>>Community Report COMMUNITY REPORT 2001: Lisa Spiro Lisa Spiro Director, Electronic Text Center Rice University Digital Documentary Documents—whether census records from the Civil War, recordings of cowboy songs, or maps of Victorian London—form the core of many scholarly digital projects. In creating these projects, digital humanists should be aware of the work of journalists and artists in promoting a burgeoning parallel genre, the digital documentary. Like traditional documentaries, digital documentaries focus on actual people and events, but they employ electronic media to open up new ways to explore actuality. Digital documentaries promote interactivity by juxtaposing different forms of media (audio, video, text, image) and enabling viewers to choose their own path through a work; some projects even encourage people to contribute their own documentary work. Three recent examples demonstrate the rich potential of digital documentaries: the formation of the VII Photo Agency, the launching of 360 degrees by Picture Projects, and the founding of Transom by Atlantic Public Media. In September of 2001, seven preeminent photojournalists formed the VII Photo Agency (http://www.viiphoto.com/), which has recently published stunning photos documenting the attack on the World Trade Center and the war in Afghanistan. The VII photographers claim to be “pioneering the integration of digital workflow with photojournalism” by using software that enables them to speed images to editors and viewers via the Internet and construct flexible, searchable databases with full rights protection. Whereas the VII Agency touts the advantages of electronic media for managing and disseminating their work, the 360 degrees web site (http://www.360degrees.org/) uses online quizzes and surveys, audio interviews, photographs, discussion forums, and an interactive timeline to encourage users to explore the criminal justice system. Invoking the metaphor of 360 degrees in both its design and approach to storytelling, the project presents a series of audio interviews with the people involved in or affected by a criminal act, and it also uses QuickTime VR to provide panoramic views of the places in which these people live or work. Transom (http://www.transom.org/) takes interactivity to another level by not only constructing a space where people can gain access to or learn about radio documentaries, but also by offering them an opportunity to contribute their own work. By examining these and similar projects, the cultural heritage computing community can gain important technical, organizational, and theoretical insights. Some of the same tools employed by digital documentaries—such as the content management system used by VII—might also serve humanities computing projects. In searching for ways to organize and promote digital humanities projects, we can look at the cooperative model pursued by VII, Transom’s mission to promote “citizen storytelling” and expand the “public” served by public radio, and 360 degrees’ attempt to build a community through active programs in schools, community centers, and prisons as well as through electronic media. Digital documentaries face many of the same theoretical and methodological questions as humanities computing projects: How should we think of a document in the electronic medium, given the ease of manipulating and replicating digital information? What is the significance of the convergence of different forms of media—audio, video, text, still image, animation—in digital projects? What designs best promote usability and exploration? How might documentaries incorporate data—raw statistics, databases of text and images, and so forth? How can digital projects be disseminated and preserved? Just as scholars, cultural institutions, journalists, filmmakers, and artists have enjoyed fruitful collaborations in the production of radio, film, literary, and photographic documentaries, so electronic media can open up new opportunities for partnership. Perhaps the Digital Opportunity Trust proposed by the Digital Promise Project (another positive development in 2001; see http://www.digitalpromise.org/) could facilitate such partnerships.