Artifacts Online: Lessons from the Macintosh and Buckminster Fuller Projects

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Institute for 21st Century Librarianship

Introduction Stages in Digital Archive Development Skills and Tools What to Focus On Making the Macintosh and Collecting in Contemporary History

Introduction Developing digital archives requires a variety of skills: you have to think alternately like an historian, a programmer, an artist, a producer, and occasionally (but only occasionally) a thief (and you're stealing in a good way, not a bad way). The bar for developing Web sites has fallen dramatically over the last several years, making it easier for people with interesting content to put it on line. For certain kinds of collections, doing so brings some unexpected benefits, as we learned while working on "Making the Macintosh," a digital archive on the early history of the Macintosh computer. Purpose of This Talk Skills and Tools. From the vast array of things you could learn to do, what do you really need to learn? What to Focus On. Like any complex, varied undertaking, it's important to prioritize. This will essentially deal with the "better practices" that have developed in the Mac and Bucky projects. Making the Macintosh and Collecting in Contemporary History. Finally, I'll discuss some of the things that happened on the archival side when the Macintosh project got underway. Organization Stages in Digital Archive Development Skills and Tools What to Focus On Making the Macintosh and Collecting in Contemporary History