brockett

For my final project, I plan to make maps (or just one for now, depending on how hard this actually is going to be) of the ethnic makeup of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, NY at various points in the late 19^th – 20^th centuries. I always marveled at the constant rotation of ethnic groups in Brooklyn…any given neighborhood may have been an Irish enclave in the 1870s, then Jewish, then Italian, then Puerto Rican today. So I thought it would be interesting to gather historical census data and identify the dominant ethnicity for the different neighborhoods at select times, use colors for each group, and link some maps together so the viewer can see how the colors move around on the map. That’s the basic idea, anyway.

After surfing around, it seems that no one has attempted this yet, certainly not in visual form. Most sites, and histories in general, track one immigrant group, one neighborhood’s development, or address only one point in time. My maps would give a broader perspective of change over time. We may understand that New York is always changing, but it’s hard to conceive of it, and of its scale, especially through text alone. Visual, moving data would be much more striking, I think.

I’m not sure it would make sense to just plop these maps on a web site for the sake of a new site, though. I do not intend for these maps to be in-depth and research intensive, to tell anything about immigrant groups other than their movement. This does not mean, however, that I don’t hope to appeal to a serious/historic/professional audience. So much attention is focused on these immigrant groups in Manhattan (especially the Lower East Side), that their movement out to Brooklyn (and presumably their subsequent or corresponding socioeconomic rise) has largely been overlooked. Researchers might benefit from the maps as a quick perspective on how to pursue further information about their topic/group. This broad overview also would appeal to a general audience. Brooklyn nostalgia and genealogy seem to be very prominent in the minds of the general public, who most likely would appreciate a quick visual display of population change in Brooklyn (especially if the viewer is descended from a particular group). Perhaps, then, these maps would be most effective if they were linked to or available on the most prominent local sites, such as the Brooklyn Historical Society or the Brooklyn Public Library. These are ideal locations because they seem to sit at the gateway to either popular interest or serious research.

First I looked at Brooklyn sites that offer information about the history of various neighborhoods. There are several, but they tend to be fairly general, summarizing neighborhood histories in pleasing narratives that would most likely appeal to the general public (as opposed to academics). They also play heavily on nostalgia, as evident in their tone and their assumption that the reader is already somewhat familiar with the neighborhood. The Channel Thirteen site is a good example, and it includes an interesting (and somewhat interactive) map of the independent towns that came together to comprise modern Brooklyn. One of the more unusual sites lists all of the neighborhoods and gives information about some of them (but not all) from a 1939 WPA guide to Brooklyn. For the most part, though, the brief histories on this and other similar pages, such as the Brooklyn Public Library’s, only mention ethnic groups who filed through the neighborhood and give vague decade estimates. They do at least establish the ethnic groups once present in certain neighborhoods, though, so sites like these could serve as helpful starting points so that I’ll know where or how to look for more detailed data.

The general history sites also clarify important events in Brooklyn’s history that may have had an impact on immigrant movement. The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1893 and the Williamsburg Bridge in 1903, for example, encouraged thousands to escape the crowded Lower East Side for more space and lower rents in Brooklyn. This timeline in particular will be helpful in augmenting the narrative histories. The timeline is also noteworthy because it is one of the few features I found among all the general histories (the inclusion of personal stories being the other); its uniqueness highlights the fact that all of the other general history blurbs/summaries are pretty much the same.

I also looked more specifically for sites with maps of Brooklyn. I found several that delineate the neighborhoods: some for tourists and others for more official municipal purposes, such as transportation and parking maps. These would seem to serve people with a specific need, such as providing directions to get to certain places. Users, then, probably would be searching for a specific kind of map and would not be interested in neighborhood or historic information. Therefore none of these maps were very representative of what I’d like to do, since I am looking to attract a history-oriented audience (be they amateur or professional). Still, they are good models of what not to include (such as modern roads or facilities).

Moving beyond these basic maps, I found several that are data-intensive and come closer to what I intend to make. Interestingly, if I wanted to hire someone to make my historical maps, Community Cartography is equipped to do it. They have already amassed a wealth of data on New York City and make in-depth displays for government offices and other private clients. Here is an example:

[sorry, hopefully I will get this in here at some point]

This map was most likely made in ArcGIS, the program I’ll be using (once I learn how). In this program, you can combine base maps (this company has city blocks, streets, tax lots, and satellite images, for example) with data sets (census, ethnic, poverty, real estate, transport, political, etc.). I would most likely layer historical census data about foreign-born populations on a base map showing zip codes or community districts because I have already seen these in map form (the base maps, I mean, not the historical data). “Neighborhood” seems to be a more informal term which varies, so I would probably label them myself, apart from the base map.

I then looked for census data and maps geared specifically to displays of this kind of information. I found the NY GIS files from the 2000 census. These are great because you can just take the population data set (for free) and import it into ArcGIS to combine it with a base map. This will be relatively simple for a contemporary map. However, there are only census files for 1990 and 2000. I’ll have to input my own historical data (somehow!). This site does include the total population of Brooklyn from 1790 on, so that might come in handy, especially if I’m dealing with data in percentages.

Finally, the New York City Department of Planning offers the best example of exactly what I want to do, only in book form (see Chapter 4 in the summary) and with 2000 numbers. In addition, they have broken down the data for each ethnic group into separate maps. However, these maps display variation in the population by using shading (the darker, the more heavily populated by the ethnicity). I would rather keep my maps simple, especially since I would like them to be user-friendly for the casual browser rather than the serious statistician, so I would probably use only one color for each group, if it were, say, more than some percent (50? 70?) of the total neighborhood population.

The problem with all of the data maps is that they are too complicated for my purposes. I would worry that they might seem daunting or alienating to a general audience, especially when most people are not accustomed to thinking of history in statistical terms. From my web surfing, therefore, it is evident that very few, if any, sites straddle a popular and an academic audience. They seem to appeal either to one or the other, but not both. My historical maps might help bridge that gap by making serious historical data seem quick, easy, and even mildly amusing.

“PP convenience for the speaker can be costly to both content and audience. These costs result from the cognitive style characteristic of the standard default PP presentation: foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial resolution, a deeply hierarchical single-path structure…a preoccupation with format not content, an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.”

Umm, yeah, I think that about sums it up.

I think Tufte makes some very good points; most notably, he reminds us to focus on content and not be distracted by PP features. I was going to counter his argument against bullets by saying that it should be the role of the presenter to fill in the info/analysis/causality between them, but I had no idea these presentations are being used in place of written reports. Which, after reading the article, sounds like a scary thought. I’m glad that he includes some helpful suggestions/alternatives (like handouts for dense data), though, because otherwise this is a bit too much of a diatribe.

Actually it reminded me of the Visual History book some of us read in Craft last semester, about thinking visually. And it’s true, why use text that people will spend 1 second reading, and which you’re saying anyway, when you could use a diagram or image that contains a lot more information? It seems like “thinking visually” about CONTENT, rather than than about the pretty package, is a good way to approach PP?

My first comment is HERE.

So that little experiment didn’t turn out quite as I’d planned. I guess the .htm doc functions more like an attachment than an actual web page. Oh well, just giving it a try…

I thought the section on multimedia was particularly helpful. The breakdown of info about the three formats will certainly be useful. I had no idea that RealMedia has the poorest sound quality. Many people in music would be want to know that! This is another example of all of the planning that must go into a site. I find myself wanting to rush ahead and start making, but, as each chapter in Digital History reminds us, there are some big questions we have to ask ourselves first: what’s already out there, audience, use, server and funding , to name a few. It’s very tempting to think about layout and colors and the fun stuff you can add to the site, but these, it has become clear after our readings, are really just fluff.

I seem to have a lot of questions each week. Mine for this week, that I hope we can answer in class is: XTML? I’m not quite sure I understand the difference between it and a database. XTML certainly sounds preferable, but is that only because it doesn’t require a database program? I see you can also save Word docs as .xml…but is that the normal route to take for making an XML…uh…I don’t even know if “document” is the right word?

For a project last semester I studied a few scrapbooks from the 1920s. I only had one chance to view them, and they were pretty fragile, so I ended up documenting them entirely. I used a digital camera and took a picture of each page…first a wide shot of the whole page, and then some close-ups of anything on the page that was interesting. I ended up saving all the photos on a CD and giving it to the group that owns the scrapbooks, so I guess I inadvertently did some archival preserving for them too.

Anyway, the larger page image was just cropped. I didn’t play with the colors since I wanted to show the age/authenticity of the pages. The second image is a close-up of the yellow ticket on the large page. I made it by copying the large image, zooming or resizing (something like that), and then cropping it.

This week’s readings brought up some major issues that I’d never considered; namely that technology is changing so quickly that we might not even be able to access things we’ve saved even in the near future. In just my 28 years I’ve witnessed the LP, the tape (probably its full, short life, which is hard to believe since they were so ubiquitous), the CD, and now the iPod. Cordless phones, then cell phones. The whole of the Internet…I didn’t get my first email address til I went to college, and now it seems as though there was always email…so strange! My point: obviously things change pretty quickly. I’ve found myself buying CD copies of tapes I used to have, and now downloading those same songs off Rhapsody and bypassing the CD. I had no idea it would pose such a problem for the enormous volume of digital information that has been processed in the last few decades. Yikes.

I’d like to talk more about HD-ROM…I think it was mentioned a couple of times, but I’m not quite sure I got what it is. Something about inscribing in metal? In such a way that it doesn’t require a certain technology to be read? Anyone??

Also on the issue of backing up, in the past I’ve saved files on an ftp site (just in time before my old laptop died, fortunately). I was surprised that this was barely touched upon. I suppose I’m thinking about saving word files in hyperspace, not web sites. Would that not work? Is this not a wise backing-up option?

Finally, I agree that it’s a very wise idea to document changes and sources, either in the code or as a README file. It makes sense for so many reasons…if you share authority over a site with someone else, if you lose something and need to reconnstruct it, and just to have a history. Kind of like historical consultants hired to go back an piece together a company’s history, since there’s so much turnover and often few records. Then you know who did what and why.

I will get to my postings in a minute, but I just wanted to point out a perfect example of why I have an issue with blogs. Not that they’re not useful, at times, but seriously:

lifehackerFIVE pictures and SEVENTEEN comments about getting the sticker off a CD case?!? Don’t people have anything better to do?? I’m surprised bloggers even buy CDs anymore, ha ha.

Sorry, had to rant. But there you go…my first official, nonschool blog entry!

I’m hoping to do some GIS maps for my project, depending on how difficult the research is to get the information to put in the maps (since I haven’t done it yet and haven’t looked to see if anyone already has…). But after last week’s readings, I was thinking that an element of collecting might be an appropriate compliment to the maps.

More specifically, I wanted to map immigrant population data in New York, or at least Brooklyn, because each ethnic group had its own neighborhood, and these were constantly shifting (so every neighborhood has been through several immigrant stages). So I thought it would be interesting to color-code the immigrant groups and show their settlement patterns over time. I have absolutely no idea if this would be really easy, or not very useful, or if it would be next to impossible, or if it’s perfectly reasonable.

Anyway, I like some of the collection ideas we’ve seen. It would be interesting to solicit stories about some of the landmarks that didn’t change as neighborhoods did (parks, churches, etc) and then plot them on the map. Or to have audio files of anecdotes about a building or neighborhood. If I were to do that, though, I don’t think I’d solicit online, since most people would be older and not internet savvy. But I could collect them in person and then post them.

Not that I would be doing all this for my final project! But maybe I could lay the groundwork for research seminar next year…if anyone has thoughts/suggestions, please feel free to send them my way….!

My experience with digitized texts thus far just blows my mind. The accessibility alone seems worth the cost. But then, of course, I haven’t had to pay for anything. I wonder if any library has thought to charge for access to something digitized, as they might charge for a reprint or as you’d pay for a photocopy.

The issue that most sticks in my mind is whether to just scan pages or to make them machine readable. I have definitely lamented many times that I couldn’t search a scanned PDF file. Though it certainly makes more sense for any document that has “original” value, such as something handwritten.

My concern with digitizing, and libraries in general, is access. We all talk about how great it is, how everyone will benefit…but here’s the concern that’s been nagging me lately: what happens when I graduate and lose my affiliation with a university? How much of all this digitization will really be available to the public? Also, given that we now know about the different methods and what they mean for quality, will we have to judge providers? Will Google, for instance, use an unchecked OCR program? Will it provide scans of handwritten documents or will everything be rekeyed? How much do we need to question the digital sources we’re using?

Heather just showed me this site, which you all should check out as another great example of archiving stories:

http://murmurtoronto.ca/about.php

Even better, it’s audio (sound clips of people’s stories, like oral histories) AND it’s interactive. When you’re at a place, a sign gives you a number to call, and you can listen to the stories about the place while you’re standing there. Pretty good idea, I think!

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.