The Wonders of Flash

Despite the abundance of dynamic websites devoted to interactive history, I still am a big fan of the “Devices of Wonder” exhibit that can be seen at the Getty Museum. One of the most frustrating part of going to a history museum (at least most museums) is that the visitor is not allowed to interact with the objects that are on display. Going far beyond the typical photographic record of the object, which is the industry standard, the Getty has taken advantage of Adobe’s Flash platform to replicate many of the “devices” from its inventory and the Flash technology allows the web visitor to try out the various devices.

Without this sort of interactivity, it would be difficult to really get a sense for what these objects did and why people would have had them in their households. Now, however, we’re able to poke and prod without the risk of damaging the actual historical object. One might argue whether Flash is on its way out or not, but it does seem like the Getty chose the perfect new media technology for the task of replicating the interactivity. A digital picture (even a 3D picture) would have been too static. A film clip of a curator demonstrating would have been too dry. The Flash interaction, however, seems to be the best of both formats.

However, the exhibit itself reveals that the Flash technology is sometimes better implemented doing certain tasks and less well suited for performing others.The item “View of the Imperial Chinese Palace in Beijing” is a great implementation of Flash. Here, the user can change the back lighting to transform the image. The “Blue Bird: Magnetic Game” is another great interactive item with which the users can even try and play the game themselves!

Others, however, are either showing their age or fall just a bit short. For instance, when viewing the “Sorcerer’s Mirror” object there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of interactivity. Here, the user simply drags an picture or painting and drops it onto the mirror. The viewer is then presented with  a repeating image of what it would have looked like if that picture were reflected in the mirror. However, the potential that Flash possesses would have allowed for even more interactivity – like the ability for the user to tilt the mirror at will to see how the image changes as the mirror is moved.

Still other objects are shown as real-time low-quality video files that are difficult to see and only serves at the moment to date this exhibit (which is now about 9 years old). The Getty has a wonderful concept here and I wish that they would invest a little money to update and expand the number of objects that are here on display. This would allow the Getty to also explore newer technologies that have been developed over the intervening years – like FLEX and HTML5. I’d also like to see other museums around the world see what sorts of object they have in their collections that could get a similar treatment.

Digital Scholarship and Research

We’ve spent most of this semester discussing the output side of being a digital historian, but this week we turn our attention to how we can also leverage digital technology to be better historians. For most historians, digital technology has simply sped up the process of what they already did with analog tools. For instance, many of my colleagues use a database (like FileMaker) to take notes instead of using index cards as one had typically done in the past. Others have utilized bibliographic software like Endnote, Biblioscape, Reference Manager (formerly ProCite), RefWorks, or now the free Firefox plug-in Zotero to organize their citations (which everyone should do, since it makes documenting your references sooooooo much easier and accurate).

These two examples are simply an extension of the older transition that all academics made when they switched from typewriters to word processing software and don’t necessarily “add” any value to the product of their research. However, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a great deal of potential in the very near future.

One of my favorite digital historians is Bill Turkel up at the University of Western Onterio. Dr. Turkel represents the cutting edge of historians (in his case and environmental historian) who want to press the envelope of technology to see what it can do for us to further our basic understanding of the past. Dr. Turkel doesn’t just use computers, he tries to think about devices or add-ons for devices that don’t yet exist and then builds them! This is fascinating stuff to say the least!

Another great story of using technology to be better historians comes from the UK last year. Scientists were able to train a computer and an electronic sniffing device to recognize the age of paper without the need to carbon test a fragment (and thereby destroying a part of the original document). When I “tweeted” about this last fall, Bill Turkel wrote to remind me that he had speculated about something similar in a blog post of his in 2008.

These are just a few examples of the potential to use technology as historians to not only present our craft, but to perform our craft more effectively and possibly in entirely new ways. What we need are more people who can “think outside the box” and dare to explore new methods that take advantage of digital technology’s potential and yet remain true to the mission of historians to explore and analyze the past.

So – What’s your big idea going to be?

Preserving the Future

We’ve already spent some time this semester discussing the challenges of digital preservation, but this week I’d like us to pay particular attention to the role of digital archives. Most archives accession only the most important documents and usually limit their content to particular fields. For instance, state archives focus on state government. The UMass special collections (which is also the University Archive) of course has many documents related to the history of UMass history, but also specializes in the history of social movements (with the papers of W.E.B. DuBois as the highlight).Yet, even with these areas of specialization, archives (when we look at the collection of physical documents) cannot collect everything and must constantly make decisions regarding what to keep and what to throw away (literally onto the dustbin of history…).

