TheLen

The theoretical and practical readings for this week dovetailed quite nicely as the authors in the theory section (particularly David A. Bell) addressed many of my concerns with the examples and discussions in the “practice” section. I appreciate the convenience, efficiency and potential environmental advantages of digital books, but I share many of the concerns Bell discussed — particularly eyestrain, searching instead of reading, distractions, and the different processes of reading digital versus paper books.

Technological advances (such as “LIBRIe” and “electronic ink”) should be able to better reproduce the traditional reading experience without the costs of paper books, but are still a distant solution. There is great potential for the future digitization of libraries and scholarships, but given how much we have discussed the issue, I was surprised to see that no one (please point me to the articles/quotes if I’m wrong) discussed the archival dangers of the “inevitable” shift away from paper books and journals.

So, do we have to re-train ourselves to read digital scholarship? How will we adjust our reading habits to the ever-changing formats and conventions of online scholarship? Will we have to learn to ignore hyperlinks (as we must ignore some footnotes) to better follow an author’s argument? Or, will arguments themselves transform to reflect the fragmentation of reading as hyperlinks, images, and the like pull readers away from the traditional argumentation structure?

David Westbrook’s, “From Hogan’s Alley to Coconino County: Three Narratives of the Early Comic Strip”, and James Castonguay’s “The Spanish-American War in US Media Culture” highlight the many advantages and disadvantages of online scholarship. Both authors have well-reasoned and -supported arguments, but while reading their articles, I found myself almost obsessively clicking the links, images, movies, etc. and drifting away from the core of the article. Although these tangents were very interesting and informative, when I finished “reading,” I wasn’t completely sure of what I had read — what were they arguing? what were the articles about? how do they relate to other scholarship? — and this disjointed, often over-stimulating, reading experience is the primary flaw of such digital scholarship. However, with more discipline, I could have followed both the tangents and the argument (opening links, etc. in different windows or tabs) and this ability to control the reading experience is a tremendous advantage of digital scholarship. If I read either of these articles in a paper journal, I would not have seen the rich layers of primary sources and scholarly debate conveyed through the hyperlinks.

The Getting Started chapter of Digital History pointed me to a number of things that I hadn’t seriously considered when thinking about my final project. I know I want to do a timeline with layers of information, but I still don’t know how I’m going to do that.

Based on the Thinking about Your Website’s Genres and Features section, it seems I’m on the right track since I’m still focused on content and what I want the site to accomplish. I can definitely see how technology can become a distraction when creating websites. Is everyone else starting with the content for their site and then seeking out the technology that will make the site work? Or is anyone (with far more technological knowledge than I) thinking about the technology first? I can see the advantages of spending at least a few hours thinking and learning about technology before planning the conceptual side of a website. If I know that databases take too long to program or are simply more complicated than I can manage on my own, I know to plan a site that doesn’t rely on a database — or, I know to find someone to help me before I get too caught up in my project. However, the authors’ view that historians should be the archetechs of websites rather than the plumbers is very important. After all, I know I can find someone who understands the technology if I decide that the only way to make my site work is through a database.

I also appreciated the parallels between the process of researching/writing history and designing websites. Presenting a website as another form of publishing helped shake me out of the mindset that I must do all of the work on my website myself. Granted, I will probably do most of the work on this website myself (since it’s basically a paper ), but in the future when I want to construct a website more on the scale of a book, I will quickly turn to the experts. After all, I certainly wouldn’t invest in printing equipment to publish my books, so why should I obsess over production details for my website?

Naming Your Site and Presenting it to the World again speaks to the question of credibility. Even though private websites can have perfectly valid and useful information, I still tend to trust .org and .edu websites more than .com sites. Ignoring my biases, how important do you see the domain of a website in establishing credibility? Of course, the authors and sources of any pages/sites should be clear, but if they are is there any quanlitative difference between domains? I don’t think so, but at the same time, perceptions are central to evaluation. After all, if every book published by Harvard University Press had advertisements at the top and bottom of the page (as do many websites), I would probably start to view that press differently. Thoughts?

The readings and websites for this week highlight the contradictions of digital history. Online collecting and communication is increasingly important and necessary, but “historians usually have no training in such matters,” and instead must rely on outside programmers and general-use software for their research infrastructure. How problematic is this technical ignorance and subsequent dependence? Do you think more history programs will (or should) offer classes such as ours to ensure that new historians have the basic tools necessary for an increasingly digital world. How important is it “for historians to be able to create their own tools, rather than using the tools created by others?”

Additionally, the FAQ question, “How do I know this item is factual?” points to another (more pressing?) concern about online history. Whether or not new historians are trained to create their own collection systems is moot if information collecting via the internet is inaccurate and unreliable. The answer to the question concisely addresses a wide range of concerns without offering a concrete answer. The mutable response lends itself to the goals of the project, but how would you treat “erroneous, misleading, or dubious” information contributed to your own project? Would you vet donations before posting them to ensure that they fit within the parameters (ideological? methodological? factual?) of your project?

Interestingly, the readings and ideas for this week came together in a very concrete way for me while exploring The Video Store Project. The first thing I did when I went to the Video Store Project, was look for my favorite video store — Video Spectrum in Bowling Green, Ohio. I found two “stories” (for lack of a better word) about the store. They were accurate in a factual sense, but didn’t fully reflect the status of the store in Bowling Green. The customers were cultish, the employees every professor’s new best friend, and the selection was amazing. I’ve only seen one other video store organized by director (Cinema Americain in Takoma Park) and have yet to find a store that matches the selection of a video store staffed by popular culture and American culture studies majors. I wonder if the cold, almost clinical tone of the stories on the site resulted from the survey (instead of a free-form “talk about movies and the place you used to love to rent them”) format? (Or, maybe everyone who opted to contribute has very similar personality traits?)

I wonder what everyone else thinks about the issue of what I’m going to call “academic legitimacy.” Namely, the determination of whether or not a work (article, book, pamphlet, tract, website, essay, doodle) presenting itself as history is an acceptable source of information. The determination of the criteria of acceptability is problematic in and of itself, and certainly worth discussing. Should academic standards for “historical” websites apply to non-historians? How important are degrees and other professional qualifications in the digital presentation of history? The Digital History chapter touched on this issue, including:

1. George Welling’s struggle to get his colleagues to accept his website “From Revolution to Reconstruction” as an “academic venture”
2. the thorny question of whether online archives are “true” archives (see the JAH guidelines for clarification)
3. the explicit division of online history-providers into “professional historians” and “enthusiasts”

Who are the “gatekeepers” of this historical legitimacy? Can someone without an advanced degree (or even a BA) attain historical legitimacy? Do degrees and credentials even matter when so few people think critically about the material presented in websites — or books, for that matter?

Also, how would you teach students to critically evaluate websites? Would “historical legitimacy” be a factor you would encourage students to address? What other aspects of a site, beyond the content/form/audience/new media areas discussed in the JAH guidelines, would you ask your students to examine. Would you even direct students to the JAH guidelines? Or would you create your own rubric for “acceptable” and “legitimate” websites?

Lastly, how important is the intended audience when evaluating the legitimacy of a website? The JAH guidelines recognize that websites’ effectiveness depends on their accessability and that content must be tailored to the audience. Should a historical website attempt to link different communities, defined by Agre as “people who share a certain institutional location,” into one audience? Or, should each community have its own set of websites? Also, if a number of communities constitute an audience for a particular website, does that audience become a community itself?