UCLA turns to social media as a means of researching the Middle East

I love that they are calling the project the “International Digitizing Ephemera Project.”

Ephemera – (1) something of no lasting significance, or (2) paper items that were originally meant to be discarded after use but have since become collectibles.

 

The UCLA Library announced last month a new project aimed at recording and cataloging all relevant forms of social media and photographs involving the Arab Spring, a wave of protests and demonstrations that have swept through the Middle East and North Africa over the past year.

(The project) is largely funded by a $3.4 million donation from the Arcadia Fund, an organization that supports preservation and digitization projects. Libraries apply for grants from the fund and receive money based on the scope of their work.

“The shelf life of these materials is not very long, so it is important that we start our work while the events are taking place, enabling us to have a greater database available to us,” said Todd Grappone, associate university librarian for Digital Initiatives and Information Technology at UCLA.

Data will be collected from verified sources, such as the Twitter accounts of journalists in the region, and stored according to their content and subject matter.

Projects like this are important for scholarship, she said, because they reflect a trend toward the use of digital media as a means of research for current affairs in the Middle East.

via Daily Bruin

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *