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I actually tried to contribute to wikipedia a couple months ago, but got scared when I actually went to change the page, so I just put it in the “discussion” of the page (it’s still there). I had been reading about when Orlando Letelier and Leonard Moffitt were killed in Sheridan Circle and then checked it out wikipedia and saw that they reported the two were killed in Dupont Circle and it actually happened in Sheridan Circle, which is just a couple blocks from Dupont. So I put that into the discussion page and somehow someone saw it, replied to my comment and then changed the article. It would be interesting to know exactly how they track such changes.

So today I thought I would make a change to some history that I felt I’ve read a lot about.  I thought - how about Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz and the CIA’s operation PBSUCCESS which overthrew him in 1954.  Alas, there was much written about both him and operation PBSUCCESS.  So I wandered over to the Conservative Mennonite Conference article at wikipedia.  I had looked at it before and realized that it mentions the Brotherhood Beacon, but not any of the conference’s earlier publications.  So, I added one sentence mentioning the previous publications of the conference and when they were started.  You can find it right near the end, under the heading “Status.”  There is definitely room to add more on both of these previous publications as they were both distinct from the Brotherhood Beacon in various ways, but since I wasn’t actually sure about all the differences I decided to leave it alone for now, but I think someday maybe I’ll go back and add a bit more.

Yes, that is a George W. Bush quote, only he was talking about Social Security (obviously).

Let me begin by saying that I love wikipedia. I know it’s been subjected to some ridiculous atrocities such as students using it as a source of academic writing and a bout or two with slander issues in the past. But that is the ridiculous side of it. It really is simpy phenomenal. I find it to be extremely useful for getting the information you want on nearly any topic. Obviously, if you’re going to contribute to any real debate on a subject you should move beyond wikipedia to more secure information, but the fact is that it provides excellent introductions to almost any topic. And for that I love it.

Rosenzweig writes an insightful overview of wikipedia which is contains, I think, an excellent balance of sympathy and critique, which will be coming out in the June 2006 issue of the Journal of American History.

Rosenzweig notes that according to Alexa Traffic Rankings, wikipedia was the 41st most popular website in the world. According to the latest data, wikipedia has moved up the rankings to number 17. I don’t know how long it’s been since this article was written, but anyway you look at it, that’s an impressive ranking. By the way, Alexa Traffic Rankings are very cool, and who knew that craigslist was doing so well.

To extend my sheer amazement at wikipedia even further, Rosenzweig notes that as of September 2005 the entire project only had two full-time employees. It almost makes me want to cry, it’s so great. Who would ever imagine you could run such a successful and innovative site that changes the way we think about information and the internet with two employees?

In a funny note, he comments that wikipedians have created an article “Wikipedia: Errors in the Encyclopedia Britannica that have been corrected in wikipedia.” I thought this was a great article and that Rosenzweig appropriately called the spirit of this page “gleeful.”

One final note on wikipedia - I think it’s amazing how fast mistakes are fixed. Rosenzweig mentions that vandals “defaced” the article on Calvin Coolidge only 10 times over a two-year period. And that the average time to repair the damage was three minutes. That’s simply amazing. And it connects to an article that I read recently about an experiment done by Esquire magazine, in which they wrote an article about wikipedia and placed it on wikipedia. As an experiment they included factual errors and wrote it very poorly. They comment that the factual errors were all fixed within minutes and then wikipedians moved on to “refinement, clarification and making the article more readable.” The article was edited 224 times in the first 24 hours it was posted, and another 149 times in the next 24 hours. You can read an article about the experiment here.

So, maybe you’ve noticed or maybe you haven’t, but I feel it’s probably appropriate to give credit where credit is due this week as we talk about intellectual property and copyright.  In the title for each of my weekly writings I use a quote and those quotes all come from the mouth of George W. Bush.  It’s amazing how well his words often lend themselves to the topic at hand (example of when this did not work out - this week, as Hanukkah and bin Laden don’t have a lot to do with copyright, but it was just too funny to not use it, and for that I apologize).

