neylon

“Collecting the Past:  Remembrances of the AU History Department” Post-mortem

The concept of the website that I worked on with Priya was a collection site.  I originally had the idea of making a collection site for American University, with the idea of collecting something like oral histories through a digital medium.  I completed my web review, examining sites that both schools and individual departments had constructed to collect histories.  Based upon this review, some of my ideas of what sort of site I wanted changed.  Rather than collecting true oral histories, the website that we created collects written histories/memories, and rather than collecting memories from the entire school, we narrowed the focus to just the American University History Department.  The website so far has a collection of six memories, from four current students, one graduate, and one faculty member.  I am happy with what I have, but there are definitely things that I would change if I had a chance to redo the project.

We found, through our research, that there is little written history about the department.  The only existing documents are course catalogues, department brochures, and overall history of the University.  Our hope, once we realized the lack of historical resources about the department, was that submissions to our site would provide some sort of historical record for future students who may want more information about the department.  Therefore, this site is completely different from how I would have approached a term paper.  Rather than starting out with information and documents from which we could make an argument, we were attempting to create a way to collect the information and documents from which a future term paper could be written.  The use of digital media made this attempt much more efficient, in that the digital survey, located online, makes it quick and easy for people to fill it out and submit it.  It is equally easy, then, for me to access responses and post them for viewing on the site itself.

I attended two Dreamweaver workshops, as well as the tutorial in class.  I had played with Adobe Photoshop a few times in the past, and the tutorial on this program in class was a great help.  Despite all of this time listening to all of the information everyone had to give me, though, I have found that Dreamweaver and Photoshop are some of those programs that I needed to play with and figure out on my own.  Through the tried and true method of trial and error, I figured out how to make and use templates, to manipulate photographs, and how to use the dreaded tables to design and construct the site.  I obviously would probably like our site much better if it was not the first site I ever constructed.  If I had more experience, in web design, I would probably like the look and feel of my site better.  The only thing that I know right now, while I am still an amateur, is that I would change the method of posting survey responses.  I would like to know how to put the survey directly on the site, rather than copying and pasting the responses into a table, as I do it now.

At this point, only six people completed surveys for our website.  This is nowhere near the number of surveys that I had hoped we would have, over a week after we sent out an email asking people to do them for us.  I have wondered what the problem is, whether it is apathy, fear of technology for some people, or the survey itself.  This is particularly disappointing because part of the decision to narrow our site to focus only on the department was based on the idea that people would have more of a stake in the department, making them more likely to respond.  Of those who have responded, the memories and personal histories that they submitted were wonderful.  As great as these are, though, the information they provide may not be beneficial in the creation of an official department history.  On the other hand, their value lies in their use as personal memories and histories.  These are interesting and fun to read now, and will prove to be so in the future.  I do think, however, that I would want to change the questions on the survey, perhaps to encourage more detail in the responses.  A change in questions would also help in the type of responses we would receive.  I am not sure, though, how I would change the survey.  My concern is that I do not want to guide the respondents too much.  I learned through work in ethnographies that an interviewer should not lead the interviewee through the questions, in order to protect the integrity of the responses.  Since I cannot ask follow-up questions to the responses, as I would be able to in a live interview, I would have to walk a fine line in my online survey, between leading and getting enough usable information.

With infinite time and resources, I would gain more experience in web design and refine the site to make it appear more professional.  I would also try using different survey questions that will get respondents to provide more detail than some have, including dates or years of the memories if the respondent remembers them.  An increase in experience in designing sites and surveys would have the biggest impact of all on the site.  I know there are many other parts of the design and construction of the site and survey that I could improve, but that I am missing because of the lack of experience.  Despite the possible improvements, the site has worked so far.  I have posted six responses from site visitors, with interesting memories, that will be great for the department to have in the future.  Overall, this site does what we intended, though it could be improved with some changes, more time, and experience.  My hope is that someone in the department will pick up this site and continue the project with whatever improvements are necessary, to help further our goal of collecting the history of our department.

eagle1.american.edu/~ln6943a/Project/html

I loved Mark Grimsley’s blog. It made me realize some uses of blogging that I had not considered before. His series on “Custer and the Art of Blogging” points out that having a presence on the web can not only help fight writer’s block, but it can also help open opportunities for historians professionally. Grimsley mentioned jobs that he got from people who found him on the web. While Grimsley and others mention that this is less formal writing, it brings up the same concern for me that I have had since I began blogging for this course. Where exactly is the line of formality in writing on blogs? Or, how informal can you be in writing, when it is easy for someone to find you online and judge you and your scholarship based on something that is somewhat informal?

