For the historical comminutes blog, I looked at several forums on women’s history. I must first admit that forums in general confuse me, so it took a few tries to find something that I could use to answer the questions. I did find two, however, that seemed to be easy enough to understand, follow, and learn from.
The first is the Women's History Forum, overseen by Gerda Lerner, a leading author and teacher in women’s history. This forum was an extension of a lecture she spoke at, and she seemed pleased with the end results of the online forum. It only ran for one month, and concentrated on the problems of integrating women’s history with the more ‘mainstream’ history presented to high school and undergraduate students in survey courses. Ms. Lerner started the discussion, and it was thoughtfully continued by several high school teachers, and a few professors who have either attempted, or successfully, combined women into the standard texts required by their schools. One of the main concerns for the high school students was their willingness to examine books and documents not presented in a standard textbook format. Many of the teachers felt that as long as proper foundation work had been established, the students would feel more comfortable with possible conflicting accounts of an event, and possibly gain a better understanding of a particular timeframe in question. In one of her response entries, the discussion says that perhaps text books make the past too clean and straight-forward, a view that many high schoolers, and perhaps many college students, hold. Ms. Lerner makes the interesting comment that “The past is no neater than the Present.” Something that is good for everyone to remember as well.
The second site that I explored was from the suggested list, http://www.h-net.org/~women/threads/. It took me a few minutes of looking around the site to find the discussions, and not the events and calls-for-papers area. This site is a bit more open to enthusiasts, although many of the responses were from people who were associated with a university or college. Unlike the Women’s History Forum, it does not appear to be overseen by one specific person, but more of a casually discussion of history questions between the members of the forum monitored by several editors. Discussions were broken up into separate categories, and several of the threads had been edited for length purposes. Some of the discussions are more slanted to the ‘women’ aspect rather than the ‘historical’ aspect, but they serve their community purpose and bring people together over a common interest. This on-line method is certainly not the only method, but perhaps the most effective. People can answer or read at their leisure, and can refer back to threads from many years past; most of the discussions I read were dated from the late 1990s, although I’m sure more recent threads are available.
In general, I think history forums are on the right track. Like most of the internet, they can be quite useful, or quite ineffective. History on the web is getting its feet wet and learning the ropes that were established by other interests. Almost every genre I know of has forums available to its members, but the degree of their usability is dependant on the forum experience of its users and administrators. Just as it is with the rest of history’s integration onto the Web, the forum aspect is another facet to consider and develop.