Reviews

Website review: http://primary-sources.eui.eu/

As opposed to the websites we had to review for the previous sessions, ‘European History Primary Sources’ (EHPS) offered rather little to talk about in terms of narratives. This is quite simply due to the concept behind the website itself: as an index of scholarly digital repositories of primary sources, its aim is to make it easier for students and researchers to find material in the ever-growing ‘jungle’ of digital archives and repositories. As such though, this website does not offer any narratives of its own.

A point I would like to pick up on is the list of countries covered by the different repositories featured on EHPS. When looking at the list (http://primary-sources.eui.eu/country), one can clearly see that the term ‘European’ in the title of the project refers to Europe as a continent rather than to Europe as a political entity. Even Turkey and Russia, two countries which have most of their territory stretching onto the Asian continent, are represented. In a historical context, such a wide definition of Europe obviously makes sense and needs no further explanation. When watching the news though, one can nowadays often hear and see a distinction being made between Europe (actually meaning the European Union) and Russia, most noticeably in the context of the Ukraine conflict. This implicitly suggests a much narrower view of what ‘Europe’ is. So, while professional historians and even history students should find it obvious that Russia belongs on a list of European countries in a historical context, that might not be the case for parts of the general public. As ‘democratisation’ of historical knowledge and of access to historical sources are among the most frequent self-proclaimed goals of digitisation projects around the globe, it becomes ever more important to also allow the new target audiences to contextualise what they can find. Including Russia and Turkey on a list of European countries is obviously a minute step in that direction, but I nonetheless found it interesting enough to be pointed out here, especially because last week, I already wrote about diverging definitions of the term ‘Europe’.

Perhaps again pointing out the obvious, I would still like to stress the importance of having a central hub for accessing the vast amount of digital archives that have sprouted across the world wide web in recent years. Unfortunately though, the search function on EHPS is underwhelming. Rather than display digitally available source material immediately, it merely indicates which repositories have material related to the entered keyword(s). Apart from not generating many results on even the most general queries (e.g. “world war 1” only generating seven hits: http://primary-sources.eui.eu/free-text-search?search_api_views_fulltext=world+war+1), the optical presentation is also far from perfect. All things considered, I think that the current search mechanism on EHPS limits its utility tremendously.

European History Primary Sources (primary-sources.eui.eu/) est un projet du European University Institute à Florence (Italie), dont l’attention principale est portée sur les sources primaires de l’histoire européenne. Or, le titre risque aussi créer de fausses attentes chez l’utilisateur, car EHPS ne contient pas de ressources numériques, mais incorpore une banque de données de liens vers d’autres archives digitales, peu importe le type de sources proposées, la langue de l’interface ou la période définie. Les initiateurs du projet expliquent leur mission ainsi : “The purpose of EHPS is to provide an easily searchable index of scholarly digital repositories that contain primary sources for the history of Europe”.[1]

En raison de la nature du site, l’analyse d’une narration éventuelle demeure donc impossible. Néanmoins, même si EHPS déclare de rassembler des sites sur l’histoire de l’Europe, les archives présentées dans la liste ne poursuivent pas nécessairement une optique européenne. Certaines se limitent à un pays (des archives nationales), voire même à une région. Des « digital repositories » sur l’histoire de l’Europe ne veulent donc pas seulement désigner des projets transnationaux, mais également ceux à vocation nationale. S’y ajoute que EHPS reste taciturne lorsqu’il s’agit de définir l’Europe. Sous la rubrique « country » de l’onglet « Browse digital repositories », le site dresse une liste de 41 pays (avec, en plus, l’Europe comme catégorie), dont certains ne font pas partie de l’UE (Albanie, Bosnie ou Russie) ou ne se trouvent pas majoritairement sur le continent Européen (Turquie). D’ailleurs, quelques catégories semblent plutôt avoir une nature cosmétique, car en cliquant dessus, le site n’indique aucune archive digitale (p.ex. dans le cas de Malte). Par contre, la Suisse manque complètement – alors qu’il s’avère après quelques recherches que la banque de données contient des archives suisses, comme le site DODIS (Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland).[2]

L’aspect des pays met en évidence un autre problème : les critères pour qu’un site soit classé sous « Europe » au lieu de son pays d’origine restent obscurs. Le contenu du site n’en fait certainement pas partie, car dans la liste de l’Allemagne, on retrouve la « American Antiquarian Society ». Bien que ce projet rassemble aussi des sources sur l’Europe, celles-ci ne se limitent pas uniquement à l’Allemagne. Également inconnus à l’utilisateur sont les critères de sélection pour un site spécifique : est-ce que EHPS rassemble toutes les archives digitales qui, d’une manière ou d’une autre, abordent l’histoire européenne (ou d’un pays européen) ou doivent-elles répondre à certaines normes ?

Pour chaque site dans la banque de données, EHPS fournit une description, souvent factuelle, en indiquant le type de sources disponibles ou le nombre d’objets digitalisés. Une critique reste rare, même s’il existe des exceptions, comme dans le cas de « eLuxemburgensia »[3], où l’utilisateur est mis en garde contre le système OCR, qui est très fautif. D’autres entrées dans la liste ne sont pas actualisées, car le Centre virtuel sur la connaissance de l’Europe (CVCE) est toujours présenté sous le nom de « European Navigator »[4]. Il existe même des cas où les liens sont absolument obsolètes parce que les projets présentés n’existent plus (p.ex. Cold War International History Project).