The Diary of Samuel Pepys is a great idea for how to use a blog format. At first I wasn’t sure what I was dealing with, whether it was a fictional story with links to real history, but when I looked at the “about” page, I realized that it was a real person’s diary from the 1600s, that is being uploaded one day at a time to the internet. This is an amazingly creative way to use the internet to publish history, in a way that would be interesting to a lot of people.

Wikipedia is an interesting problem. While the concept is an interesting one, and Rosenzweig’s article, “Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past,” to be published in June 2006, complicates my ideas of the site, I still have issues. While much of what I read was not up to professional historians’ standards, it was not necessarily bad history. I edited the entry on the Gettysburg National Military Park. I had a lot of issues with it, not because it was all completely wrong, but because I knew that it left out a lot of history, and made a few minor mistakes. Maybe I am the one with the problem…

Ok, this has absolutely nothing to do with any assignment, but I was reading an article on Slate that is interesting enough, and learned that there is an entire blog devoted to Gatorade. I think it’s strange enough to warrant a posting here. http://firstinthirst.typepad.com/darren_rovells_blog_on_al/

I think the chapter, “Owning the Past” in Digital History was extremely confusing.  This fault lies not with the authors, but with the laws themselves.  I found the section about images most relevant to me, since I am very interested in visual culture and its use in history.  In my research of Chinatown, I have had a very difficult time in finding images of the neighborhood in DC prior to 1930.  One of the best images that I have found was in a book that did not cite the image, which leaves me with an ethical dilemma.  Can I use a copy of the image and cite the use of it in the book I found, since I cannot find the original?  According to Rosenzweig and Cohen, the answer is no, because you need access to the original.  This is very frustrating to me, because I would love to use it (if I ever decided to try to publish).  As great as copyrights are, I can see how it would become difficult to deal with the shades of gray in the copyright laws.

Fair use is also a difficult concept for me.  I read the guidelines for fair use, but it still is not very clear to me.  For instance, I have had the idea that everyone has to cite EVERYTHING drilled into my head, and apparently you do not have to (at least, Stephen Ambrose did not have to) under fair use?  Can someone clarify this for me, or should I wait for class?  Does our everyday writing as historians fall under fair use when we quote other historians and cite them?  And finally, am I the only one getting hung up on all of this?  I think it is probably good that I did not decide to go into law…

I liked the idea in Digital History of making your own version of what you want to use.  Their example was if you want to use a recording of a traditional song that is copyrighted, you could just make your own recording to avoid it.  This is what I do as often as possible with images.  Why ask someone for permission to use an image of something when you can make it yourself?  I have found, though, that most people are very nice about giving permission to use images (at least when you are asking on behalf of the Smithsonian NMAH).  I had to ask several companies if I could use their images for an activity cart script that I worked on in my internship, and everyone was more than happy to give permission to use images from their sites, and some even offered to send me higher-quality images free.  I could not imagine paying some of the prices that people charge for permission to use copies.  I guess one of the nice things about being in academia or historical institutions in general is that people seem to be more willing to give permission to us.

Priya Chhaya & Linda Neylon

History in the Digital Age

Final Project Description

Our intention in this final project is to develop a collection site for American University which displays text and images relating to student life and the history of the university.  The primary audience is the AU community—which includes students former, current, or perspective, faculty and staff while secondary audiences depending on the collections developed can include researchers on local history and university campus life.  To some extent the intent of the site is to provide a place of reflection and to get primary source information about the role of American University in local and student life.

Organizationally, the site will be modeled after the North Carolina State College of Engineering Collecting site [http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/news/memories/index.html] with two separate sections to view and share memories.  The view memory section will be divided up based on years, while the share memories will include an e-mail address/web space where text and/or image files can be sent.  We shall use a combination of Dreamweaver and Photoshop to build this website using principles described in the Digital History text to make sure that it is both visually appealing and easy to navigate. In terms of design, the intention is to have a core main page which is simple, and has a sample of the collection within while the subsidiary sections provide other examples as well as easy to follow instructions for submissions.  In addition, we are thinking about attaching a survey for visitors to tell us why they visited the site including citation information to encourage researchers to use to cite for academic information. Images of AU’s history will also be integrated in order to aid in survey collections as a memory prompt for visitors to the site.

The way this site will impact our personal and professional goals is two fold.  On one hand it is a practice in Public History—impacting and serving a unique audience in a particular way. On the other hand it allows for the development of a local history archive, especially many of the American University students went to work and participated in a variety of events in and around the city.  At present, there isn’t a distinct argument regarding the site, but perhaps we can say that through the resource we hope to collect we will show the importance and variety of ways in which AU impacted individuals, the city and maybe even the nation.