The advent of digital preservation, however, has allowed archives to be less “picky” and accession many more items than in the past. What we as historians are left with is a double-edged sword of sorts. On the one hand, we now (or our counterparts in the future) have much more information than we normally would have access to. On the other hand, however, we now have much more information than we normally would have access to… Yes, it is the rhetorical embarrassment of riches. How, can we sort through all of this information? Most historians owe a great deal to the work done by archivists in organizing and culling the documents so that when we enter the archives, we can focus our intention on the contents of the documents, rather than finding the relevant documents. Yet, we now might be able to find information more quickly (through digitization) and also vastly widen the scope of our research, since we now have access to so many other layers of information and society (i.e. not just the official record, but also the voices of secondary and tertiary sources.

Some national archives have set out on an amazingly ambitious archiving and digitization program. A great example here is the national archive of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) which has set out to digitize every known document pertaining to the Netherlands (every document!). The library’s “E-Depot” guarantees long-term storage of digital material and have been able to use this guarantee to attract most local and regional archives in the land to consolidate their information. The KB will accept any type of format – including websites, digitized originals, e-books, e-journals, and much more.

In 2008, the German parliament passed a digital preservation law regarding German websites. The law itself is rather bizarre to be honest – all websites much submit a copy of their website to the national library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. According to the FAQ at the library’s own homepage, website producers must submit full copies of their web content to the library at regular intervals. The content covers all aspects of the website – from text, to pictures, to audio and video files, as well as any multi-media elements (like flash-based plug-ins). Needless to say, this law has created quite a backlash in Germany. The library still has not been able to set up a way for website producers to easily submit their content nor has the library explored a way to collect such data on their own (as Google or the Internet Archive does). In the meantime, the library has reduced its digital accession to just online journals, e-books, and university publications (master’s and Ph.D theses). The same FAQ claims that the technical aspects of collecting websites is still in development and as such is not yet accessioning them (although by law, the website producers still need to keep copies for future donation to the library!).

Not to be only Euro-centric here in today’s post, I’ll also add a few words about two great examples of digital preservation here in the US. First, check out this article about the state archivist of Minnesota (where else, right?). Also, the state of Washington was the first state to create a separate digital archive (rather then expand the existing physical archive). I won’t go into detail here, but do check out those sites and let me know in class what you think.

Digital Copyrights

In 1998 the US congress amended the US copyright laws to take in to account all of the various changes that have come about due to the new digital nature of much of our creative content production. You can read more about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act here, although a good short explanation of the highlights can be found here. As you will see, you don’t need to be a Intellectual Property Lawyer to tell that this was a major blow to the initial openness of information brought about by the internet. It is interesting that the main proponents of this were commercial interests, while those who opposed it were academics, scientists, and librarians – the same people that have gotten behind the Open Access journal movement. As you will see in your readings this week, an argument has been made (and failed) that the founding principle behind establishing a copyright law in the United States (and in other capitalist countries) was to force companies and individuals to share their work. A copyright was supposed to be treated similarly to a patent – in return for sharing your knowledge, you would receive a limited monopoly over that knowledge (or creative content) for a limited period of time. However, through the lobbying efforts of Walt Disney and other media giants, copyright laws have been extended and expanded to the point that some critics believe the system is now broken.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act further limited the non-paying public from accessing this content and prohibits the circumvention of copyright protections (like encrypted commercial DVDs or CDs), which make it possible to produce a perfect digital copy of a movie or song. On the one hand, this is of course fair – it protects those who have invested a great deal of money in producing a film or album. Yet, the language of the DMCA is so broad, that it has the effect of limiting access to those who cannot pay.

As protections have gotten stronger (both technologically and legally) the cost of purchasing content has generally risen. Sure, the music companies and others have suffered greatly from the drop in CD sales and film purchases have dropped with file-sharing networks. Yet, it does seem that there should still be room for “fair use” by individuals who are acting within their rights to own a backup copy as was the case with analog media (you were allowed, for instance to make a cassette recording of a record without the fear of being sued by the record company). Now, there is a difference (at least I would argue) with making a copy for personal use (say an MP3 copy of a CD for use on your iPod) and distributing those files to millions of people over the internet or (in the extreme case) selling illegal digital copies for profit. Yet, the DMCA does not make a provision for creating a personal copy of digital media. I would be curious to hear the opinions of others on this matter – either in the comments or in class on Tuesday.

