Andy Privee, the grants administrator for the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), and Kathy Secrist, a long-time staff member of the Sociology and Anthropology Department, were each presented with a 2009 Mary Roper award in a ceremony at the George Mason University Center for the Arts December 2nd.
The Roper Award began in 2001 and was named for a veteran GMU employee, Mary Roper, who worked in the department of biology and in the college dean’s office for 14 years. Ms. Roper was in attendance at the ceremony to honor the College of Humanities and Social Sciences staff members who have consistently demonstrated excellent performance, commitment, and dedication to the college.
“Both Karen and Andy continually embody the qualities of the Mary Roper award,” said Censer.
Privee joined CHNM in 2006, bringing with him 30 years of experience in administrative and operations roles for the Peace Corps and Environmental Protection Agency. An avid marathon runner, who has finished 13 different races around the east coast, Privee’s work at CHNM requires similar stamina.
“He has become essential to the stability of CHNM,” said Censer.
Both Privee and Secrist were presented with an engraved glass award and gifts.
“Usually, success is not the result of an individual but of teamwork,” said Privee.
Secrist and Privee were honored, as were four others with administrative awards: Frah Abdi (Outstanding HR and Finance), Dana Vogel (Outstanding Administrative Support), Mary Jackson (Outstanding Graduate Program Support) and Carrie Grabo (Outstanding Undergraduate Program Support).
The Digital Harlem website presents information, drawn from legal records, newspapers and other archival and published sources, about everyday life in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood in the years 1915-1930.
Digital Harlem is an element of the project, Black Metropolis: Harlem, 1915-1930, which was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. Unlike most studies of Harlem in the early twentieth century, this project focuses not on black artists and the black middle class, but on the lives of ordinary African New Yorkers. It does so primarily by using legal records, which encompass not only hardened criminals but also first offenders, ordinary residents acting out of desperation, poverty or anger, and which reveal all manner of things that would not ordinarily be labeled ‘criminal’– street life, black language, music, family life – as well as evidence of the role of gambling, violence and confidence men in the black community.
The Roy Rosenzweig Fellowship for Innovation in Digital Historyis sponsored jointly by the AHA and the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University. It was developed by friends and colleagues of Roy Rosenzweig (1950–2007), the Mark and Barbara Fried Professor of History and New Media at George Mason University, to honor his life and work as a pioneer in the field of digital history. This nonresidential fellowship will be awarded annually to honor and support work on an innovative and freely available new media project, and in particular for work that reflects thoughtful, critical, and rigorous engagement with technology and the practice of history.
Through the generosity of Donald and Nancy DeLaski, Martha Washington: a Life (marthawashington.us) examines Martha’s life and relationships by making available documents, historical items, teaching materials, and other resources. A biographical narrative exhibit, written by George Mason University History professor Rosemarie Zagarri, highlights the major milestones of the First Lady’s life as a young woman, bride, mother, First Lady, and widow.
Three teaching modules use Martha’s experiences as a lens through which to examine themes of sociability, slavery, and the Revolutionary War. Each includes a short introductory film, a collection of primary sources, and classroom activities for middle and high school students.
The site also includes a searchable archive which allows visitors to examine more than 450 items and documents related to Martha and her life. The letters, documents, images, and material culture objects in the archive provide users with a glimpse into the world of Virginia’s 18th century planter class.
The Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989, signaling the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new era in transatlantic relations and European unity. November 9, 2009 celebrates 20 years since the Berlin Wall was torn down. Long a symbol of isolation and contention, the Berlin Wall now symbolizes hope, change and unity. Students at more than 25 US universities will celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by organizing Campus Weeks with financial and organizational support from the German Embassy in Washington DC .
This fall, George Mason University and CHNM will join in the German Embassy’s campaign, Freedom Without Walls, a crosscultural celebration of the unification of East Germany and West Germany, and the possibility for peaceful change throughout the world. CHNM is hosting the George Mason website for Freedom Without Walls, which will feature updates on project news, Campus Week events, and new content.
