Towards an Ethics of Online Research:Accounting for Absence in the Jefferson Digital Archive

The Past’s Digital PresenceYale University

February 20, 2010

Lauren F. Kleinlklein@post.harvard.edu

Screencap of the Jefferson Digital Archive main page

Text of Jefferson’s agreement with James Hemings, September 15, 1793

“Having been at great expence [sic] in having James Hemings taught the art of cookery, desiring to befriend him, and to require from him as little in return as possible, I do hereby promise and declare, that if the said James shall go with me to Monticello in the course of the ensuing winter, when I go to reside there myself, and shall there continue until he shall have taught such person as I shall place under him for that purpose to be a good cook, this previous condition being performed, he shall be thereupon made free, and I will thereupon execute all proper instruments to make him free. Given under my hand and seal in the county of Philadelphia and state of Pennsylvania this 15th. day of September one thousand seven hundred and ninety three.”

Screencap of a search on “James Hemings” in the Jefferson Digital Archive

Four Techniques Towards an Ethics of Online Research

• IMMERSION in the archive and the process of research

Four Techniques Towards an Ethics of Online Research

• IMMERSION in the archive and the process of research

• ANALYSIS of the TEXTS: What did I find? What does it mean? What does it mean to me?

Four Techniques Towards an Ethics of Online Research

• IMMERSION in the archive and the process of research

• ANALYSIS of the TEXTS: What did I find? What does it mean? What does it mean to me?

• ANALYSIS of the ARCHIVE: Content, Construction, Technical Surfaces, Ethical Depths

Screencap of the search page of the digital edition of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson

Screencap of a search on “James Hemings” in the digital edition of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson

Four Techniques Towards an Ethics of Online Research

• IMMERSION in the archive and the process of research

• ANALYSIS of the TEXTS: What did I find? What does it mean? What does it mean to me?

• ANALYSIS of the ARCHIVE: Content, Construction, Technical Surfaces, Ethical Depths

• RESPOND RESPONSIBLY to the archive: Attend to the interplay between researcher and electronic text