HATII and collaborative Beyond Text: Performances, Sounds, Images, Objects programme doctoral award with the National Library of Scotland.

Details for candidates, closing date 30 May 2008.

This is one of six awards made by the AHRC Beyond Text programme, details of which can be found at: http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/apply/research/sfi/ahrcsi/beyond_text_sounds_voices_images_objects.asp

Context
Social networking is largely regarded as a novel phenomena of the so-called ‘information age’ with no connection with analogue forms of networking.  Curiously this is the starting point of much research into the phenomena (see for example Nancy van House ‘Weblogs: Credibility and Collaboration in an Online World’, 2004).  Van House claims that for her research – ‘One advantage of blogs . . . is that they are, by definition, visible records of participants’ presentations of self and their comments on and links to one another’; but so surely are earlier forms of networking through the exchange of letters, images and printed ephemera between friends and colleagues either through formal or informal networks that are retrospectively available in the holdings of archives and library manuscript departments.  Social networks are certainly more tractable than correspondence by our contemporary postal services, but that is no good reason for concluding that they are novel.  In the nineteenth century Gladstone wrote to his wife three times a day, probably as many times as we in our 24/7 culture would wish to communicate with our partners.  Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington and Queen Victoria all conducted vast correspondence with their extended families and friends.  Social networking takes place within a public space in contrast to the apparent private space of diaries and letters; but in some contexts there are reasons to question the nature of such privacy.  Some diaries and letters seem to have been written explicitly with publication in view or at least to be read by others than the author or the intended recipient.  Queen Victoria’s letters, which were published shortly after her death and with permission of her son, are a good example.  We are all familiar with the letters read aloud at the breakfast table.  In Japanese culture the letter was public within the household, while the social network is considered private to the participants and is straining and modifying cultural norms.  Social networking employs the whole range of available communications technologies to a fault; but communication has always exploited available technologies as soon as they become affordable.  From the eighteenth century diaries and correspondence increasingly contained non-textual features or were accompanied by parallel series of commonplace books and albums.

Research questions
In any exploration of this relationship between analogue and digital practice, the research questions can be expected to be complex and nuanced and might include the frequency of interactions, the range and extent of interactions, the form and structure of the content, how far the blogs and social networks identified in both domains can be characterised as epistemic, the relationship between private and public space, what sort of content is posted to networks or kept in the analogue and so on.  Anecdotal evidence suggests, for example, that the structure and form of postings to blogs and social networks are radically different from practice in the analogue, both in terms of their layout and use of vocabulary and familiar components such as salutations and valedictions.  Are these as much a reflection of societal change as of the technology?  Although self-evidently blogs and social networks are more tractable than current postal services, there is little or no research into just how much more tractable they really are and whether the deterioration of the latter is simply a consequence of the former.  There is also little understanding of the way in which non textual forms of communication impacted on communication.  When for example did the exchange of drawings and photographs become a commonplace and how if at all do photographs taken with a Box Brownie differ from those taken with a mobile phone or that matter from sketches?  Is just a question of the technology employed or does the technology radically alter behaviour?  What type of content is most commonly posted to networks and how does this differ, if at all, from content kept in the analogue and will this have ramifications for future preservation strategies?  Does the apparent abandoning of ‘form’ in the digital communication reduce the trust that users place in social networks.

