The Virtual Past

I have yet to find an article on Wikipedia that I can contribute/make changes to. However, the forthcoming article by Roy Rosenzweig on the history and processes behind Wikipedia and its subsequent relationship to the historic profession brought up some important points that should be addressed.

First of all, research. I acknowledge Rosensweig’s statement that “Teachers have little more to fear from students starting with Wikipedia than they do with most other basic reference sources. They have a lot to fear if students stop there. To state the obvious Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and encyclopedias have intrinsic limits.” I fear though that not enough emphasis is being placed on the look further aspect of the internet. In my three semesters as a TA I’ve had four/five papers where students cited primarily from Wikipedia without any clear corroboration from important scholarly texts. It’s frustrating, especially in that while, as a class, we have acknowledged the benefits of the digital age, the internet offers up an easy way out for undergraduate students who simply do not want to do the work. It is almost like a poisoned apple shouting out from the bottom of an abyss to a starving person—“here take me at face value—I’m always right.” (I have no idea where that metaphor came from)

Now as historians we know that even we are not always right, but what the reading from this week demonstrates is that while errors in posts can be quickly rectified, there is still a likely chance that the information posted will be limited in representing the complexity of history. I’m particularly intrigued by the idea of NPOV—the Neutral Point of View—which outwardly makes sense but the historian in me cringes because is there ever really a neutral point of view? (Yes, I know Rosenzweig also covers this in his article but I still thought it worthwhile to reiterate.)

Secondly, as a product of public consumption, public construction, and public design—yes there is an element of awe at the level of articles and participation on this site. In effect, this site is an element of public history. The details that are placed on biographical pages—or what individuals chose to record in current event areas—are distinct locus’ of memory based on occurrences in the ‘real’ world. To some extent, the Wikipedia system mimics society—where even with the rules and laws, there is an element of subversion and freedom in what can be talked about and described within this communal web space. How people struggle over these particular details is fascinating and equally hard to track—(although the history of changes is an ideal point of research).

The blogs for this week—were equally fascinating. I hopped from blog to blog reading excerpts by Don Ritchie, a quotation by Donald Rumsfeld (click and go down the entry for March 10) on how no one really studies history anymore…to the History Carnival which set me off on even more tangents. The variety of conversation and discussions out there on multitudes of historical subjects is excellent. And while not as open source as Wikipedia, the do offer individuals the incentive to do something scholarly in the digital world.

And finally–here’s the link to Wookiepedia..yes its an open source Wiki on all things Star Wars…I found it when i was searching for something to edit off of the real Wikipedia site…

Lots of legal jargon in the reading this week: from ‘fair use’ to ‘public domain,’ ‘teacher exception’, and my favorite ‘creative commons.’

Copyright is serious business—and is incredible how much it impacts the daily lives of historians. The Digital History chapter brought up the point that putting an excerpt of a textbook online is permissible as long as its part of a gated system like Blackboard, but I notice that sometimes the e-reserve at the Library won’t allow text to be uploaded if they deem it to be outside the bounds of copyright i.e. too many pages of the book rather than just a mere excerpt.

I did find the discussion on orphan works and simply the ambiguity over works on the web to be interesting—and once again it underscores the newness of the digital arena. There are no hard and fast rules and often it is best for different groups like the Documentary Filmmakers document in the reading to ascribe and describe the best practices. Even though a lot of the rules for fair use seemed to be common sense, it is always best to document the process.

I appreciated the metaphor that was used by Cohen/Rosenzwieg that said that if a copy write violation is brought to the attention of a web designer, he/she can remove the offending quotation/image/audio/video in an instant while its harder within a physical object. In this instance the digital world is a unique center for information. However, in the arena of the creative commons, copy write that falls outside this public domain stifles creative and in our case the presentation of history to a public face. As a side note–can I just say I was astounded by the extension of law that extended the copy write for many great works for a longer period of time….

On the flip side, I always say err on the side of caution (which seems to be a phrase that copy write books seem to like) and that for your own work, be sure to document when and where it may be used. Again though, in terms of research, I also feel that it is critical that it be out there—and that while laying your faith in the world of academic ethics seems to be a rather risky business—sometimes it may be the only recourse/alternative to the dissemination of your materials for critique. Naturally though this taught coincides with the discussion of the Digital arena and New Scholarship…and the tricky terrain that Digital Historians and researchers as well as the public will have to negotiate in years to come.

For this week (or rather next week…following Spring Break) the readings moved away from the theoretical to the practical with readings from Digital History on “Designing for the History Web”, and the importance of standardization.

Thematically, I think the underlying key words for this post is “usability and creativity.” How does one design a website with structure, but also aesthetic elements that are pleasing and professional? Especially when your willingness to learn is tempered by limits in time?

For this semester, (as mentioned in an earlier post) another graduate student and I have been working to redesign the American University History Department Website. Right now, it’s manageable…though filled with lots of white space, and a very unclear design structure.

Consequently, much of what was mentioned in the readings for this book have been pieces of information that Rob and I have subconsciously striven to uphold. For instance…though the site is not distinct in its application of history it still is a piece of the History web world, and so in an effort to make things easier (and the site more manageable in the long term) we have been struggling to learn and implement CSS though after a period that involved the gnashing of teeth, we reluctantly went back to tables–before going back CSS because I was introduced me to wonderful CSS templates through the Center for History and New Media…..

Anyway, that in essence was the hardest part—the basic aesthetic that we wanted to impart had already been written, it was through code manipulation and colors that we have been working to define/brand the site. As a result I find that we are working with those five principles from Robin Williams and John Tollet’s book The Non Designers Web Book: contrast, proximity, alignment, repeat. It is important to us, after looking at the old site, to import a greater sense of order so that someone coming in after us can get a sense an idea of how information has been allocated and communicated. Something as simple as using a neutral base color has made a world of difference…

In essence, each of these pieces: URL’s, images, font, multimedia, thumbnails versus actual size, light versus dark all must be balanced in the overarching effort to create a site that is both useable and creative.

In terms of web standards the list provided is rooted in common sense. Look Professional, Help your Client, Future Content sense and my favorite “Its the right thing to do.” which made me laugh a little. Industry standards aside, I can see how seperating design and structure from content can be a positive thing, opening new avenues for the look and feel of websites…to make things seem sleeker, and more real.

At the same time, and as a final comment, doesn’t that make it a little harder for just anyone to do? More languages, more coding, more graphic design elements…in a world where having your own website is a must, expanding what someone needs to implement that ‘must’ seems to be getting tougher…so what does that mean about the internet being accessible for everyone?

PS: I’m purposely not putting up a screen capture of the new website. We hope to have a prototype for everyone to review by the beginning of April. So stay tuned.

To some extent, much of what was said in this week’s reading expands upon previous class discussions. After reading various articles and browsing the Journal of the Association of History and Computing, I have to say that the impact of the internet on the digital world is one of gradual progression.

Yes, the internet is possibly the new automobile impacting travel, communication, human interaction and the preservation of the past, but it is still perhaps constantly tested medium. Right now there seems to be no limit to what one can do on the internet (except obviously physically interacting with other human beings). At the same time though there are simple, day-to-day problems that effect scholarship in a very real way: eye-strain, accuracy, access and publication. Only through consistent innovation and invention can newer, better ways of presenting scholarship be developed….

Each of these problems also exist in the real world—(how many books does a historian have to read before they find their niche?) How many times has a document been picked up only to be disproved as a forgery or a biased viewpoint at a later date? And access to materials outside of libraries is often controlled by an academic hierarchy of networking. Though most libraries have free access…. Lastly there’s publication which though peer-reviewed is a testament to the rigors of academic life. As they say…Publish or Perish.

So what are the benefits of New Media and Scholarship?