First, I don’t think we will ever reach a point where reading on the computer is as comfortable as reading something written on paper, no matter how good the color, font, etc. get.  With that in mind, this is a completely different medium than print.  The way it is used is different; the way people read web sites is completely different.  Should we really be modeling web sites off design in print?  I am just not sure that it makes complete sense to attempt to transfer design of one medium to another.  Of course, maybe this is the best idea we have right now, since the internet and websites are so new, and it is hard to come up with a completely new design or style.

Websites started out looking garish, and like the “Ten reasons to learn and use web standards”  blog entry says, you want to look professional and move on from that type of design.  Last year I received an email announcement about an internship, with a link included for more information.  I clicked on the link, which then took me to a site that was the least professional looking site I think I could find in existence today.  The worst part was that it was supposed to be an internship for a government agency.  The site used every bold, bright color available, making it difficult to look at or take seriously.  I obviously want to avoid making a page that would have that effect on someone, and will take the advice that Cohen and Rosenzweig offer, as boring as grays may sound. (As an aside, I looked into the internship more, and the contact numbers listed, and I think it was fake.  It asked for all information about you, including ssn, to be submitted online, without security, and the phone numbers, according to 411.com, were cell phone numbers, not office and fax numbers.)

The section of Digital History about accessibility was very interesting to me.  It brought up legal issues I had never considered before, and has prompted me to take the accessibility prompt that pops up in Dreamweaver more seriously.  I never thought about the need for accessibility online, it always seemed like something relegated to the real-world, not the virtual world of the internet.  It makes sense that we should do this for people, but it isn’t necessarily something you think of if you don’t need it yourself.  I hope to one day work for the government in some capacity, and it will be very important to pay attention to sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments.

Roy Rosenzweig’s article, “Crashing the System? Hypertext and Scholarship on American Culture,” brings up many benefits of the internet for historians, as well as some possible negatives. Rosenzweig describes the internet’s tools as “clunky” when it comes to certain field standards such as footnoting. The footnoting problem is one I have been trying to solve, because as an historian, I have to footnote everything. However, I have not figured out how to cite properly within a website while maintaining the design. Despite the drawbacks, Rosenzweig makes sure that readers understand the benefits of publishing online. Publishing in paper journals limits the amount of space an author can use to present his/her case. However, when the information is online, the author can allow access to full copies of images, films, and papers through links from the article. Historians should take full advantage of this amazing benefit, even if it does require them us to be historians, designers, and programmers, all in one.

Rosenzweig also points out the difficulty of establishing standards for scholarship online. How do you evaluate an article that has links throughout it, leading to new subsections and information? Rosenzweig notes that it is difficult to determine if an online article is well organized or not, because of issues such as the links. Should new standards be created for judging online articles as opposed to articles in paper journals? Is it possible to even create standards for something that seems to have no limit in design and organization?

David A. Bell’s comments in his article, The Bookless Future: What the Internet is Doing to Scholarship, about reading an e-book ring true. He states, “I start reading, but while the book is well written and informative, I find it remarkably hard to concentrate. I scroll back and forth, search for keywords, and interrupt myself even more often than usual to refill my coffee cup, check my e-mail, check the news, re- arrange files in my desk drawer. Eventually I get through the book, and am glad to have done so. But a week later I find it remarkably hard to remember what I have read.” I have found similar issues with reading long texts online. Perhaps it is the ease with which I can open another browser window and check my email, or maybe it is just that reading online really does make my eyes tired. Either way, I would very much prefer having a hard copy of what I am reading (though the benefits of free online reading are obvious). I know that I am not alone in thinking this, so I am sure that the fate of paper books and journals are secure.

http://eagle1.american.edu/~ln6943a/Chinatown/1880.html

As the use of the internet and digital media becomes increasingly common and more and more people are concerned about preserving and collecting personal memories of the past, collecting sites are becoming more prevalent.  Universities all over the world are setting up collection sites dedicated to their histories and their alumni memories.  More specifically, many academic departments and alumni associations have taken on these projects.  I am hoping to set up a collection site for memories of either American University in general, or specifically for AU’s History department.  I searched the internet using Google, and by going directly to schools and looking for collection sites.  Most sites target alumni only, though I ran across a few sites that are open to faculty.  Alumni are the targets, probably because the alumni associations are generally the organizations that have the time and energy to expend on collecting information, and there seems to be a perception that alumni are the ones who would care most to share their memories.  This may be true, but many of the sites had few responses on the sites.  The appeal to the wider audience is missing from the sites, and perhaps is what is limiting the number of responses the sites received.

I have found that there are many different ways to set up these sites and those in existence span the entire range.  Some require a great deal of information in form submissions as a sort of speed bump, to make sure that anyone submitting to the site is real and not a prank.  Another concern about the collection sites is whether to make submissions immediately available, as they would be through blogs or forums, or whether to monitor them closely before posting, as would be possible through email and form submissions.  These sites also vary in appearance.  Some sites have many images that serve a dual purpose of making the site look better and of jogging the memories of alumni.  These collection sites for alumni memories seem to fall into categories based on submission formats as well as use of images.

