Articulating a New Definition

While I never posted a mission statement for this blog, one of the motivations in its creation centered on my desire to explore and articulate the role of the historian in our culture today.  My first post dealt with the idea that teaching philosophies for history have become boilerplate portfolio documents with little regard to the actual practice of the craft their passages describe.  As a result, a number of students take a number of history courses and come away only with knowledge of the 'trivial' that served no greater purpose towards the establishment of foundational skills in document analysis and argumentative writing.  I should have added that the teaching philosophy is only one factor among many that has led to the increasing 'trivialization' of history in American culture, and that what is really needed is a redefinition of the role historians play not only in our education system but also within the larger field of the shared cultural experience.  

I believe I have begun to formulate such a redefinition, and I want to share some introductory thoughts on this idea.

Having read several works dealing with the production of culture and its relationship to a healthy, protected public domain, I was intrigued with use of the 'commons' metaphor by several authors to express the relationship humans possess with culture that has been allowed to be commodified.  The premise that granting temporary 'monopoly rights' to expression of ideas (copyrights and patents) finds counterbalance and justification only in the allowance of unfettered public use once those rights expire, i.e. the creation of the public domain, might best be explored in such a metaphor only, as Lewis Hyde points out in Common as Air, if we first establish operation of the 'commons' in its historical setting. 

For example, Hyde points out that one annual event in the life of the 'commons' involved the surrounding users pacing around the borders and dismantling any fenced off area found within.  He also points out that the 'commons' did not possess unlimited capacity for use and required the enforcement of limitations in order to preserve the longevity of the space for all.  These two elements, the perseverance to dismantle encroachments upon the 'commons' and the foresight to instil limitations on destructive usage, form for Hyde guidelines to be followed in order to maintain a healthy public domain in our current cultural environment.  This got me thinking- if one of the key elements to successful stewardship of our shared cultural 'commons' involves patrolling the 'borders', then the public needs to know the contours of the boundary lines in question.  

This is the first element of my redefinition on the role of the historian; they should act as lamps in the darkness, bringing their light to focus on what belongs in the 'commons' and what is an encroachment.  So far the battle has mainly been carried on by lawyers, a crucial task as the legal question is what most directly threatens the gradual enclosure of the 'commons' for private use.  Yet legal defense will mean nothing if the 'commons' are not utilized.  One significant challenge is getting the public at large to realize the value preservation of such a 'commons' holds for them and this is an area where historians can make their contribution.  We need to expose our knowledge of the past in a format that is accessible to a wide audience, promoting the use of archives and other public collections of sources so that people can begin to reflect on their larger role in the greater humanistic tradition.  History, as a profession, needs to open itself up dramatically and demonstrate to the people the role sampling of the cultural 'commons' plays in our interpretations of the past.  In this way we can begin to move away from the 'trivialization' of history and actively make the public a participant in the practice of our craft.

I know a lot of what I wrote above is high-minded and contains zero stated practical applications.  As I said above, my motivation for writing in this blog is to explore the role historians play in our larger culture and I plan to articulate more of my ideas in the future.  One way I plan to do that is to highlight projects or other ideas I believe will help in my search.  I begin with two ideas that are not only practical, but also fundamental to the redefinition I started sketching out above.

The first is this video on the creation of 'Public Domain Calculators' that I found on the website of COMMUNIA, the european thematic network on the digital public domain, and made by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

This is one great idea that would go a long way to establishing the boundaries, for authors at least, of the public domain in our complex, multi-legal networked world.  Historians could easily suggest works they've come across that might not be easily catalogued as well as help promote the continually growing wealth of the written public domain.  Of course, knowing the contents is one thing but actually finding what you need or an explanation of what is written is another.  This is where the second idea enters: Open Bookmarks.


James Bridle, who began the discussion and formulation of Open Bookmarks on his blog, booktwo.org, summarizes the project:

Open Bookmarks is not a thing, it’s a proposal, a flag in the ground. We need to agree on a way of sharing and storing annotations and bookmarks, reading attention data and everything around the book: that aura.

Open Bookmarks will provide a venue for agreeing on a format for doing that, and will then push for its wider adoption.

Imagine having a text students read during a semester update, over the internet, periodically with new notes or passages enhanced with links to other material.  It would make history much more interactive, with texts coming alive instead of being passively read.  Beyond education, these portable and shareable links could also assist the greater public in becoming more engaged with reading, making foreign translations more comprehensible (I love Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle, but realize I get more from the text because I've studied Russian history and culture) and easily providing additional information on complex or controversial points in science or political works.  Universal annotation would greatly enhance the role of the historian, if only for the incredible ease it will allow in the sharing of our sources to the larger public.


These are just two practical ideas I see as being instrumental to the public engagement of the 'commons' cause.  They are also useful in their ability to allow the historian to make a more visible contribution to this ongoing 'commons' war.  The models and definitions of this new fully digital intellectual property reality are still in motion and historians have a vital role to play in the shaping of this reality.