1. David Bell’s anecdotal introduction shows that at the very least New Media saves time, allowing historians to focus on other parts of the research project.
2. Dynamic presentation options. Especially in terms of visual and material culture, the digital realm offers a variety of means in which to display and identify objects and images—allowing direct interaction between the historian, reader and the past.
3. I found the suggestion by Benjamin Hermalin to be particularly fascinating. In order to speed up the peer-review/publish process use digital media to submit to a “family” of journals which would place the article, once accepted into the best fit—saving the author time and effort.
4. Presenting information in a global market. Digital media allows at a low cost, for journals to replicate their content into a variety of languages

I am not a fan of the e-book. I agree with Bell, reading an e-book is fine for literature or fiction where the story drives the narration. In terms of scholarship, e-books stifle and make it hard to concentrate on the argument when it is fed piecemeal through a limited web browser. I suppose my questions for this week rest on what this course has been about all along: i.e. translation. How can we translate our real-world practice of history into the digital realm, how can we take what works and not lose sight of the complex process that doing history devises? I say coherency matters, and that whatever media is with maximum clarity…otherwise new ideas and information may be threathened to languish in obscurity.

We’re going to keep this post short, sweet and to the point.

On page 26 of The Cognative Style of Powerpoint Edward Tufte is asked the following question.

“The problem is with presenters who misuse PowerPoint. PowerPoint is just a tool; why blame the software for bad presentations? When a Carpenter makes a crooked cut, do we blame the saw? Just because some people do silly things in PP doesn’t mean that PP has a problem; people do silly things in written reports also.”

Tufte’s response is perhaps the reasons why I love and hate PowerPoint. As a presentation tool, it gives individuals with no presentation skills something that will distract their audience from their horrible public speaking ability. Tufte states that yes, some responsibility does fall with the presenter, but that in fact as a tool, PowerPoint is set up a way that facilitates ‘bells n’ whistles’ over content.

In my few large classes in undergrad I attended lectures that were based on PowerPoint presentations produced by the textbook company. There was no reason to even go to the courses except for tests and quizzes and homework—in actuality, these courses gave me my initial nerve to (yes shockingly) skip class and make better use of my time…Even presentations when the content is almost entirely on the screen….slide after slide of words and more words its mind numbing, intellectually insulting and perhaps a bit ugly.

However, If done right (as Tufte mentions later on in page 26) a presentation can use PowerPoint to engage the audience with visuals, and low volume text as well as physical tactile handouts. Another compromise between the digital and the reality based world.

On a side note: I was rather shocked by the Columbia slide shows….those are presentations that seriously should not be given over a medium meant to summarize information. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was humorous—but allowed Tufte to make his point. PowerPoint should not be a replacement for good oratory and good communication skills.

As for the websites—I had to link everyone to this post from Presentation Zen. Yoda vs Darth Vader? Who would have thought!

Also barring any other tools to build my exhibition last summer in London, I used PowerPoint to design my exhibition. Not an ideal media for exhibition building, but without any other software at my fingertips it did its job nicely. (Here’s a screen captue of my exhibition in Powerpoint..).

From the latest chapter in Digital History one can imagine and develop a historical website with relative ease and harassment. Though I am already familiar with a lot of the topics in the reading for this week having a refresher explanation for some of the abbreviations was much appreciated. That being said, I did not have many questions regarding the process of building a website, so instead I thought I would nestle my questions regarding this subject in with a process story of how I became interested in web design….

My Junior year of high school, I was taught the basic concepts and coding behind html for an English project regarding the novel The Great Gatsby. Meant to be a sort of reference, my class split up various themes and using html coding built individual pieces for a larger three-class website. My particular part related to locations of the novel which you can see here. (For the main page of the project: WSHS Great Gatsby Project. My class was Period 2.)

After I cringe at the design elements in my personal page (too much turquoise) I do have to recognize what that project taught me in the long term. I have to be honest. I hate coding. I hate C++, C, etc. That being said, while I hate, I can appreciate its place in the larger world of computing. For some reason though, I understand html. Now this was a coding language that seemed simple, not mind straining, and really a snap to deal with, and I have had no trouble using it since. That being said, it is no longer necessary to actually know the coding language, but it is a good tool to know for reference sake. (For a quick and easy coding resource go here: HTML Goodies.)

