EDC Symposium: Part Five
by Andy Corrigan
Walking
Walking as sense-making
Professor Caroline Bassett, Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities, set the tone for the second day of the symposium by talking about walking, and the relationship it has to how we experience and make sense of things. Caroline reminded us that whist digitising collections and putting them in virtual environments has benefits, it makes them connected and accessible, but it also loses something – you become immobile, and the information comes to you. Engagement with “live” media is important, and walking shifts attention back to the body, its practice and embodied nature is favourable towards rich, engaged participation. To look at a panoramic view of a city is theoretical, experiencing it is an embodied practice. Walking writes stories… [cite De Certau].
Walking can play a role in increasing the affordances we give and allows us to develop deeper engagement, whereas digital culture is rapid and destructive. Participating in meaningful engagement with works of culture is also a way to distance the kind of destructive digital culture of mass engagement and access. In thinking about collections in this way, we can ponder the potential friendship between database and narrative. Another important aspect is that people do “sense-making” differently, and experiencing different networks of expertise reveals that, and walking is a method that can facilitate it. Caroline asked us to contemplate if this needs to scale-up when thinking about it in terms of large institutional collections, or if these approaches are a sufficient tool-kit in themselves.
Activity 3: Walking with Constable; A Cambridge Edition
Caroline’s approach, and my work with her and the rest of the team on the Walking with Constable Project has been a major influence to my AHRC-RLUK Fellowship, so I was keen to share the experience with the symposium attendees. The method of hybrid walking as writing that Caroline introduced us to is perhaps one that needs to be experienced to be more wholly understood. We had previously arranged a ‘Walking with Constable: The Cambridge Edition’ as part of the 2024 Cambridge Festival, so making use of some of the content from that to plan a walk that would be feasible in the time available was relatively easy. Technology on the other-hand, as it often does, chose the moment to throw a spanner in the works – an outdated security certificate and related technical hitch meant it wasn’t quite the augmented reality experience I was aiming for. But, as I think is testament to the unwritten rules of librarians and digital technology, we made the most of what we could and were still able to use mobile devices to engage with and relate some digital content to the physical environment we were walking through.
We first stopped along the Cambridge college backs to use Kings College Chapel as a surrogate site for looking at and discussing the printed version of Constable’s Stoke-by-Neyland, in Suffolk. We walked on to the Mill Pond at Laundress Green on the Cam, where, again using it as a surrogate site, we discussed Constable’s Mill Stream print before looking at an image of the King’s Mill that had once stood at this site, looming over the River Cam.
Walking through a much busier part of town was testament to the differences between looking-at and experiencing a place, as a few participants made quick diversions into the tempting shops. Having reached the Cambridge University Press bookshop, we discussed a photo taken during an unsuccessful vote for equality for women to take full degrees at Cambridge in 1897 – something which took another 50 years. This was a stark reminder of the importance of diversity and the richness it brings, as well as an opportunity to discuss how ephemeral some things in our archives are, which is something that chimes with so much of our current focus on digital preservation as well.
Making our way down Senate House Passage, we paused one last time on Trinity Lane to discuss an image from Cambridge University Library’s own archive, of books being lowered though a window from the old library and onto a horse-drawn cart to be taken up to the “new” building in the 1930s. This took our minds full circle and back to discussing libraries, as we continued on our journey and made our way back to the conference venue.
This post has been funded by the AHRC-RLUK Professional Practice Fellowship Scheme for research and academic libraries.