I spent the larger part of Thursday and Friday researching in special collections. The more I researched, the more I realized how scant my sources were. As it stands, the information I plan to use in my project largely relies on individual photographs, or small written anecdotes, rather than a comprehensive and fully fleshed history. The noticeable lack of materials made those sources that I could find all the more significant to me, and helped me to realize that we are constantly documenting and shaping our own histories through the memories we immortalize through pictures, words, or sounds.Even if they seem commonplace in the moment, we cannot anticipate the importance they may hold in the future.
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Something else to think about, what happens when all of this stuff that happens on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere on the Internet disappears? All of those digital documents, lost to everyone. At the Oberlin Digital Scholarship conference, one of the schools was doing digital archiving of unofficial campus group websites, especially those related to social justice, fringe culture, etc. Since there’s no more paper trail a lot of the time, is there any way to preserve this sort of history for the future?
…and is it really too late to write this history? What has to happen now, before it passes out of living memory? Lauren, leave future historians some recommendations!