Question #1

When looking at these sites, I had a problem with just about everyone of them. Devices of Wonder has never really caught my interest, while at the same time, it gives me the feeling that if a person were to stumble upon it by accident, they might be amused for about 2 minutes before giving up on the site and moving on.

History Wired seems like a great site in concept, except I appear to be having problems with it. Every time I go to click on something for more details, it just shows the general information that was in the tag about the item. Also, zooming in on the item doesn’t seem to illuminate the object. Instead it just seems to zoom in on an empty space. I don’t know if that is just a problem with my browser, or if the site is temporarily disabled, but as it stands, it seems conceptually cool…But it has an outdated look and it appears to not work.

The History Channel has a very clean and well organized site, but unfortunately like the instructions say under the tag for it, it is very large in scope, and unless a user is going there for a very specific item or task, I can see them getting lost and navigating away from it quickly so that they could quickly check wikipedia or google.com instead.

While I absolutely love the way in which the Julia Child’s website grabs the user right away by having her speak to you directly during your somewhat self guided tour, for some reason I just didn’t find it as appealing as the Raid on Deerfield website.

The Raid on Deerfield site that we have all examined several times seems to really get what a digital historian should be trying to convey to a large audience. It is engaging and colorful, while at the same time not being overbearing to look at. The ability to navigate the page through different points on view (while I might be slightly biased based on my own project) really captures the moment in history, while allowing the user to pick their own route in learning the information.

Though just about all of these sites have a chance to capture a large audience, I can’t think of a site with a more interesting topic, or way of presenting said topic, then the Raid on Deerfield site.

Digital Scholarship

Though there have been many tools developed over the course of the past 100 years that have allowed for historians to be able to reference materials, I think that the two things that really allowed for the greatest leaps were the Compact Disc and the Internet.

Though photographs and microfilm have been around for more then a hundred years, the Compact Disk has allowed for storage of information on a scale much larger then anything we had seen in the past. Starting in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, educational tools and programs started to be developed for the general public and for research institutions. The ability for programs such as Encyclopedia Britannica to be published on a few Disks, instead of in dozens of large, bound books, has revolutionized the way in which we get information. For more specialized information, all a person would have to do is take photographs or type up transcripts of documents, and they would be able to easily transport the to where ever they want, without having to transport cans of film or get special permission to borrow an item.

Of course being able to transport 600Megabytes of information on a disk that is barely 6 inches in diameter was a huge boon to any industry trying to sell information, but it couldn’t even compare to the Internet in both it’s scope and it’s availability. Though used by the military for years to relay important information, what we know today as the internet really didn’t gain popularity until the mid 1990s. People were now able to host their own domains and give out their addresses (Uniform Resource Locaters…URLs) to anyone to view. Now that people had the ability to share any information they wanted with anyone around the world, the amount of groups dedicated to housing and giving out scholarly information skyrocketed.

Though it is only a small subsection of the internet age that we live in, the resource that I find most useful in the digital world is that of online libraries and archives, especially those here at UMass Amherst. I have been doing research on Soldiers of Massachusetts during the Revolutionary War, and there is an entire 17 Volume Archive that is available here at UMass. Not only is the entire thing viewable online, but it has also been tagged so that you can word search any part of the 17 volumes and instantly find pretty much anything you want. It’s great!

4 Problems with digital Preservation (Well 3)

The absolute first and foremost problem/controversy that digital preservation presents to a community of scholars is the ease at which information can be manipulated. For whatever reason, whether it be personal gain, or just malicous intent with no cause, there have been cases throughout history of individuals and groups of people vandalizing important historical items and works. Though this problem has existed for centuries, and there is almost no way of completely insuring that all works will always be 100% authentic, as we move more and more into the digital medium, we are presented with a whole new set of problems. I think that this problem will only grow in the coming years, and I fear that it is the Number 1 thing that digital historians should worry about. The community at large on the internet is very passive and very mundane. . . But there are those who are intelligent and resourceful enough to do what they will, when they will. Anything that is put online is at risk, and the more important the item or information, the more likely someone is to care about it enough to do something horrible to it (Dr. Horrible perhaps?)

The second thing, which is somewhat tied to the first, is the ability of the “Scholar” to change works as they are being submitted. It would be very easy for an individual to electronically change a document, especially if in doing so they validate years of their own personal work. Much like the temptation that exists now, the historian of the digital age will have to stay on his toes and be willing to have his work held up to the highest of standards. This fear will more then likely put an undue burden on those who’s work is completely legitimate.

The last thing that concerns me is the idea of the preservation itself. Though a fire could take out an entire library of papers in a single night, a world wide war could easily take out every piece of history we hold dear. If power is lost for a substantial amount of time, or there is a EMP of some kind that goes off in an area, millions and millions of pieces of scholarly works could be lost. Being diligent in backing up our works at several remote sites will be important. Also having hard copies of as many things as possible will also be important

The final thing that is of concern to me is the giant bruise I have that is now covering a lower part of my back and my rear end. I was thrown to the floor of a moving vehicle (a van from work) by a co-worker who jammed on the accelerator, and then had to brake immediately for the pedestrian that they didn’t see. I landed on top of a large metal frame that is sticking up from the floor. No joke….I am surprised that it didn’t impale my rear. I will say though, as my as it hurts to sit, lay, and stand up, it is pretty cool to have an amazingly disgusting and large battle scar that I can only show my girlfriend. . . Or maybe I could pull a “Forrest Gump” and accidentally show it off during class. (Just kidding)

Born Digital

The site that I found most interesting for the concept of “Born Digital” was flicker.  Though the Archive on Katrina was well organized and seemed to fit the niche that it is trying to fill, I had never been to flicker, and I was thoroughly impressed with what I found there. The Organization of the photographs according to the date at which they were submitted is an obvious choice and I think that most historians appreciate that, though having an exact date on all the photographs for when they were actually taken would be a useful tool as well.

There is a great picture that is titled “Hope” that is truly timeless. Honestly looking at this photograph, if it wasn’t for the technology, I wouldn’t be able to place it more accurately then in the time frame of the past 150’ish years.

Hope

Another photo that really caught my attention was

hard times

It shares the quality of being timeless with the first photograph, but it also contains an amount of emotion that is hard to find outside the world of modern art.

As far as the historical content and the way in which modern Historians are going to need to think about things that are born digital items that are found here, it is going to be difficult, but rewarding. Having images that are readily available to the general public which are collected and displayed by the general public will be rewarding in that we will not have to skower the globe looking for that one image that defines a generation. The main problem that will be run into though is authenticity. Knowing if a picture is real and unaltered will be a challenge that we as historians will have to give serious consideration to moving forward.

Project Proposal

The Battle of Bunker Hill: A Living Narrative through First Hand Accounts

An interactive site dedicated to the Battle of Bunker Hill which offers the visitor the option to take the point of view of either the American Rebels or the British Regulars. Colors and themes will be determined by which side you choose upon first entering the website through a “splash” page.

Once a visitor has entered the site, they will have several options for what type of information they wish to receive. Though the list will be expanded, it will start with: Interactive Map of the Battle showing troop locations depending on the time of day, First Hand accounts from contemporaries who wrote about the battle, Letters from Battle, Visiting Charlestown today (photographs of the monument and other historically significant items).

Important tools for the production of this site will be very few. A computer and a Digital Camera should suffice for the entirety of the production (keeping theoretical operation costs low). Staff required for this project would be limited to a 2-4 man team (Once again only theoretical, for the sake of this class project, it can clearly be cut down to 1 )

Time required for the completion of this project would be in the range of 12-18 months due to the unpredictable nature of New England Weather and the requirements for the photographs that would be used. Actual development time (of the website) could be as low as 2 months, with the data collection taking anywhere from 6-16 months longer, weather and historical societies permitting.

Oh Wikipedia. . .

The first article that I had a chance to check out was “American Revolution”. The vast majority of this article’s discussion is in relation to the relevance of certain words, and the placement of certain sections of information (i.e. Should the Trail of the British Soldiers be in the American Revolution or the Boston Massacre section) Also there was a deletion of a section about the “American Patriot Party” due to the fact that it didn’t really exist, and the section had been signed by someone who claimed “I WAS SO HERE :D” The idiots always seem to find their way into articles.

The second article that I checked out was on the court case regarding the Amistad (searched for Amistad and the title for the one I was viewing was Amistad(1841) )
The discussion on this article was great. It proved able to clear up points of confusion, and it is clear that the writers who took the time to put this article together really really cared about the information, and the exact wording of each and every sentence, in order to try and keep the article as accurate as possible. Also there was clearly acts of vandalism against the page, which the online community did their best to fix.

The final article that I had a chance to look at was concerning John Quincy Adams. The discussion page regarding this article was completely full of controversy and problems. Their are clear citation problems, along with vandalism and poor or inaccurate information. There is a constant stream of debate back and forth on the authenticity and accuracy of the “Photograph” of JQA, along with a lively discussion as to the broadness of the article. The part that I found most interesting was the “Photo Cleanup” section. It clearly shows two different sides of JQA. On the one side, they have a very bright and cleaned up face that almost looks like it was painted that was, and on the other (and clearly the original) we see a darker and more wrinkly JQA.

I’m not exactly sure how useful the discussion section of wikipedia is, though I would venture a guess that using it, in conjunction with the article itself, would make for a far better reference then just the article by itself.

Battling the British

I’ve been interested in early American History, and more specifically Revolutionary War history sense I can remember. Growing up in a Military household, Military History and  an acute sense of national pride was always on the forefront of discussion. My parents, though very open to any point of view, seemed to encourage studying these areas.

The first website that I came across was www.britishbattles.com which is a listing of all major Battles from many modern wars in which the British were a part of. On the left hand side of the page, it breaks down each war by major battles. If you click on a battle (The Battle of Bunker Hill) for example, you will be brought to a page that has several multimedia and text sections that give a general outline of the entire battle. It also gives vital statistics and it’s sources, along with references and links to possible books to read on the subject matter.

Another site that I found somewhat useful was a pbs site called www.pbs.org/ktcs/liberty   It gives a visitor a very real feeling of involvement with the site and the time period by showing actual postings and papers authentic to the period. It gives a general outline of the entire war, and it shows the subject matter in a very user friendly format. Though the information doesn’t feel as detailed as the first website, it does make the user feel as though they are delving into the time period and the events surrounding it.

It’s not that late, It’s just really early

Well I guess you’re here reading this because you are a member of my History class. (More specifically my Digital History class) Seeing as this is my first entry in this blog, i feel obligated to allow myself to introduce. . . myself.  Much like Dr. Evil “The details of my life are quite inconsequential” and therefore I will not bore you with them. What is relevant is that I am a 26 year old third year undergraduate student who took 5 years off from college. I like Root Beer but I hate Broccoli. I have driven more then 500,000 miles in the past 10 years, but have not left New England. I am deeply political and one of my life’s goals is to see a viable 3rd or 4th party enter the political arena. I love New England, but I hate every single climate it has to offer (65 degrees, zero percent humidity, partly cloudy….Give me 365 days of that and I would be the happiest man alive)

But I digress. . . There was an assignment about a scavenger hunt that I am supposed to be talking about.

It has been the better part of a week since we did our in class online scavenger hunt, and I can say without a doubt that it was the best in-class assignment I have ever had. . . Unless of course you counted snack time followed immediately by nap time from my formative years (But no one counts those. It would be too unfair)

Since we all did the assignment together in class, it seems to be a little rhetorical to go over the who’s, what’s, and where’s of the questions. The answer to all of those questions is simple. Google.com. Though we refined our searches through the use of advanced search, I can safely say that the entire assignment was done using Google as our guide. What if google.com disappeared tomorrow?

I think we highlighted the fact that our culture is hooked on google (much like the 90’s were hooked on phonics) and we stray very very little from that paradigm. I was honestly going to suggest that we use bing.com just too see how effective it would be in comparison to the Search Giant. Is google the best search engine out there, or just the most commonly used engine? Does being one make it the other?

My answer. . . Maybe. Should we as a class, as an academic community, as a society be looking for a better way to find and distribute information? For now, I think we should just heed the age old saying “If it an’t broke, don’t fix it”. But where we will get our information in the future, and how we will disseminate our own research is something we should keep on the radar. It doesn’t have to be a priority anytime in the near future, but we should still think about it from time to time.