Phyllis Bober and the Census Digitisation

Phyllis Pray Bober, Bryn Mawr Library Special Collections

Bryn Mawr Special Coll­ec­tions, Letter from Phyllis Bober to Joe Trapp (detail), 31 May, 1982

In the early 1980s, Bober wrote several letters to Joe Trapp rela­ting her insights from discus­sions she had with various stake­hol­ders of the digi­ti­sa­tion process and her own acquain­tances regar­ding the hard­ware, soft­ware and programming of the computer data­base. She travelled to the Gesell­schaft für Infor­ma­tion und Doku­men­ta­tion in Frank­furt and the Max-Planck-Gesell­schaft in Munich as a repre­sen­ta­tive of the Census. In a letter to Trapp of May 1982, she summa­rised the results of the two meetings, which were focused on ques­tions of hard­ware and programming. The letter reveals that Bober played an active role in lobbying for the digi­ti­sa­tion of the Census, dealing not only with poten­tial colla­bo­ra­tors but also with tech­nical issues.

A recur­ring theme in all of her letters from this time is a self-perceived lack of tech­nical know­ledge. She called herself ‘computer-illi­te­rate’ or a ‘tech­nopeasant’. While this could give the impres­sion that she was unwil­ling or unable to contri­bute to the Census’s next, digital phase, the letters prove this not to be the case. She was not afraid of the digital future, but was at the time uncer­tain about what digi­ti­sa­tion would look like. Her letters address concerns that are still fami­liar today: the cost of photo­gra­phic repro­duc­tions, storage problems, and the ques­tion of how users will access the data­base. Long before the era of the internet, Bober imagined that access to the compu­ters in London and Rome might be achieved by satel­lite, or by tele­phone. Search results might, she imagined, be printed out from the compu­ters and then mailed to rese­ar­chers. Publi­ca­tion seemed at this stage a more certain method of disse­mi­na­ting the results of the Census project, and was achieved in the hand­book she published with Ruth Rubin­stein, Renais­sance Artists and Antique Sculp­ture (published in 1986).

The letters also reveal Bober’s concerns about what the digi­ti­sa­tion of the Census cards will do to the value of the project. Bober worried that the whole under­ta­king would become lost in the event of tech­nical diffi­cul­ties. Echoing her long­stan­ding fears for the steri­lity of the index cards, she insisted that the digi­tised version of the Census should remain a crea­tive and open tool. She wanted the compu­te­rised Census to inspire the synthesis of ideas, new thin­king and ‘cons­truc­tive work’ instead of beco­ming a rigid ency­clo­paedia. To this end, she proposed inclu­ding ‘possi­bles’ and uniden­ti­fied objects in the data­base. The Census had grown through colla­bo­ra­tion, and Bober was hopeful that there would be ways for rese­ar­chers not only to use the data­base, but also to contri­bute to it. As a solu­tion, she considered the oppor­tu­ni­ties that might arise if archaeo­lo­gists could learn to programme them­selves in the Pascal language, perhaps by making use of free courses offered by their universities.

When forming her opinions on the new tech­nical direc­tion of the Census, Bober was also advo­ca­ting for the archaeo­lo­gists, whom she feared might not be served by the work of the programmers or the art histo­rians. When the data model for the compu­te­rised Census was taking shape, one of her concerns was to protect against the ‘pollu­tion’ of the Census through the admis­sion of adapt­a­tions, that is, Renais­sance all’an­tica inven­tions, rather than direct responses to genui­nely antique monuments.

‘Bober and Rubin­stein: Index Cards and Photo­graphs’ (Room 2) and ‘Phyllis Bober and the Census Digi­ta­li­sa­tion’ (Room 3) are colla­bo­ra­tive exhi­bi­tions by: