and museums in the Netherlands: the National Museum of World Cultures, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and the National Library of the Netherlands. The sources are diverse: documentaries, sound recordings, photographs, novels, newspaper and journal articles, and other types of written documentation. Sources have only partially been archived, digitised and/or enriched. Some written and audio sources are referred to in this use case as ‘micro-archives’, i.e. historical records that don't count as archival records because they are not formally part of an archive or museum collection. Examples: a private family archive, a curator’s handwritten diaries, ethnographic sound recordings, non-published exhibit documentation, preserved in institutions yet lacking formal status.

The use case aims to draw attention to the application of historical heuristics in a digital research environment by using multimedia (AV and text) corpora that partially draw upon micro-archives.

The use case aims at (1) describing how historians can build and annotate a (virtual) corpus consisting of text and AV data in the CLARIAH infrastructure by making use of the tools developed in the linguistics and media studies domains and (2) illuminate the ways in which large-scale research infrastructures can contribute to the accessibility and enrichment of micro-archives.

What problem is hindering the research?

The research is inhibited because of a lack of:

  1. a protocol or workflow to follow that would allow for use of AV micro-archives in the Media Suite environment;
  2. a workspace in which AV and text sources in the Media Suite may be enriched, annotated and saved;
  3. a way to independently export annotations and/or ASR results from the Media Suite workspace into external NER and IE tools in order to analyse narrative categories.

What is needed to do the research?

(How can we go about solving this problem?)

Data

  • Sound and Vision radio and television collection; several documentaries and television programmes
  • KB Newspaper collection; several articles
  • KB collection: handwritten letters and other non-digitised written documentation
  • Het Nieuwe Instituut: non-digitised written documentation, photographs
  • Digitale bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse letteren; several journal articles and novels
  • Nationaal Museum voor Wereldculturen: object catalogues, photographs, (non-digitised) (handwritten) written exhibit and object documentation, (non-digitised) ethnographic sound collections (digitised sources are partly accessible through Collectie Nederland: Musea, Monumenten en Archeologie and online NMWC catalogue)
  • Nederlands Fotomuseum: photographs

Tools

I need to be able to search in the abovementioned collections and data, build an annotated corpus in the workspace and export those annotations and ASR results for analysis elsewhere within the CLARIAH infrastructure.

What software and services are involved?

  • Media Suite Search
  • Media Suite Resource viewer
  • Media Suite Workspace
  • Nederlab
  • Others? WP6?

How to evaluate this?

The research would be successful if I succeeded (1) at using the micro-archives and searching these and other data and collections in the CLARIAH infrastructure, (2) at compiling an annotated corpus on all selected data in the Media Suite workspace and (3) at exporting the annotations, ASR results and metadata from the workspace. As a final step, the research would be successful if I succeeded (4) at analysing the (dis)continuity of categories of identity in the sources with the help of NLP and IE tools (on a case-study basis).

References

References to related resources and publications and especially links to related use-cases: