Blogpost Assignment: Archive Find of the Week
Student perusing the finding aid to the Ntozake Shange Collection
Dear class, now that you’ve had some collective exposure to The Ntozake Shange Collection and the archives, you should be planning to go on your own to explore and consider how you might help the archive speak to others through your digital story. This means, as Brianna pointed out on Monday, journeying between the archives, the class readings and Scalar.
Any time before Thanksgiving break, you will write a post about an item found during your archival research. It does not have to be something you will use in your project. Pretend you are writing a caption label (20-150 words) and then include some discussion of the following:
- Why did this object interest/delight/surprise/confound you? (This might be in the caption.)
- How would you get permission to use this object? (Do this even if the object is something you won’t be using). Include links to forms or archival information.
- Is there any metadata associated with this item? How did you find it?
We didn’t get a chance to talk about metadata in our archive session because we wanted time for you to “play” in the archive, but we hope to go over it a bit in the next session. In the meantime, here is a short “What is Metadata?” video. Here is a longer, more rainbow-y one from Australia.
Tis blogpost gives a nice concrete example of how much metadata accompanies things we (OK, I) produce every day of our digital lives. Of special interest is his discussion of the metadata from a tweet.
Sample posts:
“Why I Had to Dance” (note Tiana’s comment!)
TWWA Celebrates International Women’s Day!
Helpful links: