TheLen

Like Rod, I attended the “Googling for Scholars” workshop at the library on March 28, 2006. I was thrilled to learn that the library had found a way to combine the searching abilities of Google with the resources of th academic library. Now, assuming you access Google Scholar through the library, you can access the full text for many of the articles and other sources unearthed by Google Scholar. The search results link you directly to the full text (if it is provided by American University) and even link to the Aladin catalog when relevant.

The “cited by” link takes you to a new set of results listing books, articles, reviews, etc. that reference your original search. When I put together the preliminary bibliography for my dissertation, I searched JSTOR, America: History and Life, and America: Historical Abstracts, Proquest, and Project Muse. These databases were very useful and each returned a slightly different set of results, but now I want to know how Google Scholar compares — particularly, I’m curious to see if Google Scholar will direct me to any sources the other searches overlooked. I have high hopes for the “cited by” link and I hope they pan out this afternoon.

I will have to do a number of comparative searches before I replace Proquest or JSTOR with Google Scholar, but it certainly in my top five searches at the moment.

I still don’t really understand the details of copyright, but I don’t plan to stress about it since the bulk of my website will be original analysis by me — and I doubt I’m going to send myself a cease and desist letter. Also, the Owning the Past? chapter (rightly or wrongly) left me with the impression that as long as I’m (1) not making money (nor plan to make money in the future) and (2) willing to remove the offending object, I shouldn’t get into too much trouble. Am I the only one foolish enough to be so relaxed? How concerned are you with copyright in the grand scheme of things?
Of course, the “Creative Commons” described in the readings would be an ideal arrangement for historians — particularly the potential access to multimedia sources. Would such a creative commons change your plans for your website and/or future research? Would it even make a differnece since Microsoft and others charge a fee to access public domain images? (The references to Corbis throughout the reading were shocking reminders of the serious flaws in the copyright system — not to mention the potential challenge to fair use created by profit-making shcemes based on public domain images).

One of the reasons the Vietnam: Yesterday and Today website forced me to come up with a new project is its excellent design. The timeline was exactly what I had hoped to create content-wise and the clean lines and uncluttered page made the information very easy to identify and access. The rest of the site (bibliographies, student information, etc.) is just as well-organized and the continuity of color and organization makes the site very easy to navigate. Visually, I would prefer the main page to be centered on the screen, but justifying it to the left and top ensures that technological differences do not obscure parts of the page. Because the content of this site is its primary appeal, the visual aspects of design (while pleasing) are less important than how the design facilitates access to the site’s content.

Also, in a completely different vein, I really like the design for the Book of Ratings, Lore Brand Comics, and McSweeneys websites. Although the content of each site is unique, these sites have many design similarities.  The organization of these sites actually facilitates both return visits (as new content is highly visible while archives provide access to past material) and first time visits (as visitors get an immediate sense of the content).  Additionally, since these sites are interested in enteratining — rather than informing — their audience, the rather circuitous organization of the archives and other content encourages visitors to not only look around the site, but to get lost.

When discussing web design, it’s hard not to echo Justice Stewart’s famous “I know it when I see it” definition of obscenity. The readings for this week highlight the potential confusion inherent in web design as different monitors, computers, and browsers display websites differently. Ten Reasons to Learn and Use Web Standards is an excellent overview of the logic behind web standards, but I preferred Cohen and Rozenzweig’s discussion of design — primarily because their chapter, “Designing for the History Web”, discusses how web design influences historical arguments and websites.

Rosenzweig and Cohen effectively highlight the dangers of the too much or too little web design, but I would have liked more discussion of the shared qualities of well-constructed sites in the middle ground between extreme usability and aesthetics.

Although history websites do risk losing visitors because of the large blocks of text and complex reasoning central to high-quality historical argument and analysis, Cohen and Rosenzweig’s discussion of Text points out that “good writing produces willing readers, regardless of the medium” and that historians should not compromise their arguments to reach a click-happy reading public — after all, if the argument is interesting enough and the site easy to navigate (see: Putting it All Together), a well-designed and well-argued history website should be able to reach its intended audience.

So, how much simplification is too much? And, can hypretexts correct the danger of simplification? Lastly, how much should a website cater to its intended audience? How well do the image concerns of Ten Reasons to Learn and Use Web Standards apply to historical websites?

After discovering the exact site I had hoped to create, Vietnam: Yesterday and Today, I have decided not to attempt to recreate the wheel and instead create a website that will directly and usefully complement my dissertation research. My dissertation will explore how and why individuals and organizations (both official and popular) supported the Vietnam War. I am significantly more interested in stated reasons for supporting the war and the specific forms – rallies, counter-protests, articles, advertising, etc. – of this support than in writing a history of the various groups and people who supported the war. However since I have already found 10-15 groups in the Nixon Administration papers alone, it will be incredibly useful to have a quick reference guide to the groups and their interrelationships easily accessible. Therefore, for the final project this semester, I will create a site showcasing the major pro-war groups working to ensure popular support for the Vietnam War.

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Although relatively few people quibble about the basic facts of the Vietnam War – locations and dates of major battles, the details of coups and US military operations, domestic dissent and politics, diplomatic conferences and negotiations, etc. – I doubt people will ever agree on the meanings and interpretations of those facts. When debating the rights and wrongs of the Vietnam War and other topics, it can be very useful to have a user-friendly source of basic information easily accessible. Before the internet, people turned to encyclopedias and paper reference books (or, if a student at Bowling Green State University, called the FactLine) to settle disagreements on basic questions of fact: when was the coup that toppled Ngo Dinh Diem? how many advisors were in Vietnam before the Gulf of Tonkin incident? what exactly did Nixon promise the South Vietnamese government? With the internet, such questions are now answered through a quick Google or Wikipedia search. Such searches tend to turn up two types of website: overviews and timelines. (more…)

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.