The Campus Weeks are a component of Germany ‘s Freedom Without Walls campaign, an effort to reach out to the generation that was born around the time the wall came down.
Ambassador Scharioth explained that reaching today’s university students is critical if the memory and the inspiration of the fall of the wall is to be preserved. “Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the vestiges of the wall remind us that freedom is precious,” he said. “We are proud to support a new generation of future leaders in their effort to discover and to share what the fall of the wall means to them,” he continued.
The Freedom Without Walls Campus Weeks will include public speaking competitions and an art competition involving replicas of the Berlin Wall to be located across the country.
The German Embassy has created a website with information about the historic anniversary at www.Germany.info/withoutwalls, as well as a Freedom Without Walls page on Facebook. The Germany.info website contains comprehensive information about the history of Germany’s division and reunification, and it will document the Campus Weeks using online video and photos.
The Freedom Without Walls campaign is generously supported by Air Berlin and by the Max Kade Foundation, Inc.
The Goethe-Institut USA and the Wende Museum in Los Angeles provide support in kind for the German Embassy’s Freedom Without Walls campaign.
Colleges and Universities Participating in Freedom Without Walls Campus Weeks 2009
The Center for History and New Media is proud to support George Mason’s Open Access Week initiatives (October 19th through 23rd). Since its inception in 1994, CHNM has been committed to the free flow of information and has striven to create open source educational resources that provide room for communication and democratization of history.
Open Access Week draws worldwide attention to the unrestricted sharing of scholarly research and materials for the advancement and enjoyment of all. Open Access (OA) literature is freely accessible online–maximizing the visibility, use, and impact of research. Building on the success of last year’s Open Access Day, University Libraries’ participation in OA Week offers students, faculty, staff, and the public an opportunity to learn more about Mason’s OA initiatives.
Open Access is a growing international movement that encourages the unrestricted sharing of scholarly research and materials with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of knowledge and society. Open Access is the principle that all research should be freely accessible online, immediately after publication. OA maximizes access to research, thereby enhancing its visibility, use, and impact.
Open Access Week is an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public. The now-annual event has been expanded from a single day to accommodate widespread global interest in the movement toward open, public access to scholarly research. October 19-23, 2009 marks the first international Open Access Week.
Open Access Week builds on the momentum started by the student-led national day of action in 2007 and carried by the 120 campuses in 27 countries that celebrated Open Access Day in 2008. Organizers and contributors include SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition); the PLoS (The Public Library of Science); Students for Free Culture; OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); Open Access Directory (OAD); and eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries).
Recently, museums and other educational institutions have embraced social media—media that encourages multi-way communication and the building of networks—to connect with their audiences. But, participating in social media raises a lot of questions that include concerns about balancing accessibility of collections with control; grappling with authoritative and personal voice; and measuring impact and outcomes. While these issues are of concern to many institutions, they need to be addressed with special tact by those who deal with sensitive subject matter and vulnerable populations, and who hold in trust the memories of victims of tyranny, human rights abuses, and genocide. This un-conference aims to hash out these concerns with people interested in these issues.
The un-conference will be held on Saturday, December 5, 2009 from 8:30am to 5:30pm at USHMM in Washington, DC. To learn more and submit an application, visit http://www.ushmm.org/social/blog/about.
CHNM Labs released a new research report today, Mobile for Museums http://chnm.gmu.edu/labs/mobile-for-museums/. Funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the report assesses how art museums are incorporating mobile technologies into visitor experiences and offers replicable mobile prototypes based on those findings.
A survey of the field shows that for many years art museums have been at the forefront of offering their visitors learning experiences that extend beyond traditional exhibit labels. That trend continues as art museums add cell phone tours, podcasts, and platform-specific applications in an effort to capitalize on the commonly-owned portable devices—iPods, MP3 players, Blackberries, cell phones—that visitors already carry in their pockets.
