Monthly Archives: November 2014

Reflections on #RRCHNM20

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I always know I chose the right profession when conference season comes around.  I get excited for conferences like children get excited for Christmas and  every year I plan my schedule around them.  When I found out that the Roy Rosenzweig Center or History and New Media 20th anniversary conference landed on my birthday this year, it seemed appropriate.

However, the RRCHNM20 was unlike any history conference that I’d ever been to before.  At times I was mesmerized by the conference and other times I felt like a complete deer in the headlights.  I was expecting it to be like all of the other conferences that I attended and presented at in the past, where there was a fixed schedule of rooms full of people who stared at the speakers and nodded their heads constantly.  This definitely was not the environment of my first digital history conference and–in a way–  it was a lot more refreshing.  Having the ability to have a say in what panels would be presented that day by voting in between sessions and watching the audience live tweet intently made me fell like I was a part of something more important and like my opinion mattered along with everyone else’s.

The sessions I attended dealt with subjects that affect the world of digital history and the entire historical community.  How do we fight the cultural constructs of gender in our field and give women the same respect as men in centers?  How do we collaborate more with public historians and museums in order to reach larger audiences?  Perhaps one of the most important: how to we get the funds to accomplish all of these goals?  These sessions were encouraging and inspiring because at time it felt like a digital history summit to take over the world instead of listening to panels with three different interpretations of the exact same subject.  It was refreshing and terrifying.

The conference reminded me exactly how new I am to digital history and that while I’ve learned so much in one semester (thanks to RRCHNM) that I still have a long way to go in the field before I truly understand enough to feel comfortable making assertions in panels or offering my own opinions in front of the digital historians whose articles I’ve read in class.  I felt very much like a green horn, especially after Dr. Robertson turned on the large screen in the conference room with the live #RRCHNM20 tweets.  All of a sudden my 20 tweets a minute turned into 2 tweets an hour because I realized these digital history giants would be reading my Twitter banter.  I started questioning whether on not I had to right to comment on digital history when so many people in the room had built its foundations.

While my own fears got the best of me at times, I was constantly surprised and comforted by the amount of the support in the sessions and throughout the conference.  I was approached by many digital historians who knew that I had the words “graduate student” tattooed on my forehead.  Many people asked me questions about my research, the support I’d received from RRCHNM, and why I chose George Mason.  It was fun to explain that I’d chosen George Mason because of RRCHNM and how I wanted to become a part of something bigger in our field and I knew digital history was what would get me there.  The digital historians at the conference made me feel –even though I had my own concerns over how much I actually knew–that I belonged in this group of tech-savy historians.

The conference also reminded me how lucky I am to be at RRCHNM.  Listening to all of the stories about Roy, his legacy and what that means to digital history, left the biggest impression of what exactly I am a part of.  I go to work every day for a center that not only changes our conceptions of history, but reaches audiences at the academic, public, and international level with our projects and tools.  RRCHNM’s 20th anniversary conference has reminded me of why I got into history into the first place.  It’s all about changing the way we view our pasts and teaching to large audiences.

Reflections on the RRCHNM 20th Anniversary Conference

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This past weekend, November 14th and 15th, was the RRCHNM 20th Anniversary Conference here at George Mason University. The attendee list included current and former staff, George Mason faculty, current grad students, and guests from other institutions and universities. Over the two days of this unconference, topics ranging from the history of CHNM to graduate student attribution were discussed.

I was excited to be able to meet the people whose work I have been reading in my Clio Wired class. The conference was a bit of a contextual event as I was able to interact with people like Tim Hitchcock, Dan Cohen, Trevor Owens etc. In this gathering, I was able to place myself in the community of DH scholars.  It was an interesting experience that really boost my desire to engage the field and participate in the discussions.