George W. Bush has said, “I can only speak to myself.”  Unfortunately, this is not true, so as long as we all have to listen we may as well enjoy it.

Copyright discussions make me tired. Thinking about setting up a website with lots of images, quotes, and other paraphernalia might be fun, but add the copyright issues and you get nothing but a headache. Unfortunately, this issue is something I’ll have to think about more in my digitization project.

Originally, I didn’t think that copyright would be much of an issue as I was hoping to publish/digitize the publication of the Conservative Mennonite Conference on their own website. The Conservative Mennonites don’t seem too concerned with copyright and that combined with publishing it on their website made me think I could avoid it. While I’m still hoping this proves true eventually, things have gotten more confusing in the short term. Unfortunately, I am having to build the website at a different location and then transfer the archive to the Conference’s website. Currently, I’m using a little space through the Center for History and New Media, but was also thinking I should check with the Conservative Mennonite bible college, Rosedale Bible College, to see if they could host at least during the construction phase and maybe for a longer period of time. Unfortunately, the librarian there has brought up copyright questions. I haven’t actually talked with him about it yet, but I’m already worried about how this conversation will go. I simply don’t like the problems of copyright.

This week’s reading did help me to see how I can identify with both sides of the debate, but I think it would be fair to say that I still generally fall on the side that says that copyright should be less restrictive. I know that original artists should be paid there dues, but in the academic setting we’re far more focused on protecting/claiming our ideas rather than making money off of them. It’s easier to use other people’s ideas in this way, you simply have to give them credit by citing them. This is fairly simple, but add in money/profit and things get confusing.

One interesting debate on this subject (which I’m hoping Peter Jaszi will mention when he comes to speak to our class) is the demise of the fantastic documentary - Eyes on the Prize. This is probably one of the best overarching documentaries on the Civil Rights Movement. However, they have recently run into copyright issues and haven’t been able to make a DVD version of the video series or continue producing the series. Thus, it now sells on ebay for sometimes close to $1,000 for the complete series on VHS. I (like many others) think this is a ridiculous tragedy. We are losing one of the best documentaries on the Civil Rights Movement, because the producers can’t afford to renew copyright usage agreements. This story was reported on quite a lot about a year ago (Washington Post, Wired News, etc) but I’m not sure where it stands right now. At one point, a Civil Rights Movement activist even encouraged people to violate the copyright and burn digital copies of the series to preserve it. Many of the articles also quoted people from the Center for Social Media at American University who were very interested in this topic as well. I’m a huge fan of this series and would hate to see it disintegrate on old VHS tapes before somebody creates a digital version, but that is what copyright costs are doing.

This week’s reading contained many excellent considerations in designing websites. The more open nature of website design and ownership allows users to create a vast array of styles, but many tend towards terrible, difficult to navigate, ugly to look at sites, but following these guidelines allows users to reap the benefits of good design without having to research every style for themselves.

I was interested by Cohen and Rosenzweig’s dispute of the idea of that web surfers have short attention spans that should be catered to. At some points they obviously argue that you need to make your website fit the audience, but on this point they adamantly claim that this dumbing down is unnecessary as we underestimate surfers. I fully agree. I think this harkens back to our discussion of PowerPoint in various ways. Both have the tendency to dumb down information to an extent that readers/users are no longer gaining significant benefit from the website. Reading is a good skill and it should be maintained on websites. People can read, and will, if the writing is good.

I think Cohen and Rosenzweig make some great points, but at some level they’re basically saying don’t make a crappy website. We all know a crappy website when we see one, but somehow we still create crappy websites and think they’re cool. Part of this surely comes from simply having too many options - when you can choose from 53 bajillion colors why in the heck would you choose black for your text color? Because it’s better that way. Basically, I think we just need to visit our own website as if we’ve never seen it before and think about how it comes across. It’s very similar to how some people suggest reading your papers outloud when proofreading them. In our minds we skim over a lot of mistakes, etc, but when we slow down and let the text or website speak for itself we can start to see it’s shortcomings more clearly.

In terms of how to navigate sites, fortunately streetprint will solve some of these problems for me on my site. However, it’s good for me to think about how people want to navigate the site and what would be most helpful for users. This requires running through a variety of user types/scenarios and seeing how different people might navigate the site differently. This of course will inform the types of search categories that are available, how articles/issues/pages are divided up for most simple browsing, and a variety of other navigation information.

Reading through Roy Rosenzweig’s essay on hypertext and history, I think he does present several innovative options for historians that coul shape the way that history is done in the future.

To start with, the first essay that he examines that uses anchored links to take readers directly to the point of the citation within the source allows readers to analyze the context from which the author/historian took their information. I think this allows for closer debate of how we use historical sources. I also wonder if it would shape the way that historians write from sources if they knew that readers could analyze so immediately how the author interpreted the source and utilized it in their work. (By the way, I really need to learn how to create anchored links).

I also wonder if such an immediate connection to, or reliance upon, sources changes the way that historians argue in these articles. Does it simply turn into show and tell, rather than focus on the complexity of the argument? This seems that it could be both a strength and a weakness, as readers can see the evidence very clearly, but might also be distracted from the narrative of the argument at the same time. This also connects with Rosenzweig’s question, “Can you say to a hypertext author that his or her argument is not clearly laid out?” What is a good argumentative structure within hypertext? Does it really change, or is there still a basic level of argument that the article must contain?

Turning to Benjamin Hermalin’s article, I was struck by how scholarly article databases online could be a very helpful thing. I already depend primarily on electronic articles for most of my journal/review reading. His note that from these pages people could link to further discussion surrounding the review/article, made me realize that scholarly databases online have not fully utilized their web structure. I’m sure there are many other helpful connections that could be made to more fully utilize the web in disseminating information in more helpful and interesting ways. I would love it if I could look up a book and it would have a webpage with links to reviews, short summaries, discussion surrounding the book, and/or links to historiographies that mention it. Surely this would be a massive project, but it seems that google or somebody could come up with this in some way that I don’t understand fairly easily.

I really enjoyed this week’s article by Edward Tufte. His tone was perfect for PowerPoint. You really can’t speak too glowingly of PowerPoint. It can be helpful but it essentially an unlovable thing. It has caused far too much suffering in the world. Tufte says it well on p. 5 of his article as he notes that PowerPoint templates show 10% to 20% of the information generally found in routine news graphics. He argues that the appropriate response to such “vacuous displays” is for audience members to speak out: “It’s more complicated than that!” “Why are we having this meeting? The rate of information transfer is asymptotically approaching zero.” He’s exactly right, I think we would all gain a lot more from most PowerPoint presentations if this kind of exchange did occur and then maybe people could reconnect with real information and make the meeting worthwhile. But, as he later argues, PowerPoint presentations are not about meaningful or worthwhile exchange. Rather, “PowerPoint allows speakers to pretend that they are giving a real takl, and audiences to pretend that they are listening” (p. 25).
Tufte also shows Peter Norvig’s PowerPoint presentation of the Gettysburg address. Not only was this quite funny, but also helped demonstrate how great content is dumbed down by the PowerPoint format.

In his final section he talks about how to improve our presentations and basically says that we should use paper handouts and avoid PowerPoint altogether. I’m not sure I fully agree as I do think PowerPoint can accomplish one or two good things. It allows you to integrate images (real historical ones that is, not clipart) into your presentation and give citation material for those images as well. Basically I think this is one of the few good things that PowerPoint can do. I would think that there are probably times (especially in teaching large history survey courses) when you would like to incorporate historical images. I think the easiest place to find them is on the internet and thus PowerPoint basically allows us to quickly show them in a potentially non-distracting way (as long as we don’t fill up the rest of the screen with rubbish clipart or zooming bullet points).

This week’s reading was a good introduction into website production. It gives a great overview of important factors and also gives definitions of some of the important terms without getting bogged down in the technology.

I liked their metaphor of historians being more like architects of their websites rather than plumbers. I think if I tried to do all the detailed technical aspects of my own site, not only would the history element suffer, I think the overall image/structure of the site would suffer as well. I think it’s very important to contemplate the many aspects of how your site is presented, but then to use tools that make programming/design easier. That’s why I’m thankful for software like streetprint. This is the database creating software that we talked about in class last week. At this point I’m planning on using it for my project of digitizing a publication to put in searchable format on the web. Streetprint takes care of all the technical design issues and the many other functions for searching, etc that would be incredibly difficult to program, especially for an historian.

The authors also note the importance of examining other websites like your own. This is also important for creating a site that both connects with what material has already been published in your field, but making it easy to recognize what new components your adding with your website as well. (You can also learn from the mistakes/models in this process). I’m looking forward to the web review for this reason - to see how my website will compare to others like it, possibly on the same subject or with the same scope.

I’ve considered some of the factors that they discuss in their section on funding near the end of the chapter as I’ve tried to find funding for my own project this semester. Unfortunately, I don’t envision my website getting a lot of mainstream traffic as it seems the primary people that want to read about the Conservative Mennonites are the Conservative Mennonites. I did write a grant proposal to the Conservative Mennonite Conference, but I don’t think they often give money away for historical projects so I’m not too optimistic that they’ll fund the project. If that fails I may have to turn towards organizations that are interested in preserving documents.

So I finally made it to a scanner and here is my image. It is page 15 of the January 2006 issue of the Brotherhood Beacon. For my final project for this class I’m hoping to digitize five years of this monthly publication. I’m really not sure if this is beyond my capabilities or not, but I’ve been told that there is some software that will help me with this process. I will use OCR software to create text files from each page image and then upload them all to a website using streetprint software which creates a searchable database.

For this particular image, I just scanned it in and cropped it to get just the page image. I scanned it in at 400 dpi to make sure that I get good enough quality scans to run OCR software and get readable text. I may try 300 dpi as well to see if it makes any difference. 400 dpi also gives me a good enough file to save for archives, even if I don’t end up uploading that large of an image. When I save them as .jpg images currently (on medium quality) I’m getting file sizes around 2.5 megabytes, the same is true for medium quality .pdf files.

I’m really not sure what kind of file type or size I will use yet when actually uploading. I think it would be great if the files that I actually upload were smaller so that people on dial-up connections can actually still use the archive. Finding the balance between that and readability will be my main job, as I can save the larger archive quality image on cds/DVDs and/or hard drives for safe keeping (although I guess we all realize now how safe they actually are).

I’m also considering whether or not I want to scan in color. It seems that the Brotherhood Beacon uses black and white and one other color per issue, so grayscale wouldn’t be losing too much I don’t think. I would have to check to see how much file space that would save me.

Okay, I don’t know why I can’t provide a link to my image and put it on another page on my blog. The image is too small to see what’s even on the page. Enough for now, must wait for class.

The Digital History chapter on Preservation contained many interesting observations. I hadn’t really thought about the many difficulties/dangers of preserving historical documents/artifacts through digitization. This article cleared that up fairly quickly.

One random point that I was struck by. They reported that “ink-on-paper content represented an incredibly miniscule 0.01 percent of the world’s information produced in 2003.” Is it just me or is that absolutely incredible. I could probably understand 10% or maybe even 3%, but 0.01? It just makes me realize that there is a lot of information produced. Because I’ve seen some of the ink-on-paper and there’s a lot of that. I’d love to see that statistic fleshed out. Who’s producing all this information and what exactly are we calling information?
A few words on the example sites for exploring organization: I use del.icio.us which is quite similar to Cite-U-Like in some ways. I think both could be tremendously useful tools. I still haven’t fully explored everything that can be done in del.icio.us, but Cite-U-Like adds a potential element of knowing what articles are popular or widely read in your field at any given moment as well. Although this only takes into account those who are registered on the site, so most likely a fairly tech-friendly crowd which is definitely does not encompass all historians. I know the other sites we checked out this week (lifehacker and 43 folders) help organize in various ways, but I still think that the user interface is more confusing than it should be. Simply put, I think there must be a better design than a blog layout. I don’t know what it is, but I hope that it arrives soon.

My digitized image will be up tomorrow. I have to wait until I can get to a scanner.