My colleague Brenda Martin and I are beginning to plan out our presentation for the NAI national workshop coming up in November. We’re going to talk about oral history as a primary source of information that can feed very usefully into interpretation, whether it’s a museum exhibit, a docent’s talk during a walking tour, or any way that we as “interpretation professionals” provide information to the public regarding the resources (natural or cultural) that they’re interacting with.
As I continue to explore this brave new information world that is developing within the envelope of “Web 2.0″ — this new world where we, as “authorities,” can no longer expect to just “broadcast” our information to a passive audience — it’s really got me to thinking about the relationships between “information” and “authorities” and just who is in charge here. This virtual world where there literally are no walls is a great way to imagine a real world where the actual walls of our bastions of authorities — like museums and libraries — become less the imposing symbols of Authority and become more welcoming places of collaboration and community involvement and engagement with the stories we’re all creating together.
So, are we going to go to this conference — talk about a bastion of Authority! — and stand up before our audience and deliver information to them as they sit there quietly and take notes?
It seems at best ironic; and at worst, a missed opportunity. I think oral history itself, as the voice of regular people, not Experts or Authorities or History Professors, is a subversive force all its own. It is a de-centralization of authority precisely because it gives the regular folk a say in telling how it was. That’s why Authorities discount it — it’s hearsay, gossip, and human memory is notoriously unreliable. People forget dates. They remember things that never happened. It’s not The Truth. It’s not The Facts. And it’s not in the The History Book. How can it be of any use to us?
Well, I won’t go into all that here. I’m just thinking since we’re talking about social information, really, and thinking about it as a de-centralization of authority, that it just seems strange to position ourselves as authorities (in the sense of one-way communication) and just “dump” information on our audience.
This is where Web 2.0 comes in, with its model of aggregation, collaboration, and community. What if, ahead of time, we could engage potential session-goers and have them help decide what the content of the session should be? The questions they want answered? The thoughts and experiences they might have to share? And afterwards we could continue the dialog in a wiki or some other kind of community forum?
It all depends on what you’re looking for. If you need the detailed facts of a historical event — dates, times, numbers — don’t go to oral history. If I need to know how to build a rocket, I’m not going to someone’s MySpace page, or even to Wikipedia. But if I’m looking for a way to help my audience make a meaningful, emotional connection to something — a landscape, an artifact, an endangered animal — then maybe socially-sourced information (such as a Lakota elder relating a traditional story) is where it’s at. Hopefully they all have their place in weaving a complete picture, telling the whole story. None of us can tell The Truth, as far as I’m concerned — no one owns that information, no one really knows it. We need to get over ourselves and our need to be Authorities.
