1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,400 2 00:00:03,400 --> 00:00:04,600 Hello! My name is Scott DeWitt, and 3 00:00:04,600 --> 00:00:05,820 I am here today with the founders 4 00:00:05,820 --> 00:00:08,570 of the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, 5 00:00:08,570 --> 00:00:11,980 Professor Cynthia Selfe and Professor H. Lewis Ulman, 6 00:00:11,980 --> 00:00:13,950 known to most of us as Cindy and Louie. 7 00:00:13,950 --> 00:00:17,600 Today, we are here to talk about 8 00:00:17,600 --> 00:00:20,320 the collection The Archive as Classroom, 9 00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:24,460 edited by Kathryn Comer, Michael Harker, and Ben McCorckle. 10 00:00:24,460 --> 00:00:26,530 The Archive as Classroom is organized 11 00:00:26,530 --> 00:00:28,530 around the four words that make up the DALN: 12 00:00:28,530 --> 00:00:32,560 Digital, Archive, Literacy, and Narrative. 13 00:00:32,560 --> 00:00:34,830 Reading this collection has prompted us 14 00:00:34,830 --> 00:00:36,630 to think of four other words 15 00:00:36,630 --> 00:00:38,130 that reflect the work in the collection 16 00:00:38,130 --> 00:00:40,420 and teaching with the DALN in general. 17 00:00:40,420 --> 00:00:41,850 Unruly. 18 00:00:41,850 --> 00:00:44,470 An example would be metadata. 19 00:00:44,470 --> 00:00:47,550 Not all of the metadata fields are required . . . 20 00:00:47,550 --> 00:00:53,290 right . . . so some entires are more richly annotated 21 00:00:53,290 --> 00:00:56,770 than others, and what I'm fascinated with 22 00:00:56,770 --> 00:00:59,450 in the collection is how students and teachers 23 00:00:59,450 --> 00:01:01,850 turn those constraints into opportunities, 24 00:01:01,850 --> 00:01:04,960 into ways to ask unique questions 25 00:01:04,960 --> 00:01:08,790 or to reflect on the nature of archives, 26 00:01:08,790 --> 00:01:11,400 some of which are more formally organized- 27 00:01:11,400 --> 00:01:12,720 and some of which are less- 28 00:01:12,720 --> 00:01:16,290 and how you deal with messiness in information. 29 00:01:16,290 --> 00:01:24,140 One of my favorite terms in this collection was in the Reid and Hancock chapter, 30 00:01:24,140 --> 00:01:27,140 and they talked about "uncollected collections." 31 00:01:27,140 --> 00:01:28,960 And that's such a lovely term. 32 00:01:28,960 --> 00:01:33,500 Presently, we have a lot of individual narratives 33 00:01:33,500 --> 00:01:37,430 that are in one big collection, but in the future, 34 00:01:37,430 --> 00:01:43,750 and at any moment, there's that possibility, that potential for a collection 35 00:01:43,750 --> 00:01:47,720 that you can make as a user, or that you can make as a teacher. 36 00:01:47,720 --> 00:01:55,970 The Archive's apparent acceptance of unruliness in its structure 37 00:01:55,970 --> 00:01:58,680 is really one of its strengths. 38 00:01:58,680 --> 00:01:59,730 Historical. 39 00:01:59,730 --> 00:02:02,850 It's that historical nature of the DALN 40 00:02:02,850 --> 00:02:05,790 that may be its greatest value for the profession 41 00:02:05,790 --> 00:02:10,630 because it's been going now for so many years. 42 00:02:10,630 --> 00:02:14,950 We have within the DALN traces 43 00:02:14,950 --> 00:02:19,590 of all these cultural movements that have happened 44 00:02:19,590 --> 00:02:23,300 in and around and in association with literacy. 45 00:02:23,300 --> 00:02:25,040 They are just fascinating: 46 00:02:25,040 --> 00:02:27,560 the Somali Diaspora, for instance, 47 00:02:27,560 --> 00:02:32,050 the Black Chuch and Civil Rights and literacy connection, 48 00:02:32,050 --> 00:02:37,840 LGBTQIA issues and the public nature of those issues, 49 00:02:37,840 --> 00:02:40,090 and then disability studies. 50 00:02:40,090 --> 00:02:41,120 Multifaceted. 51 00:02:41,120 --> 00:02:46,210 Media for example. There's audio in here-in the DALN- 52 00:02:46,210 --> 00:02:49,920 there's video, there are written literacy narratives. 53 00:02:49,920 --> 00:02:53,120 The format is often different, 54 00:02:53,120 --> 00:02:54,730 and that's something we don't talk a lot about, 55 00:02:54,730 --> 00:02:58,010 but there are interviews in the DALN, there are images; 56 00:02:58,010 --> 00:03:03,110 some are stories without an interlocutor or interviewer, 57 00:03:03,110 --> 00:03:07,570 some have an interviewer who plays a more active part. 58 00:03:07,570 --> 00:03:12,010 The subject-while they're all literacy narratives, 59 00:03:12,010 --> 00:03:16,700 it shows the richness of that umbrella term. 60 00:03:16,700 --> 00:03:20,770 I mean, there's narratives about learning to code, 61 00:03:20,770 --> 00:03:23,690 there's narrative about learning the literacy of music. 62 00:03:23,690 --> 00:03:24,860 Labor-intensive. 63 00:03:24,860 --> 00:03:29,130 It was a term that every single contribution 64 00:03:29,130 --> 00:03:33,070 to this collection suggested implicitly. 65 00:03:33,070 --> 00:03:41,520 So much of the labor that surrounds and is involved by the DALN is invisible. 66 00:03:41,520 --> 00:03:46,310 The editors of the DALN-the senior editors, 67 00:03:46,310 --> 00:03:50,680 Ben McCorkle, Michael Harker-have a huge job 68 00:03:50,680 --> 00:03:57,080 of collect . . . of making sure that the DALN is available online. 69 00:03:57,080 --> 00:04:01,410 They have to get designers to contribute to this; 70 00:04:01,410 --> 00:04:06,040 they have to get techical help; they have to get institutional support. 71 00:04:06,040 --> 00:04:10,820 This collection looks beyond to this vast community 72 00:04:10,820 --> 00:04:16,090 of teachers who are using the DALN and therefore bringing it to life. 73 00:04:16,090 --> 00:04:22,560 We should take one minute to thank Katie, and Ben, and Michael 74 00:04:22,560 --> 00:04:26,190 for this collection, and every one of the contributors 75 00:04:26,190 --> 00:04:31,100 because I don't know where the DALN would be 76 00:04:31,100 --> 00:04:34,816 unless there were people who make of sense of it.