For the past 7 years I have been working with oral historian Michael Frisch, Ph.D., at The Randforce Associates in Buffalo, NY. With no formal background in public history, oral history, or really any history I followed my curiosity into a realm I often call “Information Cartography“. I now work full time as Director of Technology at Randforce. What we do here is an evolving artform and science that lies somewhere between cataloging, indexing, and thesaurus development, as well as content management and multi-media production for oral histories and other types of recordings. In attempting to define this uncharted territory of research we find ourselves constantly inventing new metaphors, analogies, and general “raps” to explain our work process. Mapping our own ideas linguistically is perhaps the most important information cartography we do, for ourselves and for others. I look forward to explaining this so-called day job of mine here, as I’m sure I’ll learn new things about who we are and what we do through exposure to the new (to me) environment, perspective, and vocabulary.

Although Randforce has been built around Frisch’s work in oral history, I want to learn from and apply our practice into other fields, including library science and (eventually) civil and environmental engineering, in which I hold a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon. I enrolled in a class at the University at Buffalo in the Department of Library and Information Science (LIS) this past semester (Fall, 2009) to learn their vocabulary and theory and begin to articulate better what we do at Randforce.  Here’s an early attempt to put it in technical and/or library terms: we are creating databases containing discrete records representing passages of audio and video content, which we label and annotate, which then themselves are represented by multi-faceted, easily visualized, thesauri/indexes directly linked to the source recording.

Aspects of organizing a catalogue or collection and creating abstracts are also integral in what we call “digital indexing”, which has mostly been built around the strengths and limitations of a particular piece off-the-shelf real-time audio/video recording software called Interclipper. That software, coming out of market research, has been invaluable in exploring an effective non-linear back-end content management and content display system, combined with a unique, truly non-destructive editing environment all in one interface. The skills, methods, and approaches we’ve learned continue to be applied across any number of custom or commercial software, database, and web tools.

I am excited about the possibilities of continuing our work exploring the boundaries of direct audio or video indexing, hopefully moving towards fulfilling the promise and power of true random access in digital/web environments. Oral history is fascinating in LIS terms particularly because the size and nature of audio or video segments are not usually pre-determined. Indexing within and across interviews requires adjusting not only the precision, specificity, and exhaustivity of the collection of terms, but the frequency, length, and duration of the units being indexed themselves. I hope to explore further (with help from graphic designers, artists, computer geeks, and librarians) the implications of oral history on methodologies for recorded narratives in any number of fields. One specific interest I have is to integrate the quality, physicality, and general power of printed text with the digital parallels–creating seamless semantic and artistic consistency between a concrete physical publication form (like a book) and “more dynamic” interfaces on glowing, rectangular screens. I will present some brief examples at THATcamp Columbus of how all this work is just beginning.

Since this blogging itself is intended to shape the interaction at THATcamp, I will use it to sketch out my interests allowing us to hone in on what I am going to talk about as the event approaches. As a stake in the ground, “information cartography” captures a lot of what I do professionally, and exemplifies how I think generally. (Or at least how I think I think). The mapping metaphor has been very helpful in characterizing and/or communicating the work I do indexing oral histories, and the title itself conjures aspects of my personality, including but not limited to my general obsession with organization and my love of real-time synthesis of driving directions using a collection of appropriately scaled road atlases. (To skip ahead, scan the bullet points below and just respond if you’re into anything I’m into.)

So, as a rudimentary example of information cartography, I will map out the scope of my interests using a four-quadrant model—which came out of a recent conversation with my sister about balancing artistic endeavors with “real work”. Though I am lucky to have to great balance and even cross-over between what are generally thought to be separate worlds of work and play, defining them here is has a two-fold benefit of helping me inventory priorities and giving strangers a tour of what I think I am all about. My intention is to define four aspects of my interests loosely here, then blog separately on some or all of them subsequently and co-hone my talk with the help of some blog-loving campers. So…

“My Thing” Map, Version 1. This should actually be a Venn Diagram because these should not be mutually exclusive, however, at this phase I am specifically defining them so the separation actually appropriate:

Work Work | Work Play
Play Work  |  Play Play

Work-work – My contractually obligated, revenue generating work conducted generally 9-5 weekdays here: www.randforce.com. The big threads of interest we might want to talk about in this realm include:

• Oral history as a Cultural, Technical, and Organizational Node in the Digital Age
• Cataloging meets thesauri meets back-of-the-book indexing
• Database/Software Tool Hybridization
• Digital Literacy and/or Fearlessness
• “Anecdata”, or What Civil Engineering and Oral History have in common

Work-play – Development-oriented highly uncertain but interesting things I keep tabs on for my employer and myself. Related threads are:

• Visualizations
• Human/Computer Interface Advancement
• Luddite Confessions of a Technology Director (a.k.a. “Real work” quality check)

Play-work – are my personal/artistic non-revenue self-improvement endeavors. For me this has included:

• Music lessons / Band Practices
• Tai Chi Chuen, “Religion” Research
• Chiropractic, Dietary, and/or Interrelated Health “Arts”

Things I wish I could devote more personal development time to include:

• Computer/web programming
• Indexing and Curation of Personal Digital Photo Collection
• Cooking
• Sewing
• Construction of custom sing-along lyric-aid for play-play (digital or paper)

[Since I enrolled in classes fall of 2009, the entire Play-work category of my life has been overrun by a new category, which could be aptly labeled “work-work-work”.]

Play-play – is my fully non-work time. This includes basically socializing and music. On a good day, I have a core group of trusted friends with whom I can non-emotionally and productively discuss (in person) such topics as:

• Evolutionary Biology with a Darwinian Dialectic Deconstructionist bent
• “Performance” as an Essential Element of Human Existence

Music is really big in my life, but I prefer to do rather that talk or define. Here are some things I like to do:

• Recording original music
• Sing-along hosting/accompanying
• Coaching / arranging vocal harmonies

But to take my mind off of things, I enjoy

• Photography
• Longboarding
• Motorcycling
• Snow Shoveling

So, if anyone wants to talk about any of these things, I’m game. I’m hoping (and assuming) that there are some unidentified connections between some of them too. Thanks for reading!