Clio Wired (History 696)

Digital Scholarship – Suzanne’s View

Do the websites examined fulfill “the promise of digital scholarship?” Do they do anything genuinely new with new media, and if so, do they do it well? The questions separate into two categories – digital/new media and historical scholarship – and then blend together in the forms of the websites examined. In our discussions of historical scholarship, the most important aspect has been the existence of an argument or expressing a point of historical view and then backing it up with evidence and drawing conclusions. As we discussed, the four essential points are: originality, based on research, peer reviewed, and available to the public. Our focus in evaluating digital/new media has been to ask the question, could the material been presented as well in book form? (We’ve phrased it several ways, but that’s my version of the question for this discussion) Janet Murray, in Hamlet on the Holodeck, points outs that in digital media, the computer emphasizes four aspects of delivering information: spatial, participatory, procedural, and encyclopedic. That’s a lot of requirements to put on any project, historical or otherwise.

David Staley’s book, Computers, Visualization, and History, at least in the introduction and chapter in the handout, gives a vision of the future uses of digital media as visualizations. His definition of visualization is “any graphic which organizes meaningful information in multidimensional spatial form…and their purpose is to organize signs representing data and information in two- and three-dimensional form” (p.3) The importance of his discussion is the transition from the written word to the three-dimensional form the computer is capable of producing, and how the academic community of historians is handling this transition. According to Staley and many others (including myself and others in this class born of the linear generation), it is a difficult transition to give up words for visual demonstrations of historical scholarship. It is difficult to let go of written explanations to visual experiences. The pictorial example he gives of the transition from Pre-Tokugawa to the Tokugawa Period (p.6-7) is a good use of a historical visualization, but the nuances and subtle changes were not apparent until I read the explanation. As he goes on to explain, the computer could create a spatial and participatory (to quote Murray) experience to better explain the transition. I wasn’t able to grasp the concept until Staley gave examples of models, simulations, and games that could give form to the idea of virtual reality. I thought of the movie Lawnmower Man to help visualize his concept. Staley’s scenario of the historian arriving at a conference to present her “virtual display as an expression of her understanding of the past being modeled.” (p. 111) helped to clarify what his idea of visualization is. The historian’s “gendered spaces” of a medieval village have no directly connected words, but it is a three-dimensional display of the village that can be viewed at different angles. As I understand from readings and class discussions, this is the goal of the new media/scholarly approach to history that the digital world can give us.

It would appear that there is a path from the written work of historical scholarship to the digital/new media work of historical scholarship, and we are somewhere along that path. To that end, I examined the websites: The Difference Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu produced by Will Thomas and Edward Ayers at the University of Virginia and Images of the French Revolution http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/imaging/home.html compiled by Jack Censer and Lynn Hunt at George Mason University. Both of these websites show a close affinity with the written word, and both are committed to infusing the written word with the wonders of digital media. The analyzed material, be it images from the French Revolution or Soil Types Map of Augusta County, are the links and images created in new media, but the analysis is in the written word. The majority of what is visualized in both websites are words of historical scholarship, complemented by visual aides that can be manipulated by the web user with the right digital equipment. They both fulfill the “promise of digital scholarship” as we know it know and are able to design and produce on the web. It does seem we are only part way along the path to pure visualization.

The Difference Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two America Communities (vcdh) takes information from the archival website The Valley of the Shadows http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/ and makes a distinct historical argument about “how slavery divided American society and culture in the years before the Civil War.” Key=TI1 The article is also an “applied experiment in digital scholarship.” (ibid) The article argues as much about the validity of “scholarly argument-into forms that take advantage of the possibilities of electronic media” as it is an argument about American society and slavery before the Civil War. The sections or links to the Introduction and Summary of Argument presents the two geographic locations to be examined – one county North of the Mason-Dixon Line in Franklin County, Pennsylvania and one to the South in Augusta County, Virginia – in their historical context. The Evidence Section is lengthy and contains links to countless pieces of archival sources from maps to charts to municipal records. Each Point of Analysis has links to supporting evidence that can be reached with a click of a button rather than flipping through a book or holding places with fingers or sticky tabs. If you don’t get lost in the links, it is a definitive advantage to the book form. The scholarly argument, evidence, and conclusions of the history of these two counties are here. The website has been to peer review, and it is definitely available to the worldwide web public. The scholarship piece is intact.

