Kickoff for Collaborative Initiative between Dean College and IN_CONTEXT

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As part of the initiative “Exploring History and Digital Methods” by IN_CONTEXT and Dean College in Franklin, Massachusetts (USA), John Woitkowitz held two virtual guest seminars on November 13 and 15, 2023. With students of the HIS 425 Digital History seminar and Professor David B. Dennis, Dr. John Woitkowitz discussed the role of digitized collections as well as questions about the creation and the curation of metadata and the ways they affect research practices for historians but also researchers from the wider digital humanities. How historical catalogs shape modern collections, what needs to be critically considered when making sources available digitally and how international recommendations seek to establish a more responsible use of metadata was at the center of the first seminar.

Students at Dean College during XML/TEI seminar

Students at Dean College during XML/TEI seminar (Photo: David B. Dennis)

The practical workshop on November 15 focused on encoding historical sources on colonial history using the XML/TEI P5 Guidelines. The exercise brought many students into contact with the possibilities of digital historical research for the first time. Students independently selected sources, for example, on the history of British imperialism or Indigenous groups in Alaska from the Children’s Encyclopedia (1908-1913) made available through the Digitized Collections of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Using a basic TEI vocabulary, they will now go on to markup and encode their primary source documents. In addition to creating an XML/TEI encoding, students will also draft an “Editorial Note” to contextualize the documents historically and a bibliography of current research literature for further reading on the subject of their primary document. Topics relating to ethical issues such as authorship, the assignment of historical place names or the classification of sources met with particular interest throughout the practical workshop.

Following a review by Professor Dennis and Dr. John Woitkowitz, the students’ editorial notes, bibliographies and XML/TEI documents are considered for publication in the “Citizen History Sourcebook” of the New England Journal of History and to be made available as research data for further use. A presentation of the contributions in the form of a virtual exhibition is planned. Dr. John Woitkowitz and his colleagues at Stabi Berlin are also looking forward to welcoming Professor Dennis toStabi Berlin next year, where he will give a talk about research and teaching in the digital humanities in the United States.

We would like to thank Dr. Nicole Eichenberger for her generous assistance in the conception of the XML/TEI workshop.

For more information about “Exploring History and Digital Methods”, click here.

Workshop Colonial Contexts in Libraries

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A conference report by Christine Kühn

On 6-7 November 2023, about 60 researchers and librarians from more than 16 institutions came together at the Berlin State Library to discuss colonial contexts in libraries. For the first time, a comprehensive programme combined diverse issues and approaches. Various library-specific fields of action were identified: provenance research on collections, decolonisation of libraries, handling of metadata, appropriation of intangible cultural assets, ethical and legal considerations regarding sensitive content, and finally digitisation and access to information for Communities of Interest. Speakers from Cameroon, Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, and Sri Lanka offered their perspectives via video messages on this inaugural gathering. The event was organised by the dbv-Kommission Provenienzforschung und Provenienzerschließung and the project IN_CONTEXT: Colonial Histories and Digital Collections together with the German Lost Art Foundation (DZK).

The conference started with keynotes from Hermann Parzinger (President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation), Larissa Förster (DZK), Michaela Scheibe, and Larissa Schmid (Berlin State Library) in the Berlin State Library. The first two panels centred on acquisition and object histories, not only limited to objects from unlawful contexts but also addressing whether the provenance of an object has been sufficiently explored. Discussions delved into the issue of colonial power structures and how these have been perpetuated, past legal arrangements and contracts for travel and acquisition notwithstanding. Ralf Kramer from Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library) sparked a discussion on the ultimate goal of researching colonial provenances, questioning the validity of keeping objects as permanent loans from Communities of Interest or restituting digital objects in lieu of physical ones.

Hermann Parzinger in conversation with Achim Bonte, Larissa Schmid, and Michaela Scheibe (Photo: Hagen Immel)

The afternoon of the first day continued with panels on ethical and anti-racist perspectives. Julia Zenker from the university library of the Humboldt University and the FID Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie (specialised information service Social and Cultural Anthropology) raised questions about digitizing certain contents and objects, exploring the issue of what should be digitised and who is allowed to make this decision in the end. On the one hand, there might be uncertainty whether the pictures and texts depict culturally or religiously sensitive topics, on the other hand, digitisation cannot guarantee access via the Internet for Communities of Interest as this largely depends on the infrastructure available to them. Simon Cubelic from the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies at the University Heidelberg highlighted the importance of identifying suitable contacts for possible restitutions within Communities of Interests. Sometimes, it might make sense to look for civic instead of official players. Afterwards, it was Anne Peiter who addressed the question whether the display and use of images taken from colonial contexts is possible without perpetuating the colonial gaze. The focus then shifted towards the broader library praxis. Moritz Strickert of the university library of the Humboldt University presented the vocabulary work carried out by the workgroup Thesauri of the Network Colonial Contexts, which puts a variety of different thesauri in relation to each other. Birgit Kramreither and Birgit Athumani Hango of the Vienna University Library and Maike Mewes and Jantje Bruns of the library of Museum am Rothenbaum, a one-person library, gave reports on their respective processes of decolonisation, e. g. regarding their collections and creating a context for the users with the help of a statement, a QR code referring to additional pieces of information, and anti-racist guided library tours.

