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Sender: American Memory Fellows <AMFELLOWS@RS8.LOC.GOV>
Poster: "Frances F. Jacobson" <francey@UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
Subject: A digital library to anticipate
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Hi all -
I want to report on a talk I went to a couple of nights ago given by Sam
Gustman, Executive Director of Technology of the Survivors of the Shoah
Visual History Foundation. This project was founded by Steven Spielberg
after the completion of Shindler's List. Over 50,000 Holocaust survivors
have been interviewed on videotape, producing a archive of more than
100,000 hours of digitized testimony plus pictures and other artifacts
provided by the interviewees. Gustman was here to visit with folks at the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications, seeking help in the
management of such an enormous database (terabytes and terabytes...). Part
of its size has to do with the extensive indexing. They've had catalogers
indexing "phrases" of data -- amounting to an average of every three
minutes of tape time. The searching capability should be incredible.
Many things came out during his talk and the subsequent question session --
my brain is still trying to digest it all. For example, the Foundation
will never make the archive available in an unlimited way over a medium
like the Internet because of security issues. They are *very* concerned
with uses and abuses of the survivors' testimonies. Instead, they want as
wide a distribution as possible under more controlled conditions. So right
now they are working with five repositories (e.g., the Simon Wiesenthal
Center in L.A., the Holocaust Museum, etc.), producing derivative products
(videos, CD-ROMs), and investigating Internet 2 and authenticating
procedures. Reaching schools is a high priority for them. Gustman
mentioned the name of a writing project I wasn't familiar with, from which
they'll draw teachers for focus groups. Another question came up about
"cataloger trauma" -- how the catalogers are dealing with spending day
after day indexing this difficult material. I'm barely touching on things
here, but you can imagine the variety of issues that were discussed.
The audience represented an eclectic variety of interests -- the digital
library folks (from our library school and the University Library),
anthropology and ethnography types, students, and lots of people from the
Jewish community. The Foundation may take on other similar projects in the
future, such as interviewing people about the Civil Rights era, etc.
More information is available at the Foundation web site: http://www.vhf.org/
Cheers, Frances
Frances F. Jacobson
francey@uiuc.edu
University Laboratory High School Librarian jacobson@uni.uiuc.edu
1212 W. Springfield Avenue
Urbana, IL 61801
217-333-1589 http://www.uni.uiuc.edu/library
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