Week 07: Records and Evidence Part 3 - Context and Meaning, Lecturer: Gavan McCarthy - Fact, Fiction and Fraud in the Digital Age Lecture Summary

Fact, Fiction and Fraud in the Digital Age
Essential Skills for the Information Age Worker, Semester 2 2004

Week 07: Records and Evidence Part 3 - Context and Meaning

Lecturer: Gavan McCarthy

Online Sources

Date: 8 Sep 2004 1pm

Location: Old Arts Theatre B

This lecture will explore the broader issues of how meaning in documents and objects and other constructs is transmitted through time (within a culture) and also across space (to other cultures). The documentation and capture of context will be critically examined.

Nb. There are NO lecture notes for this week

Tutorial Exercises

Using Google, search on the phrase 'context and meaning'. Find an article not already listed in the references that appears to be relevant and use as a discussion point.
Discuss the decontextualising forces of contemporary web and computer technology. What things need to happen to the technology to allow us to get around these problems?

Lab Exercise

Navigate between these two points without using any form of search engine:
Starting point: http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/biogs/P001333b.htm
End point: http://www.unimelb.edu.au/HB/subjects/136-042.html

Find the shortest path.
Record the number of choices at each node.
Find all the possible paths (of similar length).
From the starting point begin to calculate the total number of pathways that could be followed - how quickly does this become extreme?

If you finish this example try the same exercise with:
Starting point: (Phillip Law) http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/biogs/P001333b.htm
End point: (Philippe La Hausse de Lalouvière) http://pages.intnet.mu/mmcs/be.htm

N.b. During the lab you should undertake the search for the first part of the tutorial exercise, i.e. find your article and ensure that it is different from those chosen by others, as all students will be expected to give a brief summary in next week’s tutorials.

Online Sources

Articles

McCarthy, Gavan, 'The Structuring of Context: New Possibilities in an XML Enabled World Wide Web', Journal of the Association for History and Computing, vol. 3, no. 1, The American Association for History and Computing, April 2000, http://mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCIII1/ARTICLES/McCarthy/index.html.

Conference Papers

Cook, Terry, 'Beyond the Screen: The Records Continuum and Archival Cultural Heritage', in Beyond the Screen: Capturing Corporate and Social Memory, ASA Coference 2000, Australian Society of Archivists, August 2000, http://www.archivists.org.au/sem/conf2000/terrycook.pdf.

Harris, Verne, 'Law, Evidence and Electronic Records', in Proceedings of ICA Conference, Seville, August 2000, August 2000, http://www.archivists.org.au/sem/misc/harris.pdf.

Prepared by: Gavan McCarthy
Created: 5 June 2000
Modified: 22 July 2004

Published by Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre on AustehcWeb, 2000 - 2004
Comments, questions, corrections and additions: tfac@austehc.unimelb.edu.au
Updated: 22 July 2004
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/teaching/tfac/course/L000006b.htm

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