CHNM found that while all genres of museums are very interested in offering content and unique experiences using mobiles, their biggest challenge is working with small budgets and a small staff, limiting their ability to develop content for mobiles.
To address these needs, Mobile for Museums offers recommendations and free, replicable prototypes based on this research on how to economically provide mobile users with positive experiences in and outside a museum.
These prototypes include:
• New plugins for the Omeka http://omeka.org software package allowing institutions to use already-created collections content and re-purpose it with plugins for use inside the gallery, including: Send to Mobile, Bar Codes, and Social Bookmarking.
• Website design optimized for cross-platform mobile browsers that is accessible by a variety of mobile and smart phones, for possible use outside of the gallery.
• A cross-platform application built in PhoneGap that harnesses the functionality native to a mobile device.
These examples are simply proofs of concept, but we hope that by making them and the code available http://code.google.com/p/art-in-the-city/ we will provide the museum community with some fresh possibilities for mobile development.
CHNM encourages collaboration and discussion of our findings and prototypes, through commenting directly on the site. We hope that this research and development will encourage more institutions to share their development and experiments with the greater museum community.
2. Launch a cross-platform mobile website that bring collections to people outside of museum walls.
The second prototype integrates several Omeka plugins into a mobile-friendly website. To build a mobile-friendly website from scratch, we created Art in the City<http://dev.omeka.org/artinthecity> to showcase this mobile integration by combining a customized theme with several plugins for a unique mobile experience. There were two distinct steps to launching the collections-based mobile website: organizing and presenting collections, and optimizing the mobile web design, including adding and customizing plugins.
Art in the City homepage
We began by filling our Omeka database with images relating to four sites in Washington, D.C. A person walking around D.C. may access Art in the City from their mobile device and find the Capitol building, for instance, in the list of locations. Once selecting the location, the user discovers images and art from a variety of institutions that relate to the history and use of the Capitol building as a political and cultural icon. One more click takes the visitor to metadata if she or he desires more information about the digital object, and tells the visitor what institution holds that object. By adding fields to the existing metadata, institutions can also tell visitors if an object is available for viewing in a public space. Creating a cross-institutional mobile browser-friendly site offers an out-of-gallery experience, where users can access the resource from virtually anywhere.
To offer a mobile site that rendered similar results in all major mobile browser, we modified a pre-existing Omeka theme, Emiglio. We modified the theme’s CSS by reducing the width and padding of the header, footer, navigation, and columns, and adjusted the font sizes of headings and the body, so that the design fits comfortably within the confines of a smaller mobile browser window. With the design in place, we focused our efforts on the curation of content.
Screenshot of mobile interface
Once we created a small archive for Art in the City, we installed the new Send to Mobile plugin. Send to Mobile allows users browsing the site to send specific information about the artwork in the archive–determined by the project team–to a mobile device via text message (SMS) or email. We imagine two common scenarios incorporating the Send to Mobile feature. First, an individual might visit the website prior to visiting, and choose to text themselves selected objects to view at the museum. Alternatively, once at the museum, a visitor might text a friend or family member browsing in another gallery or wing of the museum to alert them of an interesting artifact or piece of art. Once downloaded to their phone, anyone may access the information in that text, even if cell phone reception is not available within the museum itself. Offline mobile integration provides another way to deliver content to users, and diversifies the options available.
Lastly, we created a BriteKite wall and encourage visitors either to text or tweet using the hashtag, #artincity. The wall is linked from the site’s homepage and encourages anyone to contribute to or follow conversations and commentary related the Art in the City site.
Art in the City offers a prototype that is easily replicable for other museums seeking to pilot their own collections-based mobile site.
3. Harness power of mobile devices through native cross-platform applications.
Developing an application for multiple mobile platforms (Android, Blackberry, and iPhone) has proven to be the most challenging piece of this project. Unlike the browser-based solution, a native application does not run on the web browser, but on the device itself. An application will run at an optimal speed and offer the user the functionality of a phone that is not available in a web browser, such as the device’s GPS, vibration, accelerometer, camera, or phone. But mobile devices rely on platform-specific development that requires programming in different languages, and imposes different limits on how code can be shared and licensed.
