I’m still a newbie to the world of digital humanities (DH), gradually wading into its tide of terms and tensions. At this stage, as I stand ankle-deep, I couldn’t help but think that some of the contention surrounding terms like “archive” come from the many uses it has.
As Trevor Owens points out, the word itself is already stretched and multivalent, ranging from tape decks on a bottom shelf to a specific philosophy of preservation and presentation, a philosophy that Kate Theimer explains eloquently.
But even more directly in the realm of DH scholarship and work, “archive” serves multiple meanings and plays off similar terms, like “database” or “collection” in different ways. More generally, it seems to serves as both repository and tool. In other words, it is a place to preserve texts and contexts, drawing from a variety of sources, like the Walt Whitman Archive, but it also must present this information through coding, interfaces, and an effective use of metadata.
In particular, the potential that this presentation allows distinguishes DH archives from more traditional archives, in that it brings in both human and nonhuman participants into rather intimate, hybrid contact. Done effectively, it echoes the sort of “ice-skater’s dance” that Alan Liu describes in “The Meaning of the Digital Humanities,” in which human and machine can co-construct and co-discover knowledge together. But done poorly, a digital archive is rather like a grandparent’s attic, filled with a wealth of fascinating odds and ends, but buried and scattered.
Backyard Philosophy 