Our visit to the Special Collections was enlightening. I really enjoyed flipping through the physical records of the primary sources we were shown. Looking through physical copies and objects is a different experience to viewing an online digital copy. Physical records practically force you to treat them with deliberate care, otherwise you risk damaging them. They force you to slow down and consume the information wholly. Too often when I search through sources online, my eyes will skip and skim down the page. But when I sit down with physical paper, I absorb much more information. Personally, I found it easier and much more enjoyable to go through physical records instead of digital ones.
The sources that my table examined was a group of documents related to the Federal Theater Project. The documents described different types of portable, low-cost theaters that people used in order to entertain people. Some theaters were as small as a shoebox, while others took place in a trailer. Entertainers would travel from one public space to another, and provide small, low-budget shows for audiences. During the Great Depression, many theaters closed down 1. It’s likely that this decline in official theater productions caused a rise in less official, portable ones.
For scholars, the archive is an extremely valuable resource. The archive has a wealth of primary sources that offer useful information for whatever topics they are researching. Both digital and physical archives are useful, but both have their unique disadvantages. Physical copies are time consuming to search through, and they take up space. Digital copies, on the other hand, are easier and faster to access. However, digital copies lack context, and context is valuable for understanding a source. Information does not exist in a vacuum. Context matters. The Library of Congress recreated the exact style and layout of Thomas Jefferson’s unusual library just to preserve the original context of his library 2.
Even the manner in which physical sources are arranged provides context. Digital copies of sources do not have the same level of context that physical ones do. However, they are very useful for the general public. While a scholar or researcher might be willing to travel to a specific library in order to wade through piles of paper in order to find the information and details they want, the average person might not. Digital sources lack the same context as physical sources, but typically that context is not necessary unless the person searching is a scholar.
However, not all sources can be easily digitized. At our visit to the Special Collections, there were a variety of sources that were available for us to look at. Most of them were physical paper copies of letters, notes, and diagrams. Those sources can be digitized with relative ease, but there were sources that would be difficult to digitize. Most notably, on one of the other tables there was an old theater costume. This sort of source is best seen physically. The only ways to digitize a costume is through a series of pictures, or perhaps a video that shows the costume through multiple angles. Both ways are inferior to viewing the costume in person.
- Brown, Lorraine. “Federal Theatre: Melodrama, Social Protest, and Genius : Articles and Essays : Federal Theatre Project, 1935 to 1939 : Digital Collections : Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/federal-theatre-project-1935-to-1939/articles-and-essays/federal-theatre-melodrama-social-protest-and-genius/.
- LeFurgy, Bill. “The Artifactual Elements of Born-Digital Records, Part 2.” The Artifactual Elements of Born-Digital Records, Part 2 | The Signal, The Library of Congress, 5 Dec. 2011, https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2011/12/the-artifactual-elements-of-born-digital-records-part-2/.