There is one format of web design that the text for this week did not mention—and that is, your very basic, low maintenance Netscape Composer. In essence a word document, this program devised the code for you (it generated the code as you placed things on your document) and all you had to do is use a Microsoft Word based toolbar for design. In my freshman year of college I built an online travel site for a Saturday class that involved traveling to various places in Tidewater VA. Unfortunately I lost my webspace last year (though I have the site on disc) so the site is no longer live. In terms of basic web design, for this project I initially used Netscape Composer, and then three years later in a bout of frustration regarding the design, I stepped back to fix all the errant and extra coding put in by the generator to make the site look more manageable and better. In terms of design the pages were all basic backgrounds, with text and images from the trips highlighting what I had learned in a very public way. (So—yes, I would not recommend using Netscape Composer ever again.)

And then I found Front Page—and later Dreamweaver, both of which are a lot more sophisticated in terms of web development and make the process of creating your web site a lot less unwieldy…..and more presentable to the public at large. This leads me to some thoughts on the connections between history and technology and public history as a whole. There is a clear parallel between the process of building a history web site and the process of building a historical site. (This stems from yesterday’s Public History Practicum class where we talked about Falk and Dierking’s The Museum Experience, and a book Judy Diamond’s Practical Evaluation Guide.)

Both need clear mission statements, and ideas of purpose and content as to why a particular topic is important. Both require a thought to pathways, and flows, and more importantly require planning in the form of front end surveying and observation to determine the best means of presentation. To some extent, in choosing a topic, methodology and tools for building a particular web site we, as historians are learning to produce and operate our own mini-historical sites. While there are some differences, i.e. Historic sites exist in the physical rather than virtual worlds—which affords a lot more considerations the core elements still remain. Who is the audience? What story can we tell? What are the best tools to present this story? How do we maintain the site? And perhaps just as important: How can we constantly improve it?

(The reading for this week mentioned The Sonic Memorial Project--if you weren’t able to check it out, do so. Its an unique array and collection of audio files that gives another deminsion to how we remember September 11.)

The best way to describe this post is that it is full of metaphor…

Metaphor 1: I have this memory from elementary school. A group of us second graders (or was it third grade) are seated in the library watching a video series on the Dewey Decimal system [you know, the organizational schema for most library systems]. It is not just any video—rather its an adventure, a grueling, blood and guts story about an alien invasion and a book-mobile which is trying to find some way to save the last remnants of human information before they all get wiped out. (Don’t worry, its very fake, and fairly cheesy). Amidst this fighting, we students learned about the simplistic design of the Dewey Decimal system, and as I look back, the ideas behind information preservation. To my knowledge, while they did not broach the topic of digitalization, the tenants appeared to be similar in design.

I’m not sure why this story popped into my head as I read the materials for this week. A combination of articles on organization and archives this material detailed out many of the issues that we have been discussing as subsidiary to digitalization, history and technology. The narrative on the Dewey Decimal system mimics need for clarity in the metadata (organizational data) attached to the digital archives i.e. one that is intuitive or easily understood by those in the future. That being said, the material also made me think about my own spatial and sense of organization—and how that might reflect into any digital and written projects that I design.

Enter Metaphor 2: In my room there’s a very specific organizational structure to my book collection. Due to spatial considerations, many of the books that I own—but do not read often (i.e. Tom Clancy, old textbooks) are in the basement. In my room are the ones more recently used. This is how they are organized:

1. Hardcovers and Magazines on the tiny shelf.
2. On the big book shelf the order is based on subject matter—so all my paperbacks dealing with a particular space-opera on the top, followed by textbooks and library books relating to current classes, then all my other “leisure reading books” which includes Harry Potter, Homer, Tolkien, Jane Austin and Danny Wallace (a British Author who is hilarious!). The bottom shelf includes reference books—anything that I may need to look at in a moments notice from undergraduate classes.
3. In the corner of my room are three piles of 30 books each—which represent all my texts from the last three semesters…these books are in transition. I may or may not look at them often, but their physical presence allows me some comfort to know that I can search through them without having to move very far.

I’m sure you’re asking the following question: Why is she telling us all this? Well…like the science fiction library adventure, the organization of an archive is clearly connected to the ability of a variety of users to retrieve the data at minimal stress. In both the Dewey Decimal system and my own schema spatial configuration and document form are important.

Metaphor 3: Take a snowflake for example (it snowed this weekend if you didn’t notice). Repeating patterns, that form a very intricate and very beautiful crystal that when dropping en-masse from moisture ridden clouds at specific conditions looks like a puffy even layer of cold cotton. How do you find data about the individual snowflake when it is immersed in the masses? Through the search function which gives users a way to wade through the materials in a productive manner. The three websites we examined each gave a way to increase productivity—not necessarily dealing with finding data, but to daily life. I think the one I appreciated the most was LifeHacker–“Don’t live to geek, geek to live.” Lifehacker talked about taking caffeine naps—coffee followed by a nap chaser…the perfect stimulant to get you through the day….(and maybe ruin your health along the way?) Also having recently been indoctrinated in the wonderful world of Endnote, CiteULike added to that wonder and awe of tools to make a researchers life easier.

My questions for organization are connected to the discussion of archives where issues of organization and preservation of digital material seem to be intimately connected to finding an industry standard. While documentation (through html comments, readme files etc) and backing up seem to be a way to preserve information, it really depends on constant vigilance by the archivist.

Also…I’m not so sure I agree with Margaret Hedstrom who says there is a contradiction between the ideals of mass storage and long term preservation…..to some extent mass storage allows for preservation of more archives. So once again I guess it depends on what our definition of preservation is. In once sense, mass storage keeps information in trust, but it’s the quality of preservation that is threatened—and the quality of preservation is dependant (in the digital world) on things like backups on a variety of media.

I would have to admit that I spent a lot of time looking at the archives on Streetprint Engine. American Decadence, Scrawl, and Urban Record all are examples of how successful digital archives can be in allowing the inaccessible to be accessible. I did have a few questions in conjunction with Scrawl. How does archiving graffiti change the meaning of the art when its taken out of the urban context? Does it change the meaning?

Also, although the deadline has passed—I would love it if you would fill out my survey if you have not yet.

…and a very fascinating one at that. This week we had to read a chapter on Digitalization from our Digital History text. As usual though I’m going to interrupt this stream of consciousness world to entreat my fellow classmates to please fill out the online survey regarding the department website. (See below posts)

All of my thoughts coalesce around one topic. Outsourcing….who would have thought that this topic that is such a major contention in the political arena for businesses also has penetrated the world of digitalization. Crazy!

Seriously though, the reading for this week made me think about how different the technology is for text, image, video, and audio digitalization. Learning what TIFF, GIF, and JPEG actually stood for was good, but the amount of shifting that is constantly occurring in the realm of technology constantly fascinates me. We started this class talking about how just ten years ago the internet, for all intents and purposes, was not a tool for the public. Now though through digitalization—accessibility has jumped through the roof….

This leaves me to ponder a historical conundrum, which is not only alluded to in the text but also is intimately connected to the ethical issues of historical practice. Who is doing the interpretation? Is it the historian who chooses the pieces to be archived? The archivist who creates the finding aid? The scanner, who handles the document and/either depending on the level of funding, types up the text into a text file, or makes a photographic copy of the physical document? Also the discussion of machine error when using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software…how does that reflect in the already interpretive laden world of historical analysis?

I have no answers….but perhaps I would say that technology and digitalization presents itself as merely another layer in a continuous redefinition of the historical field. The fundamentals may remain the same, but the tools for practices continuously evolve…and demand newer ethical and creative rules.
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As for Collecting and Searching….I plan on using much of the information from the previous class in my current research project. That being said—until recently I had plans to co-develop a website with Linda (another student in the class) that linked public history to various audiences. I believe we are rethinking the outline of the project but can see and recognize the different levels of importance that the variety of techniques practiced may have on the project for this class. I do like the idea of collecting stories. Self-narrations make the past real, and tangible— and when produced in conjunction with multiple groups of people reveal just how meaningful the past can be.

The material from class gave me some tips i.e. key words, and searching tools that I can use for my research seminar paper on natural monuments. Also it was interesting to learn about D-spaces—something which I can see having enormous potential in both an academic and non-academic sense.

Directly connecting to the conversation above—the ideas of trust, validity of methodology and practice are things that effect many different fields—even outside the digital world. For example on this morning’s CBS show Sunday Morning a piece was done on the J. Paul Getty Museum’s difficulty (and mayhaps the Met and MFA in Boston) regarding the acquisition and collecting of looted artifacts from Italy and other areas.

Here’s the text about the piece off of Sunday Morning’s Website.:

BRUSH WITH THE LAW
Anthony Mason explores the new Getty Villa that’s just opened in Los Angeles. And we get to find out just why the Italian government is looking so intensely at several American museums. Is that looted artwork Americans are seeing in their museums? We look into the case of the Getty’s former curator of antiquities, Marion True, who is now on trial in Rome for allegedly trafficking in looted artwork. We will also talk with Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about that museum’s negotiations to return some of its treasures to the Italian government.

I guess to sum up my thoughts in a single statement?

It’s a changing world—but the transformation is in the handling—not the content

Don’t forget to fill out the survey in the previous post…

I initially started this post by talking about the reading, but once I began going through the websites I found myself being sucked into the narratives… whether I was reading about 9/11 or home pregnancy tests. I think that these websites are an interesting testimonial to the power of oral history. To some extent though these sites are all about making and preserving history—very significantly from the ground up. Each of these sites allow for the ordinary person to “let their voice be heard” in a very democratic sense…. I found myself particularly fascinated by the histories of women regarding the pregnancy test—the candid answers, and the descriptions of those who used it in early 1980’s to those who use the tests recently were particularly telling….and provided an incredible wealth of information over a large swath of time.

I also liked Josh’s website on the Video rental oral histories. Streamlined, and very easy to navigate it also asserted the strength of a well chosen topic which seems to have garnered a measure of attention. I know some of the non-chain rental agencies still exist in my area (No. VA) and allow for rentals at a fraction of the cost.

In terms of the 9/11 website, I think what was the most interesting was the speed at which the LOC and various university students understood the magnitude of what occurred—and the quick response to saving the pages of the New York Times etc.

Perhaps the most questions I had regarding this weeks topic dealt with the linkage between digital archives as preservation and digital archives as things that need to be preserved. On the former designation, digital archives are an important tool in preserving stories and e-mails—like we talked about last class this web based genre is actually creating and expanding its community through a variety of marketing tools that spread the word. As a thing that needs to be preserved, it has to do with the challenge historians face as we move further and further away from the paper trail. When you hit delete—the message is gone forever—a daunting prospect for those who may seek to reconstruct our past 25-50+ years from now. To some extent though, and Rosenzweig and Cohen’s chapter touches on this—is that we construct these archives in a conscious manner—we define the subject manner and design the interface that our community navigates.

Last semester in Visual and Material Culture we learned about the counter-archive. A Counter-Archive is a group of images, data and documents collected with the primary goal of moving against a normative archive—one which represents a dominant historical narrative. Specifically the book we read, Photography on the Color Line by Shawn Michelle Smith, looked at the collection put together for the Paris World Fair by W.E.B. Dubois (which showed successful African Americans through images and texts) as a means of countering the dominant stereotypes of African Americans. This week we looked at the process in which an archive is created—in the land of www. The multiple definitions of archives, and new methodologies of collecting and preserving the past opens new necessary avenues which redefine our responsibilities as historians in an ever changing age.

