Digital Humanist Interview with Lindsey Barnes of the National WWII Museum
By S. Corey Clyne
On the 6th of June 2000, in company of 3 friends, I made the trip from California to New Orleans, Louisiana for the grand opening of what was then called the National D-Day Museum. We attended the celebration as “living historians” or “Reenactors”. We participated in the several of the opening festivities and were allowed a preview of the museum ahead of the general public. During my visit I was impressed with the interface of digital data in the interpretation of the D-Day events. At several points patrons can sit in sound booths and select oral histories from four different witnesses; American, British, German soldiers or a French civilian. These oral history booths tied in with the themes of the exhibits and interactive maps.
Having been so moved by my experience at the D-Day Museum I have made it a point to follow the museum through their growth with the use of social media and the museum’s website. The museum has grown considerably and now is called The National World War II Museum and interprets the entire war. In addition to Facebook and Twitter the website has adapted a blog were different curators post pictures of artifacts and highlight anniversaries of battles, 1940’s cultural keynotes and educational materials. Critical to the digital presence of the museum is it’s Senior Archivist and Digital Project Manager, Lindsey Barnes. I chose her for an interview subject due to my curiosity of how digital humanities are affecting museums. Mrs. Barnes answered my questions and presented me with a copy of her resume. She is well experienced and is building the museum’s digital presence equal to the memory of the soldiers of World War Two.
1. What academic training do you credit for getting you to this point in your career?
I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History and a Graduate Degree in Library and Information Science. I very much feel that my MLIS offered the training I most needed to work in the digital humanities. Through it I learned about access to humanity collections though intensely studying and identifying the importance of metadata for access. The organizational skills and the understanding of access through metadata studies throughout my MLIS have very much helped me to work within different institutions with different types of collections successfully.
2. Were there any particular job titles that helped you get to where you are in your career?
I had a graduate assistantship at the State Library of Louisiana scanning and later cataloging for a large IMLS funded grant. The first position was a Scanning Technician, the second a Cataloging Technician. Learning both the technical standards and cataloging and vocabulary standards were very important lessons in my career path. Making sure that I involved myself in as many different types of projects as possible was important to my career as well because I learned many different skill sets, never focusing on only one. That has been very helpful in my career as one always has to evolve and change with the times and the institution’s direction.
3. What other projects have you been involved with?
Digitizing and cataloging of the Louisiana Historical Photographs Collection of the State Library of Louisiana; Cataloging a collection of artists’ books at the Savannah College of Art and Design; creating cataloging standards for our collections database at the National WWII Museum.
4. Do you consider yourself a digital Humanist?
I consider myself a digital humanist because I am shaping the way that the humanities can be accessed online and through research here at the Museum. I don’t usually provide the content but I do make sure it is accessible. For someone like me with an MLIS I feel the best way I can contribute to the digital humanities is by created consistently quality records around our collections and publishing them online to provide people with the most consistent and intuitive access through metadata.
5. How did the museum decide to feature a blog on its website?
And how do you monitor the traffic?
Since we are just now starting to work on getting our collections online, the blog was the easiest way to feature our artifacts and provide content to our online visitors. The blog is written by staff members across our curatorial, research (oral history), interactive and educational departments. An Interactive department staff member monitors the blog along with the Museum’s Facebook page.
6. I see that different curators post on the blog, can you tell me how that is decided? Are their dedicated curators just for that blog?
There are no dedicated curators that just provide online content. They all work on blogs while also working on physical exhibits at the Museum, among many other things. Topics are decided by the curators – usually based on their interests and an anniversary date that they can post the day of. The blog posts are mostly based on anniversaries actually but they are not limited to that.
7. In a progressive museum like yours what skill sets do you find most helpful in your position?
The skill set I find most helpful is being flexible and relying on the knowledge you gain from working on many types of projects. In my previous position of just ‘Archivist’ here at the Museum along with archiving and setting up standards for doing that here, I also co-curated an exhibit, co-authored a book based on that exhibit, wrote grants, supported digitization efforts for existing grants, and even helped to clean weapons! Having at least a little experience in many different aspects of museum work, along with a willingness to try new things and work with different people on different projects has made all the difference in my career.