Ways of Seeing Memory, Database and the Narrative

• In Event: Research Infrastructures, Digital Tools and New Directions in STS Research

Abstract

Digital archives afford us the ability to see connections between memory, database and the narrative. Archival databases coexist with multiple narratives that emerge from the linking of primary records like oral history interviews and photographs, manuscripts and archival video footage. We propose the architecture for a digital archive with two parallel worlds: one, a dynamic annotation layer to allow for multiple interpretations of the data, and two, a storytelling portal that helps build narratives from raw data. We stress that the primary purpose of an archive is to enable a diversity of stories. All other functions – annotation, accession, preservation, tools – are in service of that aim. By building such an ecosystem, we also hope to bridge the gaps between four existing communities: the scientists, historians of science, storytellers for a non academic audience, and the public.

As a start, we built a pilot project on thirteen ways to reflect upon and assemble the history of a Bangalore-based research institution (the exhibit title pays homage to Wallace Stevens' poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird). In the next phases, we will release an open source template that is the foundation for an interconnected digital archive of science: a pilot network of archives and metadata from five science archives in India.

Note: This abstract is an edited and updated version of previous presentations of this project.

Authors

• Venkat Srinivasan, Archives, National Centre for Biological Sciences

• Dinesh T B, Servelots Infotech Pvt Ltd

• Bhanu Prakash, Servelots Infotech Pvt Ltd

• Shalini A, Servelots Infotech Pvt Ltd