Trove of Goodies’ Through the Internet Archive.
As Elena Rowan researches the ways that activist archivers gather and make sense of data,
she often relies on the Internet Archive. She is a graduate student in sociology at Concordia University in Montreal,
Canada, with an interest in the phone number library debate around copyright and e-books in public libraries.
Elena Rowan Grad Student Finds
“I look at why archives and libraries are important to society and culture as a whole,” said Rowan,
who uses materials preserved in the Wayback Machine and the lnternet Archive. “Without the Internet Archive,
so much of the knowledge and information on the Internet would be lost, and most of my research would be impossible.”
Rowan is in her second year of her master’s program and works as a research assistant
at the Data Justice Hub. It is a collaborative research experiences as a cooperative project that pursues data-related skills development for social activists,
critical researchers and the general public, and aims to understand how data activists gather and make sense of data.
The Internet Archive has been valuable
She said, in providing information for the project and its podcast, Data Decoded.
For a recent class on sociology theory, Rowan said she’s found it useful to search for work by early researchers such as W.E.B. Du Bois in the Internet Archive’s collection. Her university library has a wealth of materials, but she says there are trust review times when she can only find an older book through the Archive and, being digital, it’s easier to locate.
With an event sponsored by the Milieux Institute
Which offers programs at the intersection of fine arts, digital culture, and information technology, Rowan leveraged the Internet Archive in another way. She created a one-hour Curating Nostalgia workshop where participants could explore resources in the digital collection to create their own personal nostalgia archive.