  • Here are some other things to think about for Tuesday:
  • What are the limits of copyright protection?
  • As an online exhibit designer, what do you need to know about copyright?
  • How can you protect your own or your institution’s intellectual property?
  • What do you think about the Open Access movement? Does it have enough support to fend off the interests of Hollywood?

ADDENDUM: Check out this interesting lawsuit by Viacom v. YouTube. What do you think about this?

Born Digital

I blogged about the assigned websites last year and you can read that post as wellby clicking here

This week I would like to expand on what I wrote last year by looking at a few different elements of those websites that I didn’t discuss last time around. First, there is a growing trend among digital archives to stop at just the digitization step and either ignore or purposely not curate the content that is being collected. This is becoming more and more common as individuals and institutions often underestimate the costs of setting up such a digital archive (and thus seldom have any money left to do any curatorial or analyzation of their own) or they believe that is not part of their purpose. These archives, like “real” archives are there to facilitate analysis by others. Although I agree that the accessibility to scholars and other interested parties is paramount, we might be missing a chance to rethink how an archivist interacts with scholars and the larger public. Perhaps the archivist could authenticate the donated item. Or the digital archivist could offer a way to provide contextual information to the “raw” data that is being collected. It seems that we have simply transferred the analog format onto the digital without looking at how it might be different this time around.

I do, however, want to raise an issue that I also raised last year and hope we can discuss in our seminar. How do we control for authenticity with such crowd-sourced digital archives? Does it matter if we know or don’t know the social, political, economic background of those who contributed to the digital archives? What might be the pros and cons of being able to contribute anonymously? Does the trend toward digital archives (and self-submission) mean that we no longer want to preserve analog sources? Don’t people still often take notes on paper, doodle, draw, or leave behind other artifacts? Are digital archives only good for digitaly produced items (digital photographs and electronic texts)? What would a hybrid archive look like in say 10 years time?

We should also discuss the concept of the “digital generation” and how the new generation might want to preserve their childhood now so they have access to it in the future.

Digital Preservation

Last year I blogged about the pros and cons of Google versus the Open Content Alliance and I stand by most of what I wrote at that time. So far, Google’s content has remained free to access, although publishers have now reached a new understanding and profit-sharing with Google that has also placed new limits on what information one can find within a Google Book search. Interestingly, the new agreement has limited access to English language texts only, while other languages (like German) have been almost completely blocked by publishers abroad.

I do, however, want to draw your attention to two digitization projects right here in the Pioneer Valley. One of the most impressive digitization projects (beyond Google and the Open Source Alliance) has been the digitization of all known Yiddish language books by the Yiddish Book Center here in Amherst.  Begun in 1998 through a major grant from Steven Spielberg, the Yiddish Book Center set out to digitize every book that they had in their collection along with many supporting documents and art prints. Most of the digitization is now complete and the contents can be viewed either through their own website or through the Internet Archive. Although not as slick an interface as Google Books, the historic preservation aspect is far more commendable. The collection, when taken as a whole, is the first digitization project to successfully preserve and entire national literature. Digitization was in keeping with the YBC’s core mission to preserve the literary heritage of European Jews. The story of the YBC itself is a facinating one (watch the video to find out more).

Another digitization of note here in the Pioneer Valley is right here at UMass. As most of you know, the central research library here is named in honor of W. E. B. Du Bois. One of the many gems found in the library are Du Bois’ papers, which are housed in Special Collections. Although the Du Bois papers have been accessible to scholars for decades, it was only last year that the library was awarded a major grant from the Verizon Foundation to digitize the collection. The digitization process is slow-going, but some of its “fruits” are already being reaped. This past semester, some of my students worked on a project together with the UMass Center for Educational Software Development to create the first e-learning website to utilize the newly digitized papers. CESD is currently working to port this project onto a larger dedicated site running Omeka, an open-source database driven exhibit builder.

