Review of Digitization Panels at the 2013 RSVP Conference

Review of Digitization Panels at the 2013 RSVP Conference Clare Horrocks (bio) Were we required to characterise this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word. Thomas Carlyle, "Signs of the Times," 1829 A review of the conference schedule for the 45 th annual RSVP conference at the University of Salford would indeed confirm that Victorian research on periodicals has moved into what Thomas Carlyle once called the "mechanical age." We are now in an age where machinery and digital archives are given increased prominence in course syllabi and research. Researchers are increasingly driven from the dusty archive and the hallowed halls of Colindale to more efficient online repositories. Scholars are divided as to whether new methods for data retrieval and analysis can be adapted and embedded within existing practices or whether they threaten to erode and undermine traditional methods. Likewise, as scholars have been quick to point out, creating an alternative canon of resources can at times present more challenges than solutions.1 The papers at this year's RSVP conference were keen to point out that embracing the digital age was not all about speed or replicating existing methods but rather about finding new and exciting ways to access and display data in ways that had not been previously possible, thus advancing, rather than retarding, the field of periodicals research. There were three panels on digitization at the conference: two on digital scholarship and pedagogy and one on digital bibliographic scholarship. Participants included seasoned scholars as well as publishers and post-graduates. Every session was packed to capacity with extra chairs having [End Page 562] to be squeezed in—a testimony to growing scholarly interest in digital pedagogies and research methods. I was fortunate to co-present on the first panel with my colleague Shannon Smith from Queens University, Bader International Study Centre. In this paper, we suggested that scholars must become producers as well as consumers in order to embrace the potential of digital pedagogies. The case study we used to exemplify this idea was the Punch and the Victorian Periodical Press Resource that I have been building at Liverpool John Moores University, which is part of a larger digital project identifying Punch contributors from 1843 to 1919.2 This site is in part focused on sharing links, readings, and examples of good practice in teaching and learning—building learning communities where students' work serves as a model for approaching and analyzing Punch. In the second half of our presentation, Shannon Smith described the process of creating a new digital humanities course. In the final part of this course, Smith brings together scholars who are in the process of developing digital archives to talk to her students about the impact of digital technology on research. Smith's presentation segued well into a paper presented by Seth Cayley from Cengage Learning, who described the process of developing the new Daily Mail Historical Archive, 1896-2004. When discussing this project, Cayley made the processes of production transparent, thereby establishing dialogue between a commercial publisher and the scholarly community—the kind of exchange that has been all too rare in recent years. Cayley's discussion of publishing decisions regarding resolution, formatting, download speed, and functionality of digital databases provided a starting point for engaging conversation among scholars and digital database administrators. The final paper on the panel was delivered by Elizabeth Penner who is studying the Boy's Own Paper, 1879-1913. Penner's presentation demonstrated a method of uniting traditional hard copy research with analysis of digital texts—a methodology Shannon Smith and I had discussed earlier in the panel presentation. The fact that the Boy's Own Paper has been digitized as part of Gale Cengage's periodicals project provided a link to Cayley's presentation as well. Penner argued that the digital archive did not do justice to the complexity of the Boy's Own Paper because it did not promote understanding of the paper's unique form, style, and editorial...

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