Stranded hurricane victims, failures of all levels of government, destruction by wind and water, and the massive displacement of Gulf Coast residents alerted us at the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) that we were witnessing significant moments in American history. We also noticed how many people turned to the web for information, assistance, and communication with friends and family. Newspapers such as the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Houston Chronicle created online forums for their readers where people shared information about the status of their communities, while others created blogs and some shared photos on sites such as Flickr. The weblog indexing site Technorati reveals over 350,000 posts on Hurricane Katrina alone. How would the story of those storms be recorded and later told? How can we save the digital sources and ensure that the historical record is diverse and inclusive?

Building upon experience in creating popular history collecting projects, particularly the September 11 Digital Archive , CHNM set out to respond to these events and partnered with the University of New Orleans to create the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (HDMB): www.hurricanearchive.org.

Archivists and librarians constantly grapple with the best ways to maintain archives and preserve electronic materials, a conversation historians recently joined. Roy Rosenzweig urges his colleagues to share in that responsibility and to participate in saving the recent past in his essay, ‚ÄúScarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era‚Äù. He also encourages historians and archivists to rethink definitions of evidence and whether everything produced is worth saving. Orville Vernon Burton shares in that concern stating that “historians must take the initiative‚Äù not only in preservation but also to improve the field of history through the use of digital technology. To encourage preservation and the development of digital history projects, including online collecting sites, Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig recently published a how-to guide, Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. Guides like Digital History make techno-phobic historians comfortable with the web so that they can join the conversation about saving emails, blogs, and websites that will affect how their colleagues in the future will write histories.

As the National Archives pushes forward in efforts to archive digital evidence from the federal government, other organizations seek solutions for preserving the large volume of born-digital materials. One large-scale effort to save the “digital now” on the web is the Internet Archive (IA). Established as private, non-profit organization, IA acts as a library that preserves website materials for the use of researchers and historians. Currently, their ‚ÄúWayback Machine‚Äù allows users to search 55 billion webpages archived since 1996. Working with the Library of Congress and National Archive, IA creates special collections focusing on prominent current events, such as presidential elections, and most recently, Hurricane Katrina. Far from complete, but IA offers an excellent snapshot of the “digital then” for given periods. One drawback is that IA‚Äôs web crawls cannot reach the deep web tucked away in databases and webmasters may block the IA from capturing their sites.

IA scans the web for an impression of what is available online at a given moment. IA’s scope does not include seeking contributions of digital files from those without websites.¬† Historians help fill that gap by developing popular collecting sites.

• Blackout History Project: One early example of a digital memory bank is the Blackout History Project . It invites visitors to complete a lengthy on-line survey and asks contributors to provide a phone number so that a longer oral history interview may be conducted on both the Northeastern blackouts in 1965 and the 1977 outage in New York City. Filled with a collection of 367 online stories and a handful of oral history transcripts, Blackout History Project offers a good example of the transition between online and oral history collection methods. This example from 1998 demonstrates how the Internet could help historians collect online.
• ECHO: In 2001, the ECHO project , (electronic, collecting history online), was created to collect and present the recent history of science, technology, and industry through the web. Most project sites target very specific groups of people, such as users of Usenet discussion boards; those affected by the accident at Three Mile Island ; or riders of the Washington DC Metro. Another purpose of ECHO is to create and share online tools, such as the Survey Builder that allows anyone to create a survey or prepare an oral history on their own. These free tools open the doors to small institutions and history classes seeking to find and collect information via the web. Finally, ECHOs third main objective is to annotate listings for all digital collecting projects.
• September 11 Digital Archive: Building on collecting experience and database structures established in ECHO, the September 11 Digital Archive was created by the Center for History and New Media and the American Social History Project. Though it started as a small effort in 2002, by the end of 2005 it had gathered more than 150,000 digital objects by simply asking people to ‚ÄúTell us your story.‚Äù Because of the international significance of September 11, interest in sharing experiences spread across the country and more people felt comfortable interacting in an online environment. Successful marketing and helpful partnerships, such as with the National Museum of American History , the Red Cross, and other collecting efforts, such as Voices from 9/11 Chinatown, made the September 11 Digital Archive the single most successful effort to collect and preserve digital materials related to a historical event. Lessons learned from building and maintaining such a large archive informed the early design stages of HDMB.
• WW2 People’s War: As CHNM‚Äôs efforts expanded, others have launched projects in the online collecting of history. For example, the British Broadcasting Corporation‚Äôs two-year online project to gather the stories of Britain‚Äôs World War II veterans and survivors of the London Blitz, entitled, WW2 People‚Äôs War have collected more than 1,200 narratives. Now closed to contributions, it is easily browsable by theme, region, or specific event making it accessible for general audiences interested in researching the stories of WWII London.
• Memory Wiki: One of the newest endeavors is the Memory Wiki, which builds upon the same principles of openness as the Wikipedia by encouraging anyone to share and save memories of their choosing. What sort of memories do they seek? Their answer is ‚Äúpretty much anything you remember that someone else might conceivably find interesting, now or in 500 years.‚Äù One distinct difference between this site and the Wikipedia is that once your story is submitted, the site editors proofread it but then lock the submission so no one else may change your words. In the same spirit as digital history sites, Memory Wiki‚Äôs motto is ‚ÄúEveryone has a Story. Make Yours History.‚Äù