One thing that I’ve learned from my own work on digitizing projects is that the act of preserving can only be one part of the project. Preservation is the first step, but if one stops at this point, then it really raises the question behind the purpose. Information, whatever kind, needs to be well organized (and, if possible, annotated). If we think of such digitization projects as only the next iteration of the archive, we haven’t really done anything other than move information from one format to another. I do believe that there should be some sort of value-added element in such digitization projects. The Google Book project adds a great deal of value – there are links to other texts and one can extensively search through books that would have otherwise taken years and links to reviews as well. Amazon’s digitzation is much more restricted, but adds a great tool – listing which other books cite a given book. These are all first steps to what could potentially greatly alter the way in which digital archives and document collections interact with one another.

German (Re)Unification on Wikipedia

I should say from the outset that I have a love/hate relationship with Wikipedia. I admire the devotion that some people show for contributing to a set of knowledge, but I really am troubled by what I often find. The quality of the content and prose can range from the professional to the most deplorable text that I have encountered on the Internet and I will highlight a bit of both of these attributes in the article that I chose to blog about for this week’s topic.

Officially, the article that I chose is called the “German Reunification.” I chose this article, since I asked the students to focus not so much on the content of the article, but rather on the discussion section that highlights how such historical postings are worked out among multiple authors. The title alone is one of the more heated topics of discussion – German reunification versus unification. Reunification is typically favored by the political far Right (and foreigners), whereas unification is favored by all mainstream political parties in Germany and the political Left. The debate and the nuances of each term is discussed in the body of the article itself, but when one delves into the discussion there is simply a note that the title “was debated” and “decided” that the better term was reunification, since “Even though it was a unification in the sense that these two states only came into existence as military occupied countries in 1945 and as such had never been united, it was decided to call it Re-unification, because it includes two sections of the country of Germany, which in 1945 was split in three.” (The italics are also in the original). There is so much wrong with this statement. First, there is no evidence that this was “actually” debated. When one contributor brought up this point, another author responded with two external links where the term was debated… However, none of this takes into account that the “official” term in Germany (as is even stated in the article) is German unification (or just unity). Such struggles over semantics may seem petty, but it plays a large role in the identity of the Germans. Germany never existed historically in its post-1990 form, thus it could not be re-unified. More importantly, re-unification has a connotation of destiny without acknowledging the struggle and the risk of life and liberty that played a role in bringing about the changes that allowed a new, democratic East Germany to enter into a new relationship with West Germany. What is even more difficult for me to understand is why the German version of this article also uses the concept of reunification despite the official language in Germany on the topic (eg. the national holiday is called the Tag der Einheit – the Day of Unity).

There was a much more controversial, third term that was often stated by the Left (especially the Nobel Laureate Günther Grass) who referred to the 1990 unification process as an annexation by West Germany. Yet, this term is not mentioned at all either in the article itself nor in the discussion. The absence of such a discussion really makes one wonder about the level of education or experience that the contributors to this article actually have. The other worry that I have is the low quality of the prose (in both the article and the discussion). This raises a flag for me because why should one trust a contributor if they are incapable of writing in a manner that is easily understood? Most frustrating to me (as with most history professors) is the repeated use of the passive voice. This happened. That was debated. Germany was unified (or reunified)… People have to make things happen! Politicians voted for unification. Diplomats signed treaties that granted sovereignty to a newly unified German state!

One aspect of the German language entry that I did like (aside from it being much better written and comprehensive) was that members of the Wiki-Community insisted that contributors rely (and cite) printed, scholarly literature and not rely on web-based sources or news outlets. The English language site, however, cites only zero scholarly sources! There are two primary documents cited for the entire article and the other twelve citations are all from web-based sources of varying quality, ranging from PolandPoland.com to a reprint of a Washington Post article in the obscure Anniston Star newspaper website. I think I might give extra credit to my undergraduates taking my German history course this semester to go and clean up some of these German history-related articles for extra credit!!!

German History Museums

This week I asked the students to write reviews of two history museums’ web offerings. For my own contribution to the discussion, I thought I would focus on two German museums and their respective websites.

Haus der Geschichte (House of History) – Bonn, Leipzig, Berlin

The Haus der Geschichte (HdG) is one of Germany’s few federally funded history museums. Although headquartered in Bonn, it has branch museums in other cities as well (one in Leipzig and two Berlin). The main website offers information about the foundation, which oversees all of the museums, and then offers sub-domains for the offerings in each of the three cities. It is clear from the start that the Bonn museum takes center stage, but the other sites are also well represented.

