Last week, I attended a workshop provided by the Mina Rees Library. Two librarians, from the excellent library staff, walked participants through the installation and basic use of the citation management program, Zotero. It was an incredibly helpful session, and I am excited about the ways this new tool might assist in my research.

There are different ways to use Zotero, and it works with several Internet browsers. I installed the standalone application, and synced it to Chrome and Word. Working with several open windows is more comfortable to me, so having the Zotero library separate from the browser window is ideal. After getting the basic idea of how it works, collecting metadata, files and snapshots from online sources, making folders for different projects, and adding tags and notes, I have been experimenting with the actual use of Zotero.

The benefits in terms of the actual writing of a paper, with proper citations, and a flawless bibliography, are clear. These mechanical bits of producing a research paper, are the least fun parts, and Zotero just takes care of it all. But, it only works if the data it has gathered is good and complete. It seems to work well with articles from JSTOR, and e-books from the library. Keeping track of books located online, from Hathi Trust for example, does not work as smoothly. Looking at digitized historical documents online, is another issue. After more use of Zotero, I hope to have a better understanding of what it is capturing.

All of this prompted me to think about how I research, and how other students (and non-students) do research. Zotero encourages users to look at the metadata being collected from websites, perhaps meaning researchers will give more consideration to the source. And, not just the metadata, but the information in general. This seems like a good practice. Zotero might be used to teach students, from high school and up, to critically evaluate the information they are receiving from their sources.

In two weeks, I have a paper due for my archaeology class. I intend to use Zotero, to gather citations and organize my sources, for that paper. I believe it will compliment my usual approach to a research paper, without disturbing my established, comfortable methods. In a future post, I will reflect on the experience.

Update 12/19

Having used Zotero now for several papers and projects this semester, I can say that it is an amazing tool. Taking away the tedious parts of making a bibliography, or proper citations for footnotes, is fantastic, and yet users are still required to understand the information included, so that the importance of the task is not diminished. Organizing the materials for a specific project into folders (called collections) within Zotero is helpful as well, and mirrors the way I usually keep track of resources on my computer. The introduction provided by the library staff at the workshop was critical to setting up the program, and getting started; further experience with the program, and a certain amount of just trying things out, revealed how useful Zotero can be.

The other two workshops I attended, a GIS introduction that included a Carto demonstration, and a beginning Python class, were helpful, and I imagine that more experience with these tools will allow me to use them effectively as well.

In the past week, the Museum of Modern Art unveiled expanded offerings on its website, transforming online collections beyond a selection of items to include information and materials from all of its past exhibitions. The recent additions are part of the institutional archive of the museum, including some behind the scenes materials, like lists of the specific objects in an exhibition, used by curators and installers, or press releases and other promotional materials. Published exhibition catalogs, many out of print and/or expensive, are also included. The online archive is not static, and will continue to be added to, as new exhibitions are mounted and as additional, older material is digitized. The coverage in the New York Times quotes the museum’s chief of archives:

“The entire website is conceived of by the museum now as a living archive,” Ms. Elligott said, “and this is really just the beginning, the first phase of bringing its history out in all its detail.”

In looking at the newly released, exhibition-centric MOMA collections, through the lens of observations and arguments from Cameron Blevins in, “Digital History’s Perpetual Future Tense,” and Stephen Robertson, “The Differences between Digital Humanities and Digital History,” several themes surfaced.[1]

The online archive upgrade is about access. Not that these materials were unavailable before, but now they are accessible to anyone online.

In an assessment of recent years, Cameron Blevins says, “In digital history, the predominant goal has been to make those sources available and accessible.” Blevins then proposes that digital historians should “reengage with argumentation” because “making arguments is a fundamentally valuable and necessary way to further our collective understanding of the past.” The materials in the MOMA collections represent or document history, specifically of the institution, but also of art, culture, and society. But they do not offer interpretation or analysis, only the raw materials for it. There is some fuzziness here, in that the exhibition catalogs in the archive do include analysis and arguments, but the archive itself does not, nor was that its intent.

The archive is comprehensive, in that every exhibition is represented, in some way, though the quantity and selection of materials varies.

Robertson notes that, “much of the early digitization of historical sources was highly selective, chosen from larger collections to answer specific research questions, or to make available well-known or popular documents.” Robertson believes this tendency has limited the usefulness of history related online archives to scholars. The MOMA efforts appear to be addressing this problem, to some degree. This is perhaps the result of advances in technology, which allowed the museum to process more materials at a lower cost, or the emergence of software or hardware that can handle the data in better ways, but it might also be an understanding that materials related to the museum objects themselves offer something to researchers, and that a long, complete view is valuable.

The search is keyword based and works, though it presents problems with taxonomy. The filters are not nuanced.

Robertson is also concerned with the way users access collections, specifically the limits of search functions. In this way the MOMA collections are typical of other large online collections, maybe more limited in access points than some. The landing page for the exhibitions part of the online collections sorts the exhibitions chronologically, so the earliest are on the first page. This is a reasonable and useful way to look at the materials, for some, but the keyword search will likely be the way most users find materials. It is unclear how deep the search goes, for example it does not appear to search within the published exhibition catalogs. But, for an initial survey or review of materials, the search seems to work, especially if a user knows what they are seeking.

For researchers interested in modern art, industrial design, architecture, and planning, the enhanced MOMA online collections are an obvious upgrade. But there are materials there for many others as well. Consider the late 1942 exhibition, “Useful Objects in Wartime Under $10,” as just one example.

[1] Both articles appeared in Debates in the Digital Humanities, 2016.