To read more on digital memory banks go to: Cohen and Rosenzweig’s chapters on Collecting History Online, Digital History.

HDMB stands as another example of how the Internet can promote collecting narratives and saving the digital record of significant events and the “digital now.”

• Capacity: HDMB has an unlimited capacity for storing images, video, audio, and text files in one place. This is so different from a physical archive where storage issues constantly plague archivists and historians who must ensure the proper environment to accommodate a variety of objects in collections. Most recently the Smithsonian Institutions‚Äôs Cooper-Hewitt Museum announced that portions of their extensive design archives would relocate from inside the museum in New York City to facilities in Washington, DC that could better handle the volume.
• Accessibility: As soon as stories, images, or audio files are uploaded to HDMB, (after a short vetting process) they are available for the public to browse. Unlike oral histories that need transcribing before they are available to the public, or physical archives which often are only available during very specific hours, HDMB sources are always available online. HDMB was born two months after Hurricane Katrina hit and was one of the first history-focused hurricane responses available in old or new media.
• Flexibility and Interactivity: Flexibility in design allowed HDMB to be customized for our targeted audience: those affected by the hurricanes in some way. After testing the site with a group of University of New Orleans students, we modified the design and wording of questions. Designing in new media gives us flexibility to change the site design, as well as change the way visitors browse through collections as the site expands. The site also may be designed with as much or as little interactivity. Visitors interact with hurricanearchive.org on their own and decide what they want to contribute, the length of their contribution, and how much time they spend on the site. Many oral history projects seek out specific subjects and then historians ask them a set of questions. HDMB allows the contributor to control the direction of the submission. They determine what is most important.
• Manipulability: HDMB provides different ways to find information, by browsing images and stories, keyword searching, or viewing objects related by geography using our Google map. We ask contributors to provide the geographic coordinates of either their location before the hurricanes hit or the location that best represents the content of their submission by entering a zip code or street address. By dynamically combining this information and their contribution with Google Maps, we provide a visual way of browsing the archive that enables new kinds of research and connections to be made. Visitors may easily browse the contributions in a specific location (down to a specific street corner), or create a customized map that is populated solely by contributions that contain a certain keyword or type of object. This type of user-determined search is invaluable for those conducting research through thousands of objects, and impossible with a traditional physical archive.
• Diversity/Democratic: We designed HDMB to be accessible to the general public as HDMB seeks contributions from anyone with a hurricane story from Katrina, Rita, or Wilma. Those with low-grade browsers even have options to contribute on a special text-only page to ensure that this is accessible to as many people as possible. To be a grassroots effort, HDMB wants a diverse collection of experiences. By inviting everyone in to participate, HDMB also breaks down some artificial barriers between academia and the general public. Numerous efforts, particularly in New Orleans, are planned to reach people through public libraries, presentations, and by bringing laptops to public spaces with free internet access asking people to add their story to the archive. During Mardi Gras season, we distributed plastic cups with HDMB’s URL to reach those in Louisiana and Southeast Texas.
• Hypertextuality: Browsers may jump in asynchronous patterns via the map or through other sections of the site. Each section stands on its own and visitors decide on how to navigate through the site. The map offers the best example of hypertextuality because the map is alive with the collection. Refreshing the webpage shuffles the pins and produces a different selection each visit.

• Finding the stories and images to collect: From the beginning, we have refined and updated various strategies for collecting and publicizing HDMB. Relying heavily on personal and professional contacts in the early stages, we spread the word and developed partnerships in a very traditional way. We also turned to listservs, blogs, online forums and other electronic means for creating direct links to HDMB. Other efforts, such as distributing Mardi Gras cups with the HDMB logo and URL and public presentations, encourage the general participate to logon and add their story to the digital memory bank. Unfortunately, the site’s mere presence on the web does not guarantee participation or visitation.
  
• Passivity, Quality, and readability: HDMB is different from oral history project where you carefully choose subjects, tailor questions for your interview, and spend hours talking with your subject. Here individuals visit the site voluntarily and decide what they want to contribute and the duration of their stay–an active process. We do not edit postings for grammar or check for “accuracy.” As Cohen and Rosenzweig suggest, historians must rely on their critical analysis skills to determine if a submissions seems authentic. Since the project went live in November 2005, we have received no spam or mock contributions.
• Incorporating an understanding of memory becomes important when analyzing the quality and even readability of these contributions as well. Oral historians have tackled these issues, such as David Thelen and Alessandro Portelli who incorporate the study of memory into their interpretation. They emphasize that accuracy of memory is not always important when taking oral histories. What is important is that those people find those memories to be real. During the early days following Hurricane Katrina, news reports detailed horrific crimes–”from eyewitnesses”–that turned out to be false, but were very real for those waiting for help at the Superdome. When documenting the history of these storms the personal interpretation of those events, as memory, will be as important as the events themselves.
• Inaccessibility: Roy Rosenzweig reminds us that economic, social, and cultural issues remain one of the biggest challenges when confronting new techology. Dealing with the displaced and disenfranchised is a big concern for us, because our target population is dealing with loss on many levels and perhaps online activity did not play a huge role in their lives prior to the hurricanes. The Pew Internet and American Life Project‘s most recent surveys find that 72% of all adults go online, but the numbers dip for those with less than a high school education to 38%, and to 54% for those with an income less than $30,000. In New Orleans, for example, the median household income in 2004 was $31,369. While we do not have hard figures on how connected New Orleanians were prior to the hurricane we know that there were many without computer access. Since the hurricanes there are even more challanges for those without the necessary hardware, so we created an internet phone account through Skype with a New Orleans exchange where anyone may call to record a digital story. Those digital files will be uploaded to the archive. Those with computers but no internet access will not need to wait long in New Orleans, because they will become the first major wireless city in the nation. Free wi-fi is becoming easier to find at cafes and computer usage is available at all public libraries. Awareness of inaccessibility issues does not solve them, but we are trying to accommodate the needs of our target population as best as we can.
• Durability: To ensure the longevity of HDBM, it will be saved in two main locations on stand-alone computers. The University of New Orleans has established a DSpace repository in collaboration with Louisiana State University (LSU) and we will deposit a second copy in the GMU‚Äôs digital repository, MARS.

One major advantage of online collecting projects is that their building tools will soon be available to anyone at no cost. CHNM plans to release such tools in 2007 so that anyone may save the stories of their organization or museums document a milestone in local history. One recent example is the George Mason Basketball Digital Memory Bank. Graduate students working at CHNM created the site within a few days after seeing the men’s basketball team advance to the NCAA Final Four, because they believed they were witnessing a significant event in Mason’s history. Within its first two weeks online, the site saw 5,000 visitors and collected nearly 300 stories and other files. Popular collecting sites can serve communities of all shapes and sizes, by encouraging participation and stewardship of one’s own history.

