The Virtual Past

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).

As you all know, I am one of the Graduate Students working to redesign the department website this semester. As part of the process Rob and I have developed a survey that we would like a core group of graduate (and undegraduate) students to fill out–this is so we get some kind of idea of what people actually use the website for.I’m attaching the word file…if you could go ahead and e-mail (or just copy and past your answers into a comment) that would be great. Also we are sending the same form out over H-Grad this week, so you don’t have to fill it out twice if you already do it here.

Thanks!

In reading for class this coming week, I realized (and Josh had mentioned this to me earlier) that CHNM has a site survey tool….so click here and fill it out.

*****

(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

For those who might stumble upon this blog in error….it is for a graduate class I am taking at American University on Digital History. What does that mean? Read on…and maybe the responses and comments from my classmates may interest you in some way….

For everyone else….welome!