Now More Than Ever

The Promise of a Web 2.0 Archive

The Berkeley Rose Garden, 1930s and 2007

Last week, I was able to speak with Gray Brechin in the UC Berkeley Geography Department; Gray is leading the Living New Deal project.

The Living New Deal Project ... is a growing collaborative team documenting the cumulative impact of the WPA [1935], CCC [1933], PWA [1933], CWA [1933], FSA [1935], and other New Deal programs on the Golden State. Writer Gray Brechin and photographer Robert Dawson began the Project in the fall of 2003 under the auspices of the California Historical Society with a seed grant from the Columbia Foundation. They soon discovered that the New Deal legacy is so vast and poorly documented that it required others to help harvest information not neatly contained in federal archives.

In many ways, the LNDP is a "web 2.0" archive. One of the most striking things that Gray notes is that there is no existing single archive of New Deal achievements. Records are fragmented, and documentation of the lasting achievement of the New Deal is extremely difficult to obtain through traditional archival means.

It is because of this failure of existing cultural legacy organizations that Gray has mounted the Living New Deal effort, and is actively soliciting historical records from those who participated in New Deal reconstruction - personal records of labor, construction, and craftsmanship. Old photographs, memoirs, and diaries; all are sorely needed.

The vision is to stand next to a great site or monument such as Treasure Island or the Bay Bridge, or walk among the trails at Tilden Park, and hear the voices and memories of those who made these presences happen, and see a contemporaneously captured record of their travail and craft - bring the people, the monuments, and the art alive. (Interestingly, although the Golden Gate Bridge is not New Deal, the approaches on both sides are; the span itself was locally financed. The Bay Bridge, in contrast, was begun under Hoover but completed by the Public Works Administration.)

As Gray notes, not only was the 30s a time of tremendous social upheaval, but it many cases these agencies were among the first to introduce racial integration. Not surprisingly, particularly lacking are records of African-Americans who worked in New Deal projects, and impressions of those unexpectedly involved in these early cracks in the barricades of segregation. [Bio of Thomas Fleming, mentioned in the podcast].

Gray is seeking the submission of photographs, both old and new, documenting these treasures, and is also seeking help to do a better job of implementing mapping, and search and discovery. This would be a fantastic layer in Google Earth, and time slider support would facilitate the witnessing of this singular flowering of civic achievement. Project classification into parks, monuments, water treatment, bridges, etc. will allow people to slice through New Deal California in the ways that are most interesting for them.

Although Gray has strong institutional support from the California Historical Society, and is being hosted by the UC Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Library, LNDP could definitely use more of the Web 2.0 technical savvy that resides out in our community to help design an improved portal for submission of photographs, diaries, and facilitate correspondence; more significant geo-mapping support (this would be awesome in Google Earth!); better integration of enhanced database search; and stronger community involvement features, such as in-line wiki.

LNDP has reached sufficient maturity to benefit from the forms of assistance that Google and our larger community can provide. (E.g., Peter Norvig of Google was -- by chance -- introduced to, and become intrigued by, this project at an Inverness outing hosted by Berkeley Nobel Prize winner Don Glaser, inventor of the bubble chamber for tracking nuclear particles.)

The LNDP records a rich legacy our civic involvement, and they also need financial support to keep their efforts moving forward. And heck, where else can you get a FDR bumper-sticker?

This podcast is about 25 mins long. It was roughly edited for length (rather un-expertly, with all the finesse of pruning roses with a hatchet). [mp3: 17 mb | 25 mins]

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 14, 1938, Fireside Chat