The Digital Presence of German Community Archives

Abstract

Humanities researchers find and utilize online data while researching. Often times, familiarity with programming, or the ability to use Digital Humanities (DH) tools increases the types of analyses that one can make with this digital data. For Digital Humanities research to be undertaken, sources and data must be extant and published in a digital manner. German archives that deal with counter-cultural milieus are typically independent of large institutions and are thus often poorly funded. These organizations typically do not have the funds to digitize their materials. This means that many of the sources housed in these archives are not included in historical and cultural analyses. This problem can be made visible using digital tools and interviews. The results of this project are multifaceted, including Python web-scraping scripts, a case study and quantitative assessment of independent archive websites, interviews with archivists, and an experimental case. The final part of my project will make recommendations to improve the online presence of German independent archives. The goal is to highlight the importance of digital tools developed specifically for accessing historical and social data stored in a decentralized network of archives and the contributions of the digital humanities to the larger humanities. I will present a paper that introduces descriptions and analyses of quantitative reviews of online archives, interviews with archivists, scraping scripts, and associated datasets.