The first format for collection of memories relating to a university or college is one of the most common.  This is the collection form that visitors fill out and submit to the administrator who then posts the memories to the site.  Lawrence University’s collection site, created for the 150^th anniversary of the school in 1996, allows visitors to the site to submit memories of 25-150 word lengths.  The University’s magazine used these submissions for the yearlong celebration of the 150^th anniversary, and the library, who administers the site, continues to accept memories.  Staff at the library reviews submissions and then posted to the site for visitors to peruse.  The Lawrence University site only asks for a name and graduation year to accompany the memory, providing only the smallest of deterrents to those who might submit a false posting.  Rutgers University’s collection site for memories of its library also asks for little information from visitors before submission.  These sites are also purely functional- they have no images, are there simply to do their jobs, and are not very aesthetically pleasing.

The University of Alberta has a site set up by the alumni association for their members to share their memories.  This site much more attractive and has much greater controls over postings than Lawrence University’s site.  Similar to Lawrence University, though, University of Alberta also has a questionnaire that alumni can submit to the administrators, who then post them to the site.  The form requires only the first and last name, but there are a total of forty-three other questions that alumni can choose from to answer.  Though these other questions are not required, the number can appear daunting at first glance, thus providing another deterrent to those who might not post a serious comment.  Most other sites that I found are similar to that of the University of Alberta.  Central Michigan University has ten questions to verify identity before posting memories, and Florida International University asks eleven questions.

Other sites out there ask very little and immediately post the submissions.  These sites are either blogs or message boards that have been set up for the expressed purpose of collecting memories.  One of these types of sites, “The 75:20 Season Reunion

Where alumni of the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance reunite,” despite the blog format, actually has some oversight because only one member has administrator capability.  All new postings must be emailed to the administrator, who then posts the memories.  However, the comments, as on all blogs, any visitor can submit and post directly.  Nebraska Wesleyan University seems to have a format that it is a sort of message board that asks little information of the author of a post before they submit their memories of the school.

The best of the sites that collect alumni memories go farther than those previously discussed.  These sites use digital images and request submissions of more than just written memories.  The Imperial College of London has a page where alumni can read and submit written memories.  The college sets itself apart, though, by the requests it makes of its alumni.  They also ask for donations of images and videos to collect a fuller picture of the history of the college according to the alumni.  Unfortunately, though, the Imperial College of London does not have a site where these submissions will be accessible, though this could change, since the request for such submissions is relatively new.  Other sites, though, have images throughout.  The University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia, has a site with five memory books full of alumni submissions.  There are images throughout these memory books, rounding out the memories.  Unfortunately, the site only permitted each posting to contain fifty words or less, severely restricting the stories.  Despite this, there are several amusing stories on the site.  Though the administrators closed the site to new submissions, the layout of the memory books is a great example of how to present the submitted memories.

One of the more interesting of these sites to use images is that of the University of Waterloo’s Office of Alumni Affairs.  The office asks for memories specifically associated with concert memories.  The site contains images of Alice Cooper, YES, Harry Chapin, and Cat Stevens, among others.  There is a form on the site for submissions of stories relating to these and other concerts at the University of Waterloo.  The administrator reviews and posts the memories along with images from the concerts.  The administrator also provides a little background information when needed, including dates of the concerts, and any other needed background information, at times settling disputes about details.  NC State University College of Engineering also has a great site for memory collection.  The site has images and allows for a much larger amount of words (submissions are in the form of emails) than many of the other collections sites.  Perhaps the most unique part of the site was an image of a class, the date of which was apparently a mystery.  The image was posted to the site with a request that anyone who might know when the image was taken, or who was in the picture, would comment on it.  Many people commented, but the mystery apparently has yet to be solved.  Overall, this site is very well constructed, is an interesting way of collecting alumni memories, and a model for collecting sites for college/university memories.

The existing collection sites for memories of alumni communities from colleges and universities provide an interesting array of forms and designs.  Some make it very easy to submit memories to the site, while others require a great amount of information along with the written memory.  Some provide images that make the site more interesting and that make it easier for alumni to think of what they want to write.  Sites such as these also vary in the motivation for their construction.  Some schools created these sites in order to celebrate landmark anniversaries of the schools, while still others created them to gather information for the sake of history.  Though these are great reasons to have these sites, many of the sites do not seem to have advertised well to their targeted audience, or did not have an audience that was motivated enough to participate in the project.  Despite the drawbacks of some of these websites, they provide lessons in positive and negative aspects of construction, from which future site builders can learn.