The design of the site (recently updated) is quite aesthetically pleasing. The site is best characterized as a companion site or visitor information portal, rather than an attempt to digitize and extend the offerings of the museum. For each of the four museums, the visitor finds all of the necessary information for panning their visit, complete with maps and directions on how to find the museum. If you want to see some of the objects that are on display, you will be rather disappointed – there are but ten selected objects or themes that the museum has put on digital display. Those that the museum curators chose are wonderful selections and the information about each is presented very informatively. The objects given the special treatment all hail from the Bonn collection, leaving the Leipzig and Berlin collections without such in-depth treatment.

The digital visitor, however, can find a few items here that cannot be found by visiting the brick-and-mortar museums. About a decade ago, the HdG partnered with the Museum of German History in Berlin (the other federally-funded history museum) to create LeMO (the Living Museum Online). LeMO is an extensive collection of primary documents (mainly visual, but also includes text, sound, and video clips as well). LeMO draws from the extensive collections of both museums to present a very in-depth history of Germany from 1871 to the present. The HdG, however, also has a few digital exhibits of its own, which by comparison are much better than the sprawling LeMO site. The HdG offers six virtual exhibits, which range from a snazzy site dedicated to the Parliamentary Council (West Germany’s constitutional convention, which met from 1948 to 1949) to a not-so-snazzy online project that looks at how the Europe is connected through architecture, culture, religion and its ties to the rest of the world.

On the whole, the offerings here a good, but they could be presented in a much more dynamic, fun manner which seems to be the direction that the museum is heading. I do hope that the museum continues to build more digital exhibits that can extend the experience of visiting the museum and I also hope that the other museums outside of Bonn receive more attention.

The German Emigration Center (Deutsches Auswanderer Haus, Bremerhaven)

One of the best virtual museums in Germany is the online presence of the German Emigration Museum – a corollary to the Tenement Museum in New York City. The port city of Bremerhaven was the departure point for millions of Germans and other Europeans seeking a new life in the New World.

The splash page for the museum is a rather long cinematic look at the exterior and interior of the museum. I have to admit, I have never seen something like this on another site. One might think that this is overkill, but it is very effective and inviting for potential visitors. Many visitors who come to such a website are looking for glimpse of what to expect when they make their actual visit and this is exactly what the introductory film offers.

Diving deeper into the website, the content is a bit more sparse, but still offers some interesting insights into the museum and the history of German emigration (I can’t post any links here, since the whole site is written in flash and does not allow for linking to specific content). The visitor can take a virtual tour, look at information prepared for school groups, read a brief overview about the history of emigration (a very brief overview), and also learn about other practical aspects of visiting the museum.

The German Emigration Center is relatively new – it opened it’s doors in 2005. The museum has a great start here with their general website, but I remain hopeful that they will continue this tradition and begin to construct some virtual exhibits for those who cannot venture to Bremerhaven to see it for themselves.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – A Review of Three Websites

This week I asked my students to write reviews of three historically-themed websites and chose one that they admired, one that they thought could be saved, and another that they think should be totally revamped.

For my three websites, I’ve chosen to focus on websites that host primary source documents. Collections of primary source documents are becoming more and more popular as the work of hosting a website becomes more and more automated. Yet, not all of these document collections are conceptualized at the same level of functionality, nor in terms of design. Some might say that one of my examples was among the first, and thus should be exempt from such criticism, yet I’m including it (the Internet Modern History Sourcebook) as a lesson in the problems of spending the time and money (possibly the result of a grant) and then not devoting any time or resources to it down the road and thus the site quickly becomes dated and sometime unusable.

THE GOOD

Before looking into the “ugly” in more detail, I’d like to highlight one of the better document collections out there. Hosted at George Mason’s Center for History and New Media (CHNM), the History of Children and Youth collection is a wonderful example of best practices for hosting a collection of primary sources. The website is divided into four categories – website reviews, primary source documents, case studies, and teaching modules. The inclusion of categories beyond just hosting the documents in question allows the website to cater to a variety of audiences at the same time – to students looking for primary documents, to teachers looking for classroom material, and to the general history buff, who wants to read a bit about a topic and then explore other resources as well.