Of the three sessions I attended on the first day, the first session (Digital Literacy Tool Kit for Undergraduates) has lingered with me the longest. I wanted to attend this session because I am just starting out in my PhD program and in my involvement with Digital history. The discussion in this session, I felt, would help me as I learn and grow as a digital historian. The session was focused around an attendee who was trying to develop an undergraduate course focused around digital methods. It began by taking a step back and asking “What do you (the professor) want the students to leave with, ultimately?” Digital literacy and fluency, multilinear narratives, interaction with digital sources were all addressed. One of the more important comments was made by Spencer Roberts on failure. He said “Failure is productive if you value learning, it isn’t if you value the end product.” I have been reflecting on how my own relationship with failure in my work. Moving forward, I have a greater sense of myself and my own progress as a digital historian. I hope to always improve my digital literacy and fluency through my work.

I also took the opportunity of the conference to fulfill my “Live tweet a day” assignment for my Fellowship. I though it would be a great time to tweet out the discussions and talks, especially for those who weren’t able to make the first day. I wrote a blog post on that experience that can be found, here.

The second day, I worked the registration table in the morning and acted as scribe for the two breakout sessions. What was interesting was that both sessions I was assigned to ended up being on the same topic. In all, including the day before, there was a series of three sessions that carried on a long discussion of peer review of digital scholarship. There was a core group of individuals who attended all three of these sessions. It was fascinating to participate in this important discussion as I have not published anything, let alone any digital scholarship. By the third session, the afternoon of the second day, the discussion focused heavily on crafting a DHR – Digital History Review (coined by Fred Gibbs) – to provide the best platform to review the scholarship. I came away from the session invigorated and motived to continue the discussion on peer review. It is an important part of Digital History, not just for the overall review but also as a supplement for tenure and promotion committees. The notes from the latter two sessions are here and here.

Overall, the conference was a great success and a lot of fun to participate in. I enjoyed tweeting out the conference, especially because there is now a record of all the tweets using the #rrchnm20 hashtag. The sessions were incredibly helpful and insightful. I was surprised at how quickly I became invested in the discussions and the possible outputs from those sessions. I went home from the second day with a plethora of thoughts, ideas, questions and concerns. I guess, that would be the identifier of a great conference.

RRCHNM20 Reflection

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The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media celebrated its 20th anniversary by holding an unconference on November 14 and 15.

On day one, I worked at the registration table in the morning. I was able to catch parts of the lightning histories and remembrances, and I attended the session on 22 short stories about CHNM history. After lunch I went to the discussion on gender and centers, and the part I found most interesting was the question of whether DH centers are starting to replicate the gendering of work that happens in academic libraries. In the second afternoon session, Anne and I produced Episode 109 of Digital Campus. It was great to have Dan, Tom, Mills, and Stephen in one room rather than recording via Skype, and as that is such a rare occasion, I had hoped the question and answer session would generate more inquiries from the audience.

Day two featured panels and breakout sessions. The first panel, featuring Ed Ayers, Brett Bobley, Bethany Nowviskie, and Stephen Robertson, spoke about the future of digital humanities centers. I appreciated Ayers’ statement that the AHA needs to embrace digital humanities scholarship as true scholarship, and I realized while listening to Bethany that I need to re-read Roy Rosenzweig’s piece on scarcity and abundance. Bethany listed many issues that we need to be more aware of, including excessive consumption, the carbon footprint, adjunctification, and disparities inherent in DH centers due to budgets or location. After the panel I went to the first breakout session of the day, where we discussed global and domestic access. The part of the discussion that I most enjoyed was that of language barriers and how we need to ensure the accessibility of our technologies to all parts of the globe. Neatline is one example of a DH technology that fosters and embraces diversity and global access.

After lunch we had our second panel, during which Tim Hitchcock, William Thomas, Kathryn Tomasek, and Spencer Roberts discussed the future of digital history. Tim brought up a great point when he stated that books should not stand by themselves, and digital history needs to reinvent history writing and telling. There is more than one way to effectively study history, and the monograph should no longer be the pinnacle of academic achievement for historians. Bill mentioned revising the peer review process, and that is a topic that has come up time and again in our Clio 1 course. Spencer’s presentation was critical and informative, and he talked about a wide range of topics, including the faults inherent in the digital history fellowship model utilized at the Center, the issues surrounding digital dissertations, and the problems graduate students face as a result of lack of funding. Then we moved into our breakout sessions, and I took notes during the discussion focusing on rethinking the physical archive.