On another note…I wanted to say a word or two on some other pieces of information from Digital History: the idea of providing “magnet” content to get individuals to visit, and the principle of trust. While their advice on how to set up a collection site, these two areas seem to be, perhaps, the most important areas. They address the questions–how do we get people here, and once they come, how do we get them to stay–and keep coming back. Sound familiar? Its very much like discussions that museums–and for what its worth stores and other places of business– have been having for years (museums more recently) attracting their particular “consumer.” True with these archives no one is buying anything, but there is some production going on–production that for those giving the narratives is feeding into a larger product of which we (or the site managers) are assembling. What is that larger product? And In terms of Public History what does that mean to the public–or any other audience?

Anyway…I did a little hopping around and found myself linking to a bunch of really cool blogs. It started out from reading the William Turkel piece on Spidering and Scraping….which was interesting (if not for the discussion of comprehensives and how to study for them) because of the parallels made regarding how to teach students to navigate the internet–as it once was about kids needing to learn to read a book.

After reading the essay, I clicked on some of the blogs listed on the left part of the screen…and somehow ended up at this list: AHA History Blog Awards
Check some of the blogs out—they’re really fascinating to read.

See you next week….(and don’t forget to fill out the survey).

(First, sorry this is late guys—we’ll blame it on the 48 hour post-comp bug.)

So…moving on…

It is of constant fascination to me just how many people instantly equate history and technology as incompatable….but as the articles for this week indicates history and technology have walked arm in arm for a long time.

In thinking about the relationship between history and the internet I have a few questions to discuss.

First is this idea of a community and how the internet and technology develop and expand particularly the historical community. What comes to mind instantly (and is discussed somewhat in Roy Rozenswieg’s chapters) are the immense arrays of listserve hosted by H-Net. One of the things I often find wanting in certain public arenas is the lack of debate allowed between differing points of view.To some extent H-net’s forums allow historians from all across the world to come together and discuss projects, ask questions, and float new ideas—sometimes becoming more then merely an online discussion. Take the idea of the “New New Political History” that (and some of us heard about this in Colloq I last semester) started out on H-SHEAR the listserve for the Early American Republic. It’s hypothesis argues that the typcial politcal history is being subsumed by a new new political history that looks at political culture and cultural politics…these historians look at things like election day parades, and fetes (I’m thinking of David Walstreicher’s book on Nationalism in the Early Republic) and how these contributed to framing this new nation. (For reference, the new politcal history that came before transformed a generation of history examining big men to looking at political parties and voter statistics). Well, this discussion on H-SHEAR pushed the historians on the list into a wider discussion that resulted in papers and later a book discussing the new trend, and whether it is actually a new trend at all.

Anyway, My point is that online communities allow historians that are seperated by geographical limitations to easily transfer ideas to a large group of collegues without the need of a physical face-to face conference.

Secondly, in the public history realm, as is exhibited by the websites that we visited there is growing attention to the presentation of history in exhibitions and other designs. There is something to be said about the impermanence of exhibitions that go up for a variable time period from two weeks, a few months, to a few years. While some museums like the National Museum of American History have exhibitions that go up for decades sometimes the only way that visitors from far away are able to experience them is through the internet. This is the interesting thing about the web—in that it appears more permenant than a phsyical exhibition with a limited time span, but at the same time it is more transcendent and more ephemeral then seeing and almost touching physical objects. Exhbitions on the web provide an outlet of preservation that would not have existed prior to the advent of the internet, and also allows older sites to be updated and revised faster than a physical exhbition. For example (and sorry to use the National Museum of American History again) check out

“A More Perfect Union”

http://americanhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/experience/index.html

“Within these Walls”

http://americanhistory.si.edu/house/

So my questions for you are—how much content is too much content? Do we really think visitors or historians actually pay attention to these larger discussions or actually take the time to peruse the whole website? What are the advantages/disadvantages to having websites that are easily editable? And also—and I speak of Wikipedia in particular—how confident are we that that sort of communal fact construction is entirely accurate? Do online communities like that have less authority than one hosted by a university or organization?

Let me know what you think