Staff Highlights

This past Thursday, Meagan Doyle, Digital Archivist of Special Collections & Archives at Bowdoin Library, joined Maine Calling on Maine Public Radio to discuss oral histories. Firsthand accounts grant historians and archivists a deeper and more nuanced understanding of historical events and their effect on the people who lived through them. She and other panelists discussed some of the challenges in collecting and preserving them, as well as how oral history changes with new technology.

Meagan noted the democratization of oral histories afforded by the widespread availability of smart phones.  Whereas decades ago doing an oral history project meant investing in expensive and specialized equipment, “now we all have audio recording devices in our pockets all the time.”  This allows anyone to capture an oral history, and Meagan encouraged anyone considering it to do so:  It really is worth capturing anyone’s story.”.

They also discussed how AI will impact oral histories. Meagan said, “[Generative AI] creating an oral history that’s not real…is not very far off in terms of where the technology is right now.”  Users of oral histories need to be diligent to ensure the veracity of sources.

Oral histories in Bowdoin Library’s Special Collections & Archives are available online and are open to the public, including the George J. Mitchell Oral History Project, a collection of recollections and personal impressions from individuals who knew George J. Mitchell.

Listen to the entire episode here.

Whether it was food or knowledge you were craving, Friends of the Southport Historical Society served up a satisfying dish. Southport Town Hall was packed Aug. 4 for the group’s latest installment of the Donald and Joyce Duncan Lecture Series, “Cookbooks as Historical Evidence,” led by Marieke Van Der Steenhoven, Bowdoin College’s Special Collections Education and Engagement librarian.

Read the full article by the Boothbay Register here.

Linnea Minich, Research and Instruction Librarian at Bowdoin Library, delivered an interactive workshop titled “Citation Needed: Weaving Together Citation and Information Sharing with WikiEdu”, at LOEX, an annual conference on library instruction and information literacy in Pasadena, CA. Workshop participants used WikiEdu resources to determine which Wikipedia articles are most in need of improvement, then practiced adding a citation to those articles.

WikiEdu is a Wikipedia training and instruction platform offering training modules, customizable course pages, and classroom programs. While these resources are designed for semester-long courses, Minich demonstrated to workshop participants that these resources can be used in individual classes and other time-limited library settings to demystify the technically complex world of Wikipedia editing. As Wikipedia articles are subject to peer review by the community, this kind of participation can help students understand citation as a crucial part of the knowledge-sharing process, rather than as a formality.

The WikiEdu curriculum emphasizes the importance of improving representation on Wikipedia for under-represented groups. In Minich’s workshop, she showed participants how to find important articles that need to be improved by looking at WikiProjects like Indigenous peoples of North America and African diaspora. These WikiProjects are formed by groups of Wikipedia editors working to improve articles in a particular area.

Minich notes, “even though this workshop was during the last session block at the conference, I had some enthusiastic participation. The audience asked helpful questions about the practical side of these activities, and about Wikipedia and WikiEdu. I have used WikiEdu in three semester-long courses previously. It was great to have the opportunity to experiment with how this can be applied at Bowdoin to help students think about citations differently.”