I left the conference feeling inundated with information about the future of digital humanities and digital history and the problems we need to discuss and collaborate together on to remedy. I was constantly in awe of the level of intellectual discourse occurring, and I greatly enjoyed listening to both panels’ presentations. It was great to meet some of the authors of our Clio 1 readings and the digital humanities scholars I follow on Twitter, and the big names in DH in general. I ended up with more questions than I could possibly elucidate here, but I must admit that the conference completely sold me on the utility of Twitter. Not only was it useful for me for note-taking purposes to live tweet as much of the conference as a I could, but the hashtag created for the event allowed a diverse audience of people to tune into the days’ events. To view my Tweets from the conference, click here.

Reflection on the Public Projects Division

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In some ways, Public History was a field I spent little time engaging before coming to George Mason. While I did work in a University museum for 2+ years during my undergraduate degree, I had always focused my career aspirations and attention on academic history only. In part, I had never formally been introduced to public history and the vastness of the field. Since starting the Digital History Fellowing, Public history has quickly come into focus. My rotation through the Public Projects division introduced me to the plethora of opportunities that digital public history has to offer. Over the course of these four weeks, we worked on multiple projects, each with differing tasks.

During our first week, we were introduced to Omeka. A CMS (content management system) designed with the focus on the item and not the word. Omeka is one of the flagship programs/projects for Public Projects. I was excited to learn more about this program as I had heard so much about it from around the Center. We started by reading about Omeka and exploring Omeka sites. This was followed by Megan Brett walking us through a command line install of Omeka on the Dev server. It was really interesting to work with the command line as I have little experience using Terminal or command line anything. In addition, the command line install differed greatly from the One-click install we did in our Clio Wired class on Reclaim Hosting. Working on the back end using git commands definitely gave me a greater appreciation for the ease of the One-click install while also highlighting the control command line gives to the user. We wrapped up our week on Omeka by installing PosterBuilder on our Dev Omeka and tested the plugin.

In our second week, we moved on to Histories of the National Mall. Our main task was to do mobile testing of the website while on the National Mall. It doesn’t matter how old you get, everyone loves going on field trips, especially to a place like the National Mall. We took a day off from the Center and traveled out to the Mall with the intention of testing the site on different devices. Alyssa brought an iPad, Stephanie had her Android phone, and I had my iPhone 5. Of the three devices, the Android phone worked the best (surprisingly). The Mall wireless network wasn’t working thus ruling out Alyssa’s iPad and my iPhone was running really slow. In spite of this, the whole experience was a lot of fun and very educational. Using the website on the mall allowed us to experience it as it was intended. We had to work around the sun glare on the screens, trying to get the map geolocation to work, and filtering the tags for each item.

During our trip to the Mall we were tasked with reading through an Exploration to gain a sense of the user experience. After we returned to the Center, we were assigned a rough draft of an exploration that needed to be both fact checked and edited. My exploration was “Who keeps the mall so green?” It covered the history of the Mall’s landscaping as well as its grounds maintenance. The fact checking process took an exceptionally long time to complete. It required me to read through various NPS documents as well as other government documents. As difficult and frustrating as it was, it was very rewarding in the end. I learned a lot about the McMilan Plan, the Commission of Fine Arts as well as the new Turf Restoration Project.

Our final project was the 911 digital archive. A retired FAA special agent from Boston sent in a collection of documents that needed to be cataloged into the archive. We each took five documents from the collection, read through them and then populated the respective metadata fields. It was quite fascinating to read these testimonial accounts or internal memos from Logan International Airport. I learned evermore about metadata as we had to follow the Dublin Core standard. While I have experience with metadata in general (metadata is important in GIS work), I was unaware of differing standards etc. Through this project, I learned more about curating items in a digital archive as well as creating and maintaining metadata.

