This award supports the participation of American researchers in a U.S.-Japan joint seminar on developing digital archives and oral histories with Japan's KEK High Energy Accelerator Research Organization to be held in Tsukuba, Japan. The co-organizers are Professor Sharon Traweek at the University of California, Los Angeles and Dr. Yoshinobu Takaiwa at the KEK High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Japan. The purposes of the meeting are to: 1) gather and evaluate the specific methods and practices used for developing digital archives and for collecting cohort oral histories; 2) develop detailed strategies for achieving these goals; and 3) developing the collaboration to conduct this work. Collecting oral histories of cohorts who have worked together on specific projects or who have been members of an active network of colleagues will provide a significant contribution to the understanding of such cohorts and networks, especially how they have participated in the development of this distributed complexly structured international community of scientists. The methods of conducting these cohort oral histories are an important contribution to the anthropology and history of science and technology. The development of fully digital archives at KEK will provide an important opportunity for understanding how archives with materials in multiple languages and scripts should be designed. Initiating the design of an interactive digital portal for the archive while the archive is still in the formative stages will provide a model of how to establish an archive with open access. The resources of this digital archive will be available to all users worldwide, including other archives. Further, this trans-disciplinary, trans-national project can provide a model for how to bring together researchers from across the spectrum to work together on an important intellectual project of immediate and enduring interest and it can also be a model to other research institutes on how to design such projects for other archives.
The co-organizers have complementary scientific expertise in the field. This enables them to evaluate and attract the best researchers to participate. The seminar organizers have made a special effort to involve postdocs and graduate students as both participants and observers. The exchange of ideas and data with Japanese experts in the field will enable U.S. participants to advance their own work, and will set the stage for future collaborative projects. Following the seminar the organizers plan to widely disseminate the knowledge base and strategies via a website.
