YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED...PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD...AND REGISTER NOW for
The New York Folklore Society's June 2006 Symposium on New Archival and
Ethnographic Technologies
Register now by contacting Eileen Condon at [log in to unmask]
(mailto:[log in to unmask]) (845-489-7914) or Ellen McHale at
[log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask]) (518-346-7008).
When: Friday, June 9th, 2006
9:30 to 3:30 with lunch on site
(Registration is free--$11 charge
for l unch buffet can be paid
at the S ymposium)
Where: The Henry A. Wallace Center at the FDR Presidential Library and
Home in Hyde Park, NY. The Wallace Center is on Route 9 and a short distance
from the Poughkeepsie and Rhinebeck train stations. Further information on
the site available at: _http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/index.html_
(http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/index.html)
Our Keynote Speaker on New Archival and Ethnographic Technologies is Dr.
Michael Frisch , Professor of History & American Studies and Senior Research
Scholar, at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Frisch is Principal of The
Randforce Associates LLC, based in the UB Technology Incubator, where he has been
pioneering new ways of digitally indexing audio and video documentation.
Working initially to extend the uses of Interclipper, digital indexing software
developed for market research, the Randforce team is now combining a variety
of digital tools to meet the diverse challenges of projects that range from
oral history to ethnographic collections to qualitative analysis in public
health and social science. His presentation will explore the transformative
implications of new capacities for working with audio and video documentation.
During the symposium, participants in the 2005 NYFS DHP (Documentary
Heritage Program) Initiative, a grant-funded statewide archive appraisal and
improvement project, will be given time to meet and discuss their experiences. We
also plan to devote an afternoon session to learning more about the
Ethnographic Thesaurus Project at the Library of Congress. Frisch's abstract and bio
are given below.
Tentative Schedule: 9:00-9:30 Welcomes from NYFS Staff and FDR Library
Archivist Bob Clark; 9:30-10:30 Tour of FDR Presidential Library and Museum;
10:45-11:30 Keynote Presentation by Mike Frisch; lunch 11:45-12:45; 1-1:45
Q&A+Demonstration of Applications of Interclipper Software; 2-2:45 Presentation of
Ethnographic Thesaurus Project by Cathy Kerst, Library of Congress;
2:45-3:30 Feedback and Discussion for DHP program participants.
The New Archival and Ethnographic Technologies Symposium is one culmination
of New York Folklore Society's DHP Archive Appraisal and Improvement
Initiative. Archivists and folklorists participating in the DHP Initiative in 2005
and 2006 are cordially invited to attend, along with archivists, oral
historians, and folklorists at other institutions and organizations across the
state. We thank the FDR Library and Home for their willingness to host our
symposium at the Wallace Center.
Keynote Abstract:
Putting the “Oral” Back in Oral History and Other Recuperations of The
Primary, or, How Emerging Information Technologies Transform Folkloric,
Ethnographic, and Oral History Collections
Audio and video documentation is conventionally encountered in one of two
states-- relatively “raw,” in archived collections, and relatively “cooked,”
in constructed, selective, and linear documentary forms. In this
presentation, I will discuss and demonstrate how new digital tools open an important
non-linear, multi-pathed ground between these poles. By permitting direct
indexing, cross-referencing, and searchable access to audio and video documentation—
to collections of recorded voice or music and, in video, to bodies, gestures,
performance, and non-verbal demonstrations--these tools stand in sharp
contrast to conventional modes grounded in the limited (and limiting) world of
text transcription and broad-brush content summaries.
Because audio/video indexing means the entire content can be usefully,
intelligently, and instrumentally mapped and searched, archival documentation
becomes something more than a “raw” collection. And the same tools make it much
easier to “cook” -- to explore a collection, select and order meaningful
materials, and export them instantly for a range of presentational or analytic
purposes. In this way, documentary exploration and representation becomes a
far more democratically sharable process.
I will argue these dramatic new tools restore the rich primacy of audio and
video documentation in folklore, ethnography, and oral history collections,
leading to powerfully transformative dimensions of analysis, utility,
engagement, and presentation. As such, they promise to narrow dramatically the
distance between the archival and the scholarly, at one end, and public access,
educational use, and community engagement at the other.
Michael H. Frisch is Professor of History & American Studies/ Senior
Research Scholar at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He is an American social and
urban historian who has been involved for many years in oral and public
history projects, often in collaboration with community history organizations,
museums, and documentary filmmakers. His urban history and public/oral history
interests came together in Portraits in Steel (1993), a book and associated
GANYS exhibit in collaboration with the noted documentary photographer Milton
Rogovin. The project documented in oral history and photographic portraiture
the lives of Buffalo area steelworkers before and after the plant closings
of the 1980s; it received the Oral History Association’s Best Book prize for
1993-1995. Frisch is the author of A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft
and Meaning of Oral and Public History (1990). He has served as editor of the
Oral History Review (1986-1996); as President of the American Studies
Association (2000-2001); and as a board member for the New York Council for the
Humanities and the Federation of State Humanities Councils. His recent work in
new oral history applications of new media technology is being developed
through his consulting office, The Randforce Associates, LLC, based in the
University at Buffalo’s Technology Incubator.
This symposium is made possible through support from the Documentary
Heritage Program of the New York State Archives, the New York State Council on the
Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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