The Harden/Allan collection at the National Library of Scotland
This collection comprises thirty-two newsletters in separate volumes covering periods of four months from 1801-1811, which were designed to be sent to India to Jessy Allan’s sister.  They refer to the family’s wide social network in the New Town of Edinburgh and around Barathay Hall on Lake Windermere.  Unusually they are heavily illustrated and in some ways can be described as a pre-cursor of what we might observe in family blogs and websites in that the drawings are records of events and activities, for example social gatherings and domestic chores, such as bottling whisky.  Such images are analogous to the sort of photographs that populate blogs and social networks.  The collection has been described by Iain Brown in Elegance and Entertainment in the New Town of Edinburgh, published by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, and small selections have been published (W Park, ‘Extracts from the Journal of Jessy Allan, wife of John Harden, 1801-11’. Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. xxx (1959) 60-118). With the help of Iain Brown at the NLS the student will become familiar with the collection, begin to plot the social network that it reveals and search for related content in other collections.  At the same time the student will, with the help of all the supervisors, select the blogs or social networks with which to compare the content.  There are a number of possible Edinburgh and Lake District sites, such as http://davemckain.blogspot.com/ or http://soteria2.blogspot.com/ or http://nl.wordpress.com/tag/lake-district/ .  These and other relevant blogs along with Edinburgh and Lake District content in Social Networks, such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook, will be reviewed by the PhD students before a final decision is made.  The NLS is already committed to capturing such content for its collections through its ‘Breaking through the walls’ strategy (http://www.nls.uk/professional/policy/docs/strategy2004.pdf).  Those selected will be captured as part of the NLS collection.  Once this has been done the research questions will be refined and agreed.

Deliverable
The student will be asked to deliver the bulk of the thesis in non-traditional format, combining an on-line collection of the examples from both the analogue and digital evidence, assembled during the course of the project, with accompanying explanation and exegesis that will be made available through the NLS website.  This will provide a useful learning resource and a platform for future research into what we might term the ‘diplomatic’ of the digital.  The written elements of the thesis will be an explanation of the underlying methodology and research results.  At the end of the project HATII and the NLS will stage a workshop to disseminate and discuss the findings.

HATII
HATII has a vibrant research culture with a growing number of doctoral and masters students, exploring a range of topics in the information sciences. Rapid technological change is collapsing the distinction between information objects and necessitating an engagement with disciplines such as anthropology, computer science, ethnography, history, material culture, philosophy sociology and the statistical sciences. By adopting an integrated approach, and with its breadth of expertise in different disciplines, HATII is uniquely placed to explore the theoretical and intellectual foundations of information and its impact on society.

Contemporary concerns such as the war on terror, religious fundamentalism, corporate scandals, globalisation, virtualisation, community and the individual demand both a fresh theoretical approach and an appreciation of the nature of information and associated concepts of flow, trust, transparency, accountability, identity, memory, preservation, evaluation and representation.
Within HATII there is frequent interaction between academic staff, researchers and postgraduate students, a regular flow of visiting fellows and guest lecturers and two weekly research seminars.  The Institute's research activities are overseen by Research and Postgraduate Committees. Since 2000 HATII has attracted over £3 million of research income from the AHRC, JISC, the European Union as well as a number of private foundations.  Further details can be found at http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/research/research.html and a list of current PhD students at http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/courses/phd.html

Criteria and application process
The successful applicants will need to: meet the AHRC’s academic criteria for doctoral study (details of which can be found at http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/apply/postgrad/doctoral_awards_scheme.asp ), have enthusiasm and experience of the subject area; show the potential to develop a range of advanced research skills suited to the needs of the particular project; and demonstrate the ability to work effectively in academic and non-academic environments.  In addition applicants must meet the AHRC’s requirements for UK/EU residency: only students meeting the UK residency requirement will be eligible for the stipend – which will consist of the AHRC standard maintenance grant – in 2008/2009 approx. £12,940.00 – with an additional contribution of £500 per annum from the AHRC and additional support each year from the National Library of Scotland
The successful candidate will be expected to have a masters level qualification in a cognate discipline, such as archival or library and information science, and a good honours degree with some understanding at undergraduate level of Scottish social history.

A downloadable application form can be obtained from http://www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate/howtoapplyforaresearchdegree/ . In this instance online applications are not acceptable. Your application should include a research proposal of no more than 700 words, a curriculum vitae and two references. Applications and all supporting documentation should be submitted by 30 May to: Elaine Wilson, HATII, George Service House, 11 University Gardens, University of Glasgow, G12 8QH. If you wish to discuss your application, you can contact either Elaine Wilson or Professor Michael Moss, m.moss@hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk.  Interviews will take place on Thursday 12 June, 08.