However, documenting the history of current events is not always easy. As I continue to work with the HDMB I realize that while we strive for a diverse collection of stories there are always challenges to reaching those who have the fewest resources. Knowing that historians constantly struggle with scraping together the pasts of those who leave little or no evidence of their everyday lives, we attempt to proactively seek out voices from those that may not be represented in traditional evidence. Additionally, when dealing with the aftermath of a natural disaster the physical evidence, or material culture, of people’s lives often is destroyed. Material culture helps fill in gaps that the published record misses. A digital memory bank, by collecting images, digital video, and audio files, offers a way to collect evidence of the material life through what is absent or destroyed.

Digital memory banking is not just for tragedy. Like the George Mason hoops site, this practice can document achievements and encourage a participatory history. Online collecting sites broaden the scope of the historical record and foster stewardship of the past by a larger group of people–even those who are not particularly tech-savvy. If we, as historians, want to encourage more public interaction with the past (visiting museums, reading history books, discussing the complexity of history) and break down some of the barriers between academia and the “public,” then we should offer ways in which people can also help shape their pasts in the present.

As I mentioned earlier, we must analyze the objects collected in these online archives within the context of memory. The term “memory bank” implies that the collected objects are memories that will be saved for a later date when we need them. Memories are psychological, social, and cultural that shape a more personal vision of the past. In the case of HDMB, I see all of the memories collected standing on equal ground with media coverage or official government reports as evidence contributing to future interpretations of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Just as historians must carefully examine “official” documentation, so shall we also carefully examine contributions to the HDMB. These memories offer us an important interpretation of life after a hurricane.

From my interaction with various contributors to HDMB, I know that they feel good about depositing their memories with this online archive, because theywant to ensure that many others will hear about their struggles, in their words or images, and they like knowing that they are helping us make history. Digital memory banking offers an avenue by which people feel connected to their own history and, perhaps, feel a little more powerful because of their act of contributing.

Burton, Orville Vernon. “American Digital History.” Social Science Computer Review 23, No. 2, Summer 2005 206-220. Available online: http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/essay.php?id=30.

Cohen, Dan and Roy Rosenzweig. Digital Past: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, Presenting the Past Online. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Available online: http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/.

Knabb, Richard D., Jamie R. Rhome, and Daniel P. Brown. “Tropical Cyclone Report Hurricane Katrina 23-30 August 2005.” National Hurricane Center report, December 2005. Available online: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL122005_Katrina.pdf.
Pew Internet and American Life Project, “Demographics of Internet Users,” online table found at: http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/User_Demo_12.05.05.htm

O’Sullivan, Catherine. “Diaries, On-line Diaries, and the Future Loss to Archives; or, Blogs, and the Blogging Bloggers Who Blog Them.” The American Archivist 68 (Spring/Fall 2005): 53-73.

Pogrebin, Robin. ‚ÄúDesign Museum’s Archival Shifts Prompt Concern.‚Äù New York Times, February 14, 2006, E1.

Portelli, Alessandro. The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories. Form and Meaning in Oral History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era.” American Historical Review 108, 3 (June 2003): 735-762 Available online: http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/essay.php?id=6.

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Digital Archives Are a Gift of Wisdom to Be Used Wisely.” Chronicle of Higher Education 51, no. 42 (24 June 2005): B20. Available online: http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/essay.php?id=32

Thelen, David. “Memory and American History.” Journal of American History 75, no. 4 (March 1989): 1117-1129.

U.S Census Bureau, Fact Sheet, New Orleans, Louisiana. American Community Survey, 2004. Available online.

Collecting Sites:

Blackout History Project, http://blackouts.gmu.edu/

ECHO, http://echo.gmu.edu/

George Mason Basketball Digital Memory Bank, http://hoops.gmu.edu

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, http://hurricanearchive.org

Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org

Memory Wiki, http://www.memorywiki.org/en/MemoryWiki

September 11 Digital Archive, http://911digitalarchive.org

WWII-People’s War, http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/