The best bit of the WWW website, and what else could be added

As part of regular WWW consultations with readers and users, an item in a Lives & Letters mailing asked two questions about website use and offered a modest prize for the best response. We’re pleased to say that the prize has been awarded to Astrid von Rosen, from the University of Gothenburg. Her responses to the questions provide some helpful food for thought, and we think that readers of the blog will find them interesting.

We also hope that other users – and also Astrid herself – will be pleased to know, concerning her request for the addition of visualisations, that this feature is already underway and will appear on the research website to be hosted by hriDigital. Indeed, it is production of the visualisation capacity that is holding up its publication. What will be provided is the capacity for users to produce your own visualisations. We will be providing the tools and the whole dataset, while it will be searches by users that will populate the software, so users can see and save or printed out the results of their investigations.

Astrid’s responses to the questions now follow:

Question 1. Tell us what you think is the best bit of the WWW website and why. This can be a whole section, it can also be a specific item, it’s up to you to explain your choice.

As a Swedish art historian and scholar engaged in research centring on scenography and dance archives, it is perhaps not self-evident that I should visit the WWW regularly. Nevertheless, I do keep returning to the site with interest. Depending on needs and mood I find different bits of the blog to be “the best”. Just now I had a look on the early sections of the blog with its merging of poignant scribbling and urgent research matters. This spring I read through the “Elias” section. At other times I have enjoyed and benefited from the “database” section, and so forth. I perceive the WWW as substantial, well written, to the point, honest, and fun, but why is this so? What is that “best bit” that turns the WWW into a moving and living agent in my memory and makes me remember it now and then in the midst of everything else?

First, I find the structure clear and purposeful without being superficial and overtly slick: you can see and perceive the basic construction and this renders the practices and processes of the research unusually transparent. The “best bit”, then, is what makes the structure (or skeleton to use a metaphor) into a living thing, an agent (both human and non-human) is, I suggest, “the voice”. Here is one of many examples manifesting how the “voice” operates: “A cacophony outside is the usual order of the day, while inside the mind is the low thrum of Forbes letter-writing and replying of a usually humdrum kind that is concerned with getting the business done while oiling the wheels of relationships.” [http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/archival-silences-and-sounds/]

So, the voice is the winner because it unites an equally dainty and stern sense of humour with a critically conscious and crucially important research agenda.

Question 2. Tell us what feature you would most like added to the WWW website and why. Please provide some detail on this and if possible examples of good practice elsewhere.

I would very much like you to add a section on your “archival thinking” as it has developed and will find its ways through time and space. For this you – or “the voice” mentioned above – might wish to develop your own way of working with visualization and constructive critical writing. I have previously been rather negative towards visualization, as for example a relational or even vibrating map geographically demonstrating connections between for example letter writers or business partners. However, I have gradually come to change my mind, because visualization at times can provide good access to complex topics. I do think a critically conscious visualization which not only can constitute a beginning of sorts, but also frames (to allow for openness towards particular issues) and stays in memory, is particularly useful in a world overloaded with visual fuss. A rather straight-forward, but potentially all the more useful example, of good practice can be found here: http://moravianlives.org/map/).

Adding visualization to the WWW website is suggested because the site itself constitutes an archive, and archival research, practice and intellectual engagement is present in many ways in the writings on the site and there are also links to a related archive project. I think a “visualization-archive” section would be a relevant and hugely interesting “feature” on the WWW site as it could bring out and highlight much archival matters that are already there, as well as propel new and challenging questions to the digital and visual world we live in today.

Last updated: 12 October 2017