When products “go digital”, when resources or knowledge become part of the digital space, they’re supposed to undergo a process of democratization (at least according to the ideals of DH studies). But, if anything, the articles we read for today highlight the falsity inherent to this viewpoint, putting accessibility values in juxtaposition to real practice. In the beginning of the McPherson article, she discusses how much of what’s archived today moves away from association with larger, conglomerate powers, onto more public, distributed use: “Less and less does it signal rigorous institutional practices, dedicated spaces, or a devotion to physical (let alone dusty) object”(483). And yet, the forces which shape access, resources, and the creation of knowledge hierarchies are deeply saturated in normative structures, which rely on stratified discourse and literacy disparities in order to retain power. McPherson acknowledges this, and goes into its structure, later on in the article, having us (the reader) look at these imbued power dynamics.
Questions we need to be asking: What is accessed by large groups of people online? How do websites, and DH projects, get promoted? What determines the shape of these projects? Cohen talks about his participation in the Whitman archive, and how the choices made around that endeavour had much to do with institutional constraints. Whitman was chosen for his already elevated position in the academy, because it was easier to generate funding for this type of work. This is what get’s money, what get’s the resources to go digital: an expensive and time-consuming process. Although getting information online isn’t necessarily difficult, the ways in which knowledge spreads, becomes advertised, and is categorized in larger discourse is highly controlled. And so, democratization can exist as veiled outer layer to the more subversive dynamics at play.
What I did like about the transition to digital space, discussed in the Gitelman article, was the creation of various digital universes, where process (as opposed to polished product) becomes apparent: “Even the most exactingly self conscious, intensively authored and attended publication on the web, those scholarly electronic editions and archives, tend to exist in a sea of installment, versions, and revisions, works continuously present and yet constantly subject to change”(145). Transitions, and change, as part of the process towards creative, epistemological work, can be seen.
