Clio Wired (History 696)

According to Kirsten Foot, Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Washington, digital scholarship is “any element of knowledge or art that is created, produced, analyzed, distributed, published, and/or displayed in a digital medium, for the purpose of research or teaching." More specifically, the Electronic Imprint project at the University of Virginia defines digital scholarship as a “publication that (1) exists in digital format, i.e., as an electronic file or set of files that can be stored, transported, and displayed on general-purpose computers or other devices that manipulate digital files; (2) is incapable of being translated without loss of information or value into a non-digital format, such as that of a printed book, because it makes use of media, tools, structuring, or other features of computer presentation that cannot be conveyed in any other medium; and (3) is subject in all other respects to the demands of traditional print scholarship for originality, value, and selection via a process of peer review.”

With these definitions in mind, I analyzed “Hearsay of the Sun: Photography, Identity, and the Law of Evidence in Nineteenth-Century American Courts,” by Thomas Thurston, and “Los Angeles and the Problem of Urban Historical Knowledge,” by Philip J. Ethington.

Hearsay of the Sun
Thomas Thurston is a graduate of Yale University, who was studying for his Ph.D. when he authored this site. In constructing this site, Thurston’s purpose was to consider “the legal reception of photography as a type of evidence in the appellate cases, legal treatises, and legal journals of the last half of the nineteenth century.” The essay is very well-written and engaging, allowing the reader to view a glimpse of the legal system of the nineteenth century.

It is immediately apparent that recreating this project in a book form would be virtually impossible. Mr. Thurston does something unique, using oft-cursed frames. In separate frames, Thurston allows the user to look at the text of the essay, footnotes, and the entire source cited in the footnote. Unlike other sites, the frames can be broken up, so a unique URL is formed (making citations and book-marking easier for those using this material). For example, if I were to cite the following quotation:

1. The great sun in heaven was summoned as a witness, and the sun would not lie. A voice was to speak to them from a hundred millions miles away—a hundred millions of miles near the realm toward which men looked when they dreamed of the Great White Throne.... the name swept through the darkness over an unseen track, and appeared upon the wall, within a halo of amber light.

I could provide a separate URL for the footnote (http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/photos/ essay/foot04.htm)—N.B., this URL will provide the URL for the entire chapter’s footnotes, the original source (http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/photos/texts/92holland400.htm), and Thurston’s essay itself (http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/photos/essay/4.htm). If I found all this information overwhelming, I could turn enlarge one frame, e.g., the essay, and read it alone. Although one could put all of this information in a book, it would not be as useful for the user, as it would be rather cumbersome to flip back and forth (not to mention very long).

To meet the peer review criteria, Thurston’s site was reviewed by scholars for the online American Quarterly experiment, and their reactions are presented online at Project Muse. Roy Rosenzweig is enthusiastic about Thurston presentation. While admitting that the presentation could potentially be done in print, he is excited because Thurston “offers us something else—a system for seamlessly linking argument and evidence.” Using the anchor tag, Thurston allows the reader to move “directly from one reference to the paragraph from which it originated and the "frame," which enables Thurston to keep all the different pieces (argument, footnotes, sources, illustrations) of his "article" on a single screen.” Such a structure is useful, and has not been attempted by many scholars. Furthermore, it does not appear that other authors have really examined this topic; therefore, this site meets the criteria for scholarship.

Los Angeles and the Problem of Urban Historical Knowledge
Philip Ethington, the author of this site, is a professor of history at the University of Southern California. His 2001 site was a joint venture between the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History. In his essay, Ethington looks at Los Angeles from a postmodernist perspective, utilizing maps, photographs, and hyperlinks to look at the city. He offers his hypothesis: “The key concept in the search for historical certainty should be "mapping" in a literal, not a metaphoric, sense.” He posits the idea that the Los Angeles, like all metropolises, is ultimately unknowable, begging the question of whether we can ever know an ultimate “truth” about something.

When I first came to the site, I was a little concerned—one of the first things I encountered was a broken link (see, A Multimedia Essay to Accompany the December Issue of The American Historical Review, published by the http://www.historycooperative.org December 2000). The left alignment of the text also bothered me a tad, but I thought the essay could make up for these design flaws.

I must admit, I was a bit flustered by this site. I liked some of the maps—they did show the complexity of the city with the multitude of political divisions. Furthermore, it did make me question about how we perceive situations and objects—how do people really know what things are? However, I quickly noticed distracting design flaws. I did not like the repeated menu going down the entire length of the page. The pages were far too long, requiring much scrolling, and I found myself quickly bored. He presents links to images throughout the piece—photos that he admits that he has altered, begging the question of whether the original significance of the building/object photographed has been obscured. He gives us a panoramic view of the areas he describes, but the technology employed is not useful. When I tried to focus on certain points on the photo, I was confronted with blurry images. Furthermore, the author provides us with no explanation—for example, is the Los Angeles River a junkyard for cars? There are also maps of global cities. I click on London, and I get the whole continent of Europe—this holds true for all cities—and I cannot zoom in to the actual city, making may wonder at the tool’s usefulness.

The site was featured in the American Historical Review; therefore, it was peer reviewed. After reviewing the essay and the accompanying maps and images, I went on to examine whether this sort of work is original. I found a similar site (Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future) also done by USC. It was more archival, without the overarching essay. Therefore, I do not think anyone has covered Los Angeles from a postmodernist perspective. I suppose it is scholarship—though its intended audience is probably only a select few folk who are arguing epistemology and the idea of objectivity. A study such as this one could have been presented in a book—with difficulty—although he could not incorporate the panoramic revolving views into a book.