Overall, my time in public projects was very beneficial. I was introduced to the expanse that is digital public history by taking part in multiple projects. Each project challenged me in different ways and helped me to become a more rounded digital historian. Truthfully, I am now contemplating and investigating Public History just as much as Academic History.

Day of Tweeting – RRCHNM 20th Anniversary Conference Day One

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Prior to entering the PhD program at GMU and starting my Digital History Fellowship, I had little to no interest in Twitter. My opinion of Twitter centered around self absorbed individuals who liked to tweet images of their breakfast or update the world on their commute to work. However, I found myself creating a Twitter account on my first day of graduate school. In the coming weeks, I learned that Twitter has become a very active platform for academics, especially Digital Historians, in the exchange of ideas and information. Two great articles on the topic, Heather Cox Richardson’s “Should Historians Use Twitter, parts 1 & 2” as well as Ryan Cordell’s “How to Start Tweeting (and Why You Might Want To),” were both helpful as I crafted my Twitter account.

As a Fellow, part of my curriculum for this semester is to do a day of tweeting. While the other two in my cohort (Stephanie and Alyssa) tweeted about a day in a division, I thought tweeting a day at the CHNM 20th Anniversary Conference would be interesting. The attendee list included current staff, graduate students, alumnae and other noted scholars all gathering to discuss CHNM, Digital History and Digital History Centers. Not only would this fulfill my Fellowship assignment, I thought it would be a great experience live tweeting a conference.

The conference was great! There was a lot of great discussion on various digital history topics. I found the live tweeting to go exceptionally well. I noticed that I was listening to the presenters specifically to find a group point to tweet out. This made it harder at times to take notes but in a way, the series of tweets serve as my notes. Twitter served as a collaboration platform, when using the #rrchnm20 that everyone else at the conference used. It was also interesting to see the interaction of others who could not attend the conference but could interact online through Twitter.  It was a very interesting exercise that I continued on day two as well.

Overall, my view of Twitter as increased greatly, especially from tweeting the conference. It adds another layer to scholarly interaction and allows for communication beyond the conference hall. Furthermore, it increased my network of scholars by finding new people to follow as well as others following me. My tweets from the first day of the conference are below.

Tweeting on the National Mall

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I am still getting the hang of Twitter and how to use it for academic purposes.  For years I refused to create an account because I wasn’t sure exactly what purpose it served and I didn’t want to be on another form of social media shared with distasteful celebrities.  However, now that I’ve been expected to keep up a Twitter account I’ve realized it’s much more than celebrities and tabloid news.  It has been a fun experience following other historians and getting to understand the tech humanities a little bit more.  However, while I’ve gotten used to reading other people’s tweets, I’m still getting the hang of tweeting my own thoughts out in the Twitterverse.

Live tweeting was a very interesting experience. I purposefully chose what would be an exciting day to do my live tweeting so I would have a  little bit better of a chance of not being a boring tweeter.  The day we tested the Histories of the National Mall in DC and I knew there would be lots of pictures and fun experiences that would make for a good day of reading for all of those who cared to follow me.

While I managed to get out quite a few tweets, testing a mobile website and switching back and forth between Twitter was a little bit more difficult than I had initially planned—which should have probably been the first issue that popped into my mind when I chose that day. However, Alyssa, Jordan, and I managed even though I was usually a few feet behind them playing on my phone so I could tweet more of our day out.

The only other issue we had was the length of the day.  We ended up being able to test the mobile website a little bit faster than anticipated, which meant that my day of live tweeting was cut just a little shorter than I would have liked.   I did manage to get out plenty of tweets full of interesting information about mobile testing on the Mall and it appeared the people following us from the center enjoyed watching us run around the National Mall attempting to find new clues on our scavenger hunt.  Those invigorating tweets can be found here:

 

Reflections on Public Projects

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Last week Alyssa, Jordan, and I completed our final rotation in Public Projects.  When I first arrived at RRCHNM, Public Projects was one of the divisions that I was most eager to experience due to my background in public history.  I am in the process of finishing up my public history certificate at Southern Miss and I have always wanted work with or pursue an entire career in public history projects.  This love for public history is what made me excited to learn and understand the digital work that goes into some of the RRCHNM projects that used since I was an undergraduate.

