Clio Wired (History 696)

As previously discussed in class, a good quality website is made up of at least two factors, good content and good design. A 'scholarly' website must likewise employ these same two elements. A piece of 'digital scholarship' seems to imply a bit more than just good content and good design, though. As David Staley discussed his views on the 'virtual reality' that would eventually evolve from combining history and computers, he evoked a vision that historical works would soon include a similar interaction and involvement found in todays computer and video games. Staley's descriptions of the historical field of the future only lightly touch on scholarship produced for the World Wide Web, but they do include, therein, his ideas that these historical sites will be interactive, communal, and provide some sort of virtual reality. The sites I reviewed proved to be in varying nascent stages of Staley's virtual reality world of history. Generally websites contain two visual aspects, text and media in the form of still images, video, and audio. Digital scholarship is how well these visual aspects are interwoven into the scholarship the author is trying to portray.

Both of the sites reviewed included helpful introductions as to what to expect on their site. I was pleasantly surprised to see the foresight each author had to realize their works were not the same as a printed book, and as such would be viewed much differently. Both sites included a statement which acknowledged, and even encouraged, the viewer to peruse the contents in any manner they chose. While a single and complete essay had been written, in the case of the Los Angeles site, Philip Ethington, the author, states that the pictures, maps, and other aspects should be viewed in which ever sequence the viewer chooses. “But readers can also disregard the Essay altogether,” Ethington encourages, “because it is not essential to the site – only one of its elements” (Preface). Similarly, the Comic Strip site suggests that the contents can be reviewed by looking through the index of images and the accompanying text. Completely aware that allowing the viewer to 'choose his own adventure' may alter the meaning of the site, David Westbrook offers the following statement about his chronological index of thumbnail images:
“If this fourth thread succeeds in creating the impression that the strips are speaking for themselves in their own language, then I hope it will have made a gesture toward the same sort of deflation of pretension that cartoon characters have been effecting for over a century. While the scholars talk, the comics thumb their collective nose and follow their own path.”

While the authors are aware of the 'digitalness' of their scholarship, and make a valiant attempt to incorporate forms of new media in their sites, they fall short of the ideals of David Staley. Ethington's site on urban history in Los Angeles comes a the viewer a smidgen harsh at first with a large collage of images on the home page, the stark and eye jarring white text on black, and continuously changing images on the preface page. Ethington incorporates a multitude of images, detailed and somewhat interactive maps, and a few videos depicting a drive down Los Angeles streets. Although much is display, nothing much 'new' is used. The site is a good show of mostly stationary media, but does not incorporate the virtual reality spoken of by David Staley.

Westbrook offers even less in the form of 'new media.' While his content is documented with numerous resources and other aspects of a scholarly work, thus achieving the 'scholarship' of 'digital scholarship', Westbrook does not offer anything thing that couldn't be had in print form. One of the 'digital' tools found on the site is the chronology of images used througout the site. While this is helpful in looking at the argument from a different perspective, it is not something attainable solely in digital format.