Since I wanted to focus on the primary sources, I’ll limit my further comments to that area.  The scope of documents included in this collection is amazing – covering all of the major areas of the world. Digging into each of the categories allows the user to explore the lives of women and children in these different societies through a variety of media. There are paintings, sculptures, texts, photographs, toys, folktales and many other items that help illustrate different how children and youth live around the world. Each item is tagged with additional information to aid in searching and also allows the user to quickly locate related material.  The search function is also highly adaptive, allowing both simple and advanced searches. In order to help students understand the source that they are looking at, each source has an annotation that places the object or source within its historical context. My only real reservation here is that the primary sources are not accessible as pre-formatted PDF files (which allow students to cite page numbers within a document, not just a website).

THE BAD (SORT OF BAD, BUT ALSO GOOD)

Another very good (and ambitious) collection of documents that I have found very useful in my teaching is hosted by the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC.  The German History Documents collection is divided into ten chapters or periods of German history. Each chapter contains dozens (possibly hundreds) of annotated primary sources, maps, and images. Every document (here’s where things are ambitious) are available in both the German original and in English. Each has a pre-formatted PDF for uniform printing and citing, which is very useful for those of us who integrate such sources into their curriculum. The vast about of information here is remarkable and is going to greatly help develop better teaching resources for undergraduate education in English-speaking countries. At the undergraduate level, it has been very difficult to find English language documents for use in teaching. So, this collection is highly valuable to many of us in the field.

However, there are many problems with the usability of this website. The structure of the website is rather basic and analogue – it doesn’t take advantage of any of the newer programming or design techniques that would allow a much more rich end-user experience. The structure of the site resembles the analogue book format of a multi-volume document collection that just happens to be on the internet, rather than in a printed book.  Although there is a rudimentary search function, which does work OK, it does not have the sophisticated advanced search features offered in the CHNM designed website. One of the differences here is the basic technology that each of these two sites are based upon – CHNM uses Omeka, while the GHI website is running Cold Fusion scripting and static web pages.  I don’t have anything against ColdFusion per se, but I don’t think its implementation here has helped users navigate the website. The website also needs a desperate dose of design overhaul. At a minimum, each source title should have a three-line excerpt for easy browsing. Another issue is that many of the PDF links contain spaces, which is a definite no-no, since web browsers cannot use spaces. The server inserts % signs as a holder, but this makes for very odd-looking slugs. Were they running Omeka, this would be taken care of automatically and items would be renamed as they entered the MySQL database.

All of these reservations aside, it still is a fabulous and much needed collection of primary documents!

THE UGLY (AND DATED)

On to the ugly! For the ugly category I decided to go with one of the oldest primary source collections on the Internet – the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. This sourcebook is probably one of the most used collections of documents on the web. I can’t think of a colleague or friend who teaches modern European history who does not use documents from this collection. However, it is a remnant of early 1990s website design. Some might say – “Hey, it works!” and they would be right, sort of. It works if you know what you are looking for. It works if you find your way to a document by searching Google and just happens to land on one of these documents. It works if a professor links directly to a document from the syllabus or course website. It doesn’t work if you are trying to find information on your own in an orderly fashion.

The collection has many of the most classic texts of western society and as such is a rich resource, no matter its format. However, there is a great deal of potential for improvement. The first thing that is needed here are better annotations and better searchability.  The layout of the documents is roughly based on chronology with a long list of key words listed along the left sidebar. This organization works, but it isn’t as efficient as integrating tags or any other form of hyperlinked navigation. Integrating “related documents” to each document would greatly help students who are using the website for research papers. The ability to search within the website for specific terms or concepts would also help a great deal.

The larger issue here, however, is that the success of the website (as I mentioned earlier) actually makes is almost impossible to revamp this website. Since there are so many external links pointing to these documents, revamping them and migrating to a more modern server technology (like Omeka) would break hundreds (if not thousands) of links. This raises the larger issue of what one does with older websites that are not maintained. What is the expectation within the humanities for maintaining such resources over the years? Most digital history projects are financed through one-time grants that do not include money for maintenance. Some document collections (and this might be the case here) weren’t even funded – they were built over the years by a lone professor who developed a resource for his own use, but then became a popular go-to place for others teaching similar topics. As far as I can tell, the site has not been updated since 1999.

The lesson here is: design and usability is just as important as the content. The documents need to be easily accessed and should include annotations so that the documents don’t exist out there in the interwebs as stand-alone documents that lack any sort of contextual information. All three are good collections, but they could all be improved as well.