The April 16 Archive

バージニア工科大学（ヴァージニアテック）構内で起きた惨劇から
およそ半月が経ちました。
工科大学ゆえなのか、時代なのか、あの悲劇を記憶から消さないためのサイトが学校の研究所主催で早速立ち上がりました。名前は事件の日付のままで、The April 16 Archive。インターネットの双方向性を利用して、画像とストーリーのシェアをする「場」を作り、ユーザー各々がコンテンツを作っていく仕組み。
“digital memory bank”として後世に語り継いでいくようです。
少し違うかもしれないけども、以前だと、こういう時には、千羽鶴を折ったり（日本だけ？）、寄せ書きを送ったりというのがよくある手法だったと思う。このオンラインアーカイブは、科学技術の進歩が人々の心の癒し方や記憶の伝承に新しいチャネルを提供した例といえそう。

事件後、被害者の顔写真がFacebook（アメリカの学生がかなりの割合で使っているSNS）から引用されてテレビで報道されたり、犯人の元クラスメートを名乗る人物がブログに犯人が過去に書いた劇作をアップしたりもした。それだけでなく、当事者の犯人が犯行声明もどきをDVDに焼いてテレビ局に送りつけた（それを多くの視聴者がYoutubeにアップロード）。さらには犯人のeBayのアカウントも公になったことから、世界中の人が彼の売買履歴をチラ見し、好き勝手にプロファイリングすることまでできる状態にもなった（彼は拳銃の替えの弾倉もeBayで買っていた）。そして今回のサイトの立ち上げ。
今回の事件は傍から見ているとずいぶんとネット化した流れなのが分かる。

For immediate release

Virginia Tech Launches April 16 Archive

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 30, 2007 - Virginia Tech’s Center for Digital Discourse and Culture (CDDC) is pleased to announce the launch of the April 16 Archive (www.april16archive.org). This new online archive assists artists, humanists, social scientists, and all other scholars who seek, today and in the future, to develop a better understanding of the violent events of April 16, 2007 at Virginia Tech. It is also available to the general public of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the United States of America, and the world at large as we come to terms with a local, national, and global event that will have ramifications for years to come. This archive works actively to deploy electronic media for the collection, interpretation, preservation, and display of stories and digital objects related to the tragedy of April 16, 2007 and its many effects as text, image, and sound. Developed in cooperation with George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media (CHNM), this project is receiving technical, curatorial and administrative support from Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff.

The archive will preserve a diverse record of the events surrounding April 16, 2007 by collecting first-hand observations, photographic images, sound recordings, media reports, personal writings, official statements, individual blog postings, and any other documents that can be stored as digital files. In addition to local reactions, the archive welcomes responses from across the globe in any language. Through this archive, we aim to leave a positive legacy for the larger community and contribute to a collective process of healing, especially as those affected by this tragedy tell their stories in their own words. The larger trend exemplified by this project is the “digital memory bank.” Memory banks are being used to preserve the richness of the present as it transitions to the past, thereby ensuring that the collected records can be both readily accessible and carefully preserved for future access.

The April 16 Archive welcomes contributions from the Virginia Tech community, as well as from anyone around the world who wants to share words of support or reflection following the events of April 16, 2007. The attacks happened in Blacksburg, Virginia, but they were experienced around the world through mass media and community ties. The accounts of that day from any site across the globe are, therefore, very important to the April 16 Archive as it documents the full impact of this tragic event. For more information, visit www.april16archive.org or contact admin@april16archive.org. For media inquiries, contact Brent Jesiek, Manager of the CDDC, at (540) 231-7614 or cddc@vt.edu.

Established in 1998, Virginia Tech’s Center for Digital Discourse and Culture is one of the world’s first university based digital points-of-publication for new forms of scholarly communication, academic research, and cultural analysis. Virginia Tech’s College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences (CLAHS) as well as the Institute of Distance and Distributed Learning (IDDL) actively support the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture. The CDDC is also working with Virginia Tech’s newly established Institute for Society, Culture, and the Environment (ISCE) to develop new scholarly initiatives, such as the April 16 Archive, tied into the practices of rhetoric, representation and the public humanities.