Clio Wired (History 696)

However, I am going to argue in the face of empiric evidence that we should ignore this proposal when designing digital scholarship. I am not going to dispute their findings as outdated or irrelevant, but rather shortsighted and unimaginative. If we are going to call it "new" media, then we should treat it as such. People are initially going to be drawn to presentations as recommended in the article, as they are naturally drawn to familiar mediums. However, it stands to reason that as the use of the internet and interactive websites becomes ever more pedestrian, so will comfort and satisfaction. Creating digital scholarship with television as the model seems to shortchange new media's potential. Instead, alternatives should be created and implemented in hopes of expanding user engagement.

That said, choosing a site from among those presented for this week's assignment was not easy. I liked aspects of nearly all of them, but two really stood out: Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704 and History Wired. Raid on Deerfield coalesces many of the opportunities digital scholarship offers and forces the user into an immersive experience, while History Wired presents users with an interesting way to identify information and draw conclusions.

Raid on Deerfield brings together text, images, audio, and video files in an interactive format to create a truly comprehensive piece of digital scholarship. The user is guided through a series of narratives, presented in a variety of formats, presenting background and primary information about the setting and events which led to the attack, an account of the attack itself, and the aftermath. Throughout, user activity is encouraged and necessary.

History Wired, by comparison, is much more traditional in terms of their content. The site is mostly composed of images coupled with complementing narratives. However, the site contains a unique and engaging tool by which this material can be approached. All of the objects are mapped on a grid. Several topical categories can be chosen, and cause the object positions to highlight by degree of relevance to the chosen terms. It becomes a graphical search engine, allowing a new way for users to locate information.

The differences in these sites highlight the potentials of new media. Deerfield, for example is not searchable. Users are forced to browse the site through the predetermined pathways. In this way they are guided through a series of "chapters" which use audio and video files as well as tools which require user actions to develop the narrative. And although there is a great deal of choice in this process, due its strong narrative, it works much better when the sections are followed in the order they have been laid out. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it adds a measure of control to a medium which generally reduces ownership. Although, the implementation of a simple search engine would be useful when trying to locate information on return visits. Conversely, the material presented on History Wired is eminently searchable, although it hard to imagine presenting a narrative using this model. It is an excellent example of how primary and related secondary materials might be presented to users in hopes of encouraging them to draw their own conclusions.

Either way, these sites both approach new media as more than an extension of the television, and require critical and engaged use by their audience. In that sense they seems to be excellent examples of the potential efficacy of digital media to redefine scholarship.