Week 2 Responses
Spidering? Scraping? I sort of got the gist, at least in the sense of “data mining” (not that I really know what that is either, but it’s easier to guess). Is it something I would do, or do only the big search engines like Google do it? The problem with technology information, generally, seems to be that it presupposes the reader’s knowledge about the topic. I tried to look around online for better definitions of these two terms but with little success (don’t bother with dictionary.com…seems to be a few years, or is it only months? behind). So I will be glad to discuss these terms in greater detail in class.
The 9/11 Digital Archive was certainly impressive, especially the map portion. However, this kind of site seems possible only with some serious technical support. Digital History, on the other hand, gives a better idea of how to collect on a smaller scale, which is perhaps a more likely situation for us as historians (unless we have a lucky affiliation with CHNM or ASHP). I really appreciated the options it laid out (people email you so you can screen them and then post, or people post directly, you can better organize topics if you use a list serv, etc).
I thought some of the most important points in the Digital History chapter dealt with privacy and reassuring the user/contributer. They don’t seem very important in terms of site operation, but actually I think they are crucial in soliciting information from the general public. I didn’t really think about it until I saw the “About This Project” page on the Video Store project site. If I were considering contributing to a site, I would probably read that information and look for reassurance first.
I have a few questions for Josh, as creator of the Video Store site: How did you get people to go to the site when you introduced it? Did you try to link it to other sites, or just throw it up on the web and hope that people came across it? I guess I’m asking, is there a way to do some kind of marketing/publicity when you start a new site? Also, I noticed there were mostly customer and not very many owner/employee responses. Do you think you would have done something differently to target these audiences?
The pregnancy test site was definitely…unusual. At first I just thought, why?? I’m still not sure I have an answer (who would ever go looking for this site?), but I do appreciate the fact that it’s making public something we don’t really discuss as a culture, and I think that makes the personal testimonies useful.
January 30th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Actually, it is something anyone (paticularly a historian) can and does do. Spidering is searching through material to find key words, in the case of websites, what a search engine does. It is also the same thing you do any time you check an index for a term.
January 30th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
While i’m not answering your questions that are directed to Josh–I will say that I do think the level of praticipation is proportional to the advertising…to some extent, and I mentioned this in my blog I think it has to do with marketing strategies and actively integrating some basic business principles in order to create this successful “product”.
I say “product” because of course the stuff we do is not necessarily for monetary gain, but at the same time these principles are needed to spread the word.
January 30th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
I agree that the amount of general participation connects to advertising or PR efforts. One of the pstings on The Thin Blue Line even noted how the visitor had heard about the site on CNN and just had to share her comments! The failed business plan archive also had links to a number of news articles discussing the site. However, after working in the PR industry, it’s not that easy to get publicity for just any Web site. At this time the media are incredibly jaded about Web sites and one would have to be really creative, affiliated with a large, national organization to get media pick-up. The press also loves to cover news about children but that raises the tricky question of collecting information from kids online…
January 31st, 2006 at 1:53 pm
I think spidering and scraping are definitely things that all of us, as historians, must do. We all use such search techniques at varying levels while reading paper books and articles, but I suspect finding a way to do so with websites and digital sources is more complex than it seems in Turkel’s blog. This confusion points to the danger of assuming technical knowledge, or even a shared concept of search methods, can be very dangerous when trying to make information accessible to people unfamiliar with the topic.
January 31st, 2006 at 3:26 pm
The questions you pose to Josh are important and ones that I have pondered as well. In considering doing a website for this class as well as research seminar I thought “who would visit a site that I created?” Without advertising or soliciting of visitors how would someone find the site in the first place? I am sure there are simple answers to these questions, but it they are concerns that I have had.
December 24th, 2006 at 11:47 am
hello, nice day…
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January 15th, 2007 at 6:54 am
hello, it’s good idea…
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