The second workshop day began with a panel on colonial collection practices: How colonial knowledge structures are entrenched in cartographic and library collections of the Perthes Verlag and determine today’s access to archival materials and literature was the focus of the contribution by Petra Weigel from the Gotha Research Library at the University of Erfurt. The following lecture provided insights into the colonial connotations of Christian missionary literature and the representations of Communities of Interest in contrast to the Christian missionaries at mikado, the library and documentation centre of the International Catholic Missionary Society missio e. V. The discussion then shifted to the philological level in the lecture by Irene Albers and Andreas Schmid from the Free University of Berlin on collection practices: To what extent are stories from colonised countries anonymised and reprocessed in anthologies before they are commercially exploited in fairy tale collections for a German audience? Of course, the holdings of the Berlin State Library were also the subject of Meliné Pehlivanian’s lecture on the Ernst Dammann Collection of the Oriental Department.

In the panel on digitisation, Elke Brehm discussed whether ethnographic film material that was originally recorded for research purposes might be used outside of research purposes, considering ethical and not just legal issues. Maria Hermes-Wladarsch presented the Digital Collection of German Colonialism project. She then discussed how the selection of the collection can depend on the definition of colonialism and how, in this way, library collection practice is always an expression of the current situation.

In the panel on metadata and presentation, the question over an alleged neutrality of metadata was explored – after all, it is always produced by those who create it. Christoph Rauch from the Berlin State Library also provided insights into current developments in the Qalamos portal on provenance research, we learnt about the role played by FAIR and CARE principles and the development of personas for the DDB’s Collections from Colonial Contexts portal and considered why the “Dresden” Maya Codex is actually associated with Dresden and how accessibility for Latin American communities is affected if it is only presented on a website in German and English.

The presentations and lively discussions were interspersed with impulses and interventions through recordings by Mutanu Kyany’a from Kenya, Debey Sayndee from Liberia, Naazima Kamardeen from Sri Lanka, Albert Gouffo from Cameroon, and Werner Hillebrecht from Namibia. Mutanu Kyany’a emphasised that cooperation is necessary not only to give Communities of Interest access to their cultural assets and information about their cultures but also to initiate real transformation. Naazima Kamardeen expressed a lack of understanding of the arbitrariness of restitution decisions by custodian societies and the associated inequality between actors and criticised the concept of the “global South”, the content of which is better defined by the “global majority”. Albert Gouffo expressed the desire for joint bibliographies or collections of shared knowledge between Cameroon and Germany.

Albert Gouffo talks via video message to the participants (Photo: Christine Kühn)

One of the original motivations of the workshop, namely a joint reflection on drafting guidelines for libraries and their handling of colonial contexts, inspired by the guidelines for handling collections from colonial contexts of Deutscher Museumsbund (German museums association), which museums already use, was realised in the form of pinboards with questions for the participants. This meant that there was always room for discussion, exchange, and participation during the breaks. In the last time slot of the workshop, the answers and comments were presented and put up for discussion.

Michaela Scheibe and Regine Dehnel present the results on the pin boards (Photo: Christine Kühn)

You can view the detailed programme with lecture titles, participants, and institutions here.

For further exchange, interested individuals are invited to join future meetings of the network Colonial Contexts and the network Decolonize the Library.

Hopefully, this workshop sparks further cooperative initiatives, fosters ongoing dialogues between libraries, cultural heritage institutions, practitioners, researchers, and Communities of Interest. Planned future projects include a thematic issue in o-bib in 2024 and an international conference.

 

 

 

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Project presentation at Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient

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Creating digital access to historical sources: A joint project presentation

In this presentation, Christoph Rauch, will introduce the online portal Qalamos, which provides direct access to metadata and digitised copies of Oriental manuscript collections in Germany. The talk gives an overview of workflows, standardization processes (e.g. authority data, metadata) and discusses challenges of developing a platform in collaboration with various partners.

Larissa Schmid will be presenting the project “IN_CONTEXT: Colonial Histories and Digital Collections” which seeks to secure funding for the digitisation of historical colonial sources and for devising a virtual platform for the study of colonial histories. Please find more details about the talk and the venue here.