We understand that it is difficult for museums to develop for multiple platforms, so in order to help the museum community reach the broadest possible audience, our goal was to create a single development solution that works across three major platforms: Android, Blackberry, and iPhone. We hope to encourage further cross-platform development, which is why we are releasing this open-source code to our prototypes.
We developed our prototype application in Phonegap <http://phonegap.com>, a cross-platform framework for building mobile applications. Phonegap allows developers to create mobile applications that are native to devices, programmed using only HTML and javascript that seamlessly integrate with device-specific installations. By using HTML and javascript, traditional web developers can now create mobile applications without requiring them to learn a new programming language, such as Objective-C or Python. In addition to being based upon these basic technologies, the pool of available developers with the necessary knowledge base to use Phonegap is much larger than for other languages, which makes using Phonegap an economical choice.
The Phonegap application relies on the Art in the City Omeka installation we already created. There is a client/server relationship between the mobile application and the Omeka database. When a user installs and opens the mobile application on their device, our server is pinged to download specific data. When returning data to the device, the application formats that data in a specific way. This basic API (application programming interface) allows the application’s users to receive recently-updated information from the live Omeka installation.
In order to exchange data between the Art in the City website we created, and the mobile application developed using Phonegap, we needed structured information that could be accessed remotely. A variety of formats are favored online for exchanging data, such as XML-based specs such as RSS and RDF, or OAI-PMH. After several performance tests, we chose to access Omeka data using JSON, because the size of files containing information for the mobile device are smaller. The amount of data sent from the server to mobile application is an important consideration, especially if users have limited bandwidth or slow cellular connections. Omeka natively has a JSON output format, however we chose to create a plugin which provided additional metadata. The Enhanced JSON Output plugin shares data about museum collections, artwork, tags, and other information such as featured artworks.
Javascript is used within the mobile application to retrieve and display data from the Omeka website. To avoid starting from scratch, we used jQuery, which is a popular javascript framework. By using jQuery, the javascript code developed as part of our mobile development already performed several basic actions, such as displaying and hiding content on the screen, and retrieving data from a remote server. We focused on implementing code that would integrate with Omeka, and be reusable on other Omeka sites in the future. Similar language was used in the javascript as found in Omeka’s code, so that a developer who is learning both systems could avoid having to learn two different approaches to displaying collection data.
Accessing a mobile devices hardware, notably GPS, distinguishes a mobile application from the mobile-optimized website. Most of today’s smartphones including Blackberry, Android, and iPhones come with a GPS that provides the geolocation of the device as it is being used. By integrating GPS functionality into our native mobile application, we are able to provide location-based search. When a user opens the application, they see a splash screen notifying them that the GPS will plot their current location. All artwork displayed within the application will be ordered based upon the physical distance from the user, and users will see the distance calculated for them. So, if a user stands at a street corner, they might discover four pieces of public art located within a 0.5 mile radius from where they stand. The user also may access more information about those artworks by browsing on their phone.
Finally, we complied all of the code used in our mobile projects. We generalized the Phonegap code so it may be translated into the necessary language for each mobile device. Compiling this code creates a file which can easily be downloaded onto a Blackberry or Android device. iPhone applications, however, must be approved by Apple before anyone may install them. Once approved, the application will be available in the Apple application store.
All code developed for these prototypes is available to download on Google Code, (http://code.google.com/p/art-in-the-city/). We released this as open source and invite anyone to test and expand it, and then to contribute back to the museum community by sharing your enhancements.
Since 1994, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has used digital media and computer technology to democratize history—to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past. We sponsor more than two dozen digital history projects and offer free tools and resources for historians. Learn More
Teachinghistory.org is the central online location for accessing high-quality resources in K-12 U.S. history education. Explore the highlighted content on our homepage or visit individual sections for additional materials.