Malgré ses quelques imperfections, EHPS s’avère indispensable face au nombre croissant d’archives digitales. Certes, pas toutes les informations et liens sont actualisés, et la banque de données n’est pas exhaustive – même si elle est déjà assez riche – mais le projet du European University Institute peut constituer un premier pas important pour trouver des sites utiles à la recherche. D’autant plus que la banque de données rassemble aussi bien des projets connus (Europeana, EUscreen, etc.) que ceux qui sont moins notoires (comme des archives régionaux).

Références:

[1] http://primary-sources.eui.eu/about (dernier accès: 15.10.2014).

[2] http://primary-sources.eui.eu/website/diplomatic-documents-switzerland-dodis (dernier accès: 18.10.2014).

[3] http://primary-sources.eui.eu/website/eluxemburgensia (dernier accès: 18.10.2014).

[4] http://primary-sources.eui.eu/website/european-navigator (dernier accès: 18.10.2014).

A website that would gather addresses and links to other digital archives or scholar databases was really needed. In fact so many institutions, universities or archives digitize and put online their sources but it is often difficult, and sometime impossible, to find their address or even to know of their existence. For this purpose really helpful for the researchers is the website titled “European History Primary Sources” created by the Library and the Department of History and Civilization of the European University Institute in Florence in Italy, which guarantee to the user an academic quality. It contains links to primary sources websites, which are very handy, gathering internet platforms of all the countries of the European continent mainly but containing also indications regarding American websites, a state which is not indicated in the browse options.

Several tools can be applied to refine the search selecting the country, the language or the type of source needed; but maybe the most important is the possibility to select the targeted historical period. Every website stored in the “European History Primary Sources” is introduced by a small review and description of the nature and the quantity of sources accessible to facilitate the choice of the user, which is a very researcher friendly action. The bookmark option is also an application meant to gain time and energy saving the results for a later moment, which not many websites offer and more of them should. The interface is quite simple and instinctive so that the user does not really has a chance to get lost.

The number of partners is still a bit limited but hopefully the website will gather all the existing primary sources digital archives and deliver the scholar or the student from driving out interesting and useful sources from hidden and unknown places of the web and possibly to miss them. However even now it is a very useful tool.

According to the description in its ‘About’-section, this website aims to be an archive for European television history, allowing researchers, students and the general public access to an unprecedented amount of material from a wide variety of audiovisual archives across Europe [http://euscreen.eu/about.html]. In the following lines, I would like to comment specifically on two aspects, namely the European ‘scope’ of the website and its definition of “Europe”.

Firstly then, the ‘scope’ of the website: by this, I mean that the immense amount of audiovisual material available is repeatedly labelled as being “European”. On every last page, the letters ‘EU’ or the different varieties of the word ‘European’ are mentioned over and over again. In my opinion, this goes so far as to conceal (especially to the non-academic public) that this particular way of connecting the material is in itself already one possible narrative among many. For instance, I think that the presentation of the material on the website over-stresses the similarities between the individual elements rather than their differences. The side-by-side availability of the material automatically suggests content-related connections between the individual clips where maybe there aren’t any. Of course, the sheer availability of the material means that any researcher (or more generally speaking, every viewer) can also choose to look at the differences. In practice though, I would argue that the visual presentation and virtually every line of text on the website lead the viewer in the opposite direction. A case in point, at least in my opinion, is the image-movie (or trailer) of the website as it is available both in the ‘About’-section on the website itself and on Vimeo [http://vimeo.com/78342872]. In that clip (at 1:33 minutes to be specific), the words “Let us be your guide” are displayed. Although not meant that way, this can also point to the fact that the creators of the website choose one way of interpreting (i.e. a ‘scope’ for) the material over the other(s). Of course, they have to offer some sort of narrative if they want the broader public to be able to make sense of the huge amount of resources available. Thus, I don’t mean to judge their way of proceeding, I would merely like to point out that it comes at a price.

Secondly, the definition of which countries and regions constitute Europe in the context of this website caught my attention, which is why I would like to comment on it here. The ‘EUscreen’- project combines material from 30 institutions from 21 EU member states. I am not so much interested in the fact that not all current members of the EU are on the list, even though it is still worth asking why. Rather, I have noticed that two Swiss institutions appear on the list of partners (one of them merely as an associate partner) [http://euscreen.eu/partners.html]. At first sight, this seems logical: with Switzerland being situated in the geographical centre of the European continent, why would one not include it? On second thought though, it reveals that the definition of ‘Europe’ in the context of the website isn’t strictly political. While 30 institutions from 21 countries constitute make impressive list, one has to ask whether it would not be beneficial to have, for instance, Turkish or Russian or Belorussian material available as well. Actually, it might be even better to go one step further and ask why none of these countries are on the list as of yet. Personally, I suspect that this goes back directly to the ‘EUscreen’-project being financed mostly by EU-institutions such as the European Commission. As a student or researcher, additional material from outside the ‘EU28’ would doubtlessly add tremendous value to the website. I wonder though whether this would be possible with the given financial background of the project. Thus, the ‘EUscreen’-website points at one of the pitfalls of digital archives, namely that they require a tremendous budget both to be set up and maintained. In my opinion, it is evident that anyone investing on a large scale into such a project would influence it in one way or another. Again, this is supposed to be more of a diagnosis than an allegation.