 

Event details:

Tuesday, 26 September 2023
2-3:30pm

Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Kirchweg 33, 14129 Berlin

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SPK Lab Workshop on API Use Cases

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John Woitkowitz presented use case scenarios for APIs at the July 19, 2023 API workshop hosted by the SPK Lab of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The project IN_CONTEXT is developing a concept for a virtual research environment to advance research in the history of colonialism via a linked repository, a collaborative workplace and a set of digital tools. This involves the use of APIs or computational interfaces in various areas of the platform. Data such as references, digitized files or norm data from external institutions and data providers are integrated into the platform. Furthermore, the source portal provides data such as references to holdings, full texts, and digitized material from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin via OAI-PMH APIs for subsequent use by external institutions. In addition to institutions, the IN_CONTEXT platform also aims to address research groups and individual researchers or interested parties. In this way, REST APIs or knowledge graph endpoints based on research demand will be developed, data will be offered in common formats and made accessible through documentation resources. Different forms of providing information and further resources at the level of API-design related to problematic content is also under consideration.

The workshop provided an excellent platform to exchange experiences among institutions, projects and individual users of APIs. We look forward to participating in future events and to continuing the conversation on the development of APIs for research and the wider interested public.

You can find more information about the SPK Lab at https://lab.spk-berlin.de

Annual Meeting of the Network Colonial Contexts

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On June 12, 2023, the IN_CONTEXT team presented current developments and activities of the project at the annual meeting of the Network Colonial Contexts. The integration of collections and holdings from institutions external to SBB/SPK, the handling of sensitive metadata and the role of communities of interest were among the topics discussed. The project will deepen the discussion on the topic of “Colonial Contexts in Libraries” during a two-day workshop in November. We are looking forward to the exchange with our colleagues in Berlin and in the Netzwerk Koloniale Kontexte.

The complete program of the annual meeting of the Netzwerk Koloniale Kontexte can be found here.

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IN_CONTEXT at Workshop on Retrodigitization

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Larissa Schmid presented the project IN_CONTEXT at the University of Kiel on May 11-12, 2023 at a two-day workshop on retrodigitization. Timely questions related to access and the presentation of digital collections related to colonial histories were discussed. At the workshop, Larissa was able to further connect with important institutions and researchers from across the fields of digitization and colonial history.

CfP: Workshop on Colonial Contexts in Libraries

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The colonial past is increasingly the subject of public debate. Cultural heritage institutions bear a special responsibility, and museums in particular have already begun to reflect critically on their colonial entanglements and to investigate their colonial legacies. Provenance research and restitution debates have contributed to this. So far, libraries have played a marginal role in this debate, although the term “museums and collections” used in most official documents also includes historical collections held in libraries. The dbv Commission for Provenance Research and Provenance Cataloguing and the project IN_CONTEXT of the State Library Berlin in cooperation with the German Lost Art Foundation are taking this desideratum as an opportunity to take a closer look at how libraries deal with holdings from colonial contexts.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together actors from libraries, interest groups and research in this field to present holdings that are already known to be relevant and to conduct preliminary work on guidelines on how to deal with colonial holdings in libraries. The goal is both a fundamental discussion of how to deal with colonial contexts in libraries and a focus on specific holdings and topics. The workshop will focus on two themes:

First, the question of holdings in libraries that originate from colonial contexts of injustice will be raised. To what extent, for example, did objects come to Europe in connection with the looting of Magdala (1868) or the so-called Boxer War? To what extent do libraries already conduct provenance research and, if so, are there demands for restitution? How can provenance data be integrated into metadata?

Second, the question of holdings related to colonialism is addressed: How do libraries deal with so-called reception literature, such as travelogues or colonial nostalgia literature? To what extent does the topic also affect special collections such as maps, bequests or photo collections? How should scholarly literature from the colonial era be handled? How can these holdings be appropriately integrated into digital collections and repositories?

The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2023. The workshop language is German.

Call for Papers: Colonial Contexts in Libraries.

For any inquiries, please contact in_context@sbb.spk-berlin.de

Deutsche Version

IN_CONTEXT at the #DHd2023 in Trier

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As part of the Annual Meeting of the Organization for Digital Humanities in German-speaking Countries, John Woitkowitz presented the project IN_CONTEXT at the University of Trier on March  17, 2023. Along with colleagues on the panel “Digitizing Cultural Heritage and Postcolonial Perspectives”, he discussed the ethical dimensions of digitization projects and the challenges of implementing the FAIR and CARE principles.

For a larger discussion of the conference, see John’s blog post “Going Digital in a CAREful Age”.

The conference program can be found at https://dhd2023.dig-hum.de

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Projektstart: IN_CONTEXT: Colonial Histories and Digital Collections

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IN_CONTEXT is a two-year project with the aim of securing funding to digitise library collections related to colonial histories and to develop a virtual research environment. In the medium term, the virtual research environment is to serve as a central platform to study historical sources by documenting and by making available all relevant collections in Germany and from international partners. The project is based at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (State Library Berlin) and receives funding from the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation).

 

You can find the full project description here.