VCDH is also arguing the use of digital media to present their article. The authors, and their many students, relied on the use of new technologies to present their views. For analysis, they turned to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to arrange the social structures in a spatial form. They used Extensible Markup Language (which I don’t really understand) to connect the myriad of pieces of information to the articles on the page (which I do understand clicking on the link to quickly see the evidence to support the point). The site is supported by numerous maps, charts, and tables. I understand using XML to link these pieces of information to the written presentation, and I utilized the links as a participant in the discussion. I think Janet Murrary would agree the procedural process on the website is exemplary, and nothing could be more encyclopedic than having The Valley of the Shadow as your information source. The VCDH website fulfills the promise of the digital side of the question, but does it do this particularly well? I’m hesitant to be critical because of my personal lack of credibility in the field of new media, but if the goal is Staley’s visualization, the website is only a few steps along the path to this goal. Maps, tables, and charts can be utilized well in book form, but they cannot be manipulated by the reader of the book as can the user of the website. Perhaps more bells and whistles are needed.

Censer and Hunt’s Images of the French Revolution takes advantage of the digital form to present 42 images surrounding the events and people involved in the French Revolution. These Images were presented to six historians who were asked to write an article of any topic of their choosing about the Images. The marriage of visual image and written word is essence of the website. After the articles were presented, a time for discussion was allowed and some of the responses appear on the website. It would be difficult to make the presentation in book form for a couple of reasons -- the difficulty of getting a printer willing to print 42 images (as well as their varying presentations) unless it is a work of art history, as well as getting the printer to entertain the notions of interactive response to a printed work. These two things Images does quite well. The Introduction divides the website into two main parts namely “a bank of images that focused our collaborative discussion and six individual essays about the meanings of the images.” (Introduction) Although, each page of the website has four icons to choose from, Essays, Images, Discussion, and About. This work is a group effort, and therefore one single argument can be hard to determine, but Censer and Hunt synthesize the views of the other historians in identifying the difficulty of using French revolutionary prints and cartoons as accurate historical data. They argue the evidence surrounding the printers and intended audiences can tell as much or more than the prints themselves. The site gets a star for originality as the historians are given free reign to present differing viewpoints of the same images. The articles are well written by scholarly historians in their field of study, the French Revolution. The conclusions Censer and Hunt draw from the articles about the nature of the Images emphasizes the “slipperiness” of the Images as revolutionary imagery without the use of captions to explicate the meaning of the image. Again, the use of words to explain a visual is an important part of the presentation. The secondary argument is the pros and cons of using digital media as “the on-line version of these images leaves much to be desired; the text below and around the image is often obscured.” (intro) The strength in the on-line presentation is summarized in the About section. The reader or user is allowed access all 42 images, as well as providing an “Image Tool that permits close study and comparison…each image includes relevant data and is linked to various places throughout the site.” (About) These links and tools provide the spatial and participatory aspects of digital scholarship. The Discussion section is an excellent presentation of Peer Review and the website is in the public domain. The procedures or navigation of the website is easily accessible, but it would be difficult to stamp encyclopedic on the website. Encyclopedic does not seem necessary given the narrowly focused topic of 42 French Revolutionary images. Images aims at digital scholarship and does well in its presentation. The technology available allows user around the world to view all 42 images, and the tools (if the user has the right equipment) allow the user to manipulate the images that the book form would not allow.

Both sites fulfill the promise of digital scholarship as it known today. They both use new media effectively, and they are on the cutting edge of the use of new media. (as much as I know about new media and understand it) They still rely heavily on the written word for the conveyance of information, and this shows the field of academic scholarship has moved only a few steps along the path to Staley’s version of visualization. Small steps are integral to the process, and the steps along the path are as important as the end result. If there is an end result and it is attainable with the technology we have today.

Endnote: I was particularly encouraged by David Staley’s example of the historian as the director or producer of the project, and not necessarily the web designers or technical gurus able to make it all happen alone. I can relate to directing, producing, or delegating without ever being able to write hypertext at all…