Our first week in Public Projects was one of the most difficult, but definitely one of the most educational.  As my blogs have shown from our rotations in Research and in Education, my coding skills definitely need some work.  However, our mentor that week—Megan Brett—was exactly what I needed to understand code life a little better.  She helped us understand SSH and was able to help me and my PC keep up with everyone else and their Macs.  For once I was never left behind with Alyssa and Jordan two or three steps ahead of me because tutorials weren’t adequate enough for PCs.  Megan was able to help me understand my windows PowerShell and never became frustrated when I forget one of the dozens of commands when trying to manipulate Omeka.  Whether it was Megan’s patience or the fact that I’ve been here for an entire semester and things are finally starting to stick, my first week in Public Projects made me feel like I was finally getting the hang of things around the center and that I could actually “talk tech.”

In week two with Public Projects, the first year fellows were sent on a mission to conduct mobile testing on Histories of the National Mall. The experience was exciting not only because we got to spend an entire work day on the National Mall, but because we were able to find some of the issues with the site on our phones.  Since I’m the one of the three of us with the least flashy technology (PC and Android kid), it was fun to see Histories of the National Mall working well and at a good download speed, whereas Jordan’s was a little slow and poor Alyssa could never find a wifi network for her ipad.  It was my own personal win for the week!  However, we were able to find a few content problems, specifically with Ghost Sites, that we were able to bring back to Public Projects.

In the last two weeks of Public Projects, we were tasked with adding newly submitted documents to the 9/ll Digital Archive.  The center recently received donated materials from Brian Sullivan who worked for the FAA around 9/11 and we were asked to submit them to the Omeka site.  We reviewed the 17 documents that were submitted and then created descriptions and other portions of Dublin Core that were needed before the documents can go live on the site.  On one of our days going through the documents we were even able to watch a documentary (Please Remove Your Shoes) that was also submitted by Sullivan so we could add it to the collection.  Aside from absolutely never wanting to fly again after going through the FAA documents and watching the documentary, I really enjoyed going back to one of the reasons I wanted to become a historian—going through primary sources.

My four weeks in Public Projects was a great experience, not only because I’m finally starting to find my way around the center, but because I was genuinely interest and excited about the content we were able to learn and create.  Sharon and Shelia made all three of us feel like we’d been in Public Projects the entire semester and it was such a smooth transition to begin working with everyone in the division because of how welcomed we felt.  The things I learned in Public Projects, especially working with Omeka, are something that I will be using throughout the rest of my time at Mason and hopefully for a dissertation project.  I’m excited about the possibility of working more with Public Projects in the future and cannot wait to learn more.

Public Projects Division Reflection

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Working in Public Projects has been a great learning experience. While working in the Division we were able to “sample” several different projects, which provided me with a firm understanding of the breadth of work this Division does.

I live tweeted our first day in Public Projects, which you can read about here. The focus of our first week was Omeka, the content management system used in online digital collections. We first looked at the showcases of Omeka to learn more about the front end. Our Clio class that evening was on Public History, so it was convenient to have the overlap between work and class. For the rest of the week we played around with the back end of Omeka. Megan took us through the steps of downloading Github, placing it in our directory on the dev server, and using command line in our Terminal to navigate. We also did user testing of Omeka, during which we installed the guestuser and poster plugins. We worked on generating posters on each other’s sites. We then installed all available Omeka themes and used them to test out the captions in both static and carousel views.

The second week we became more familiar with Histories of the National Mall. We compared Baltimore Heritage and Heritage Pin to Histories of the National Mall. Those sites have similar goals but use various methods to achieve those goals. Personally I liked History Pin – it’s a great example of crowdsourced history and it encompasses all parts of the globe rather than a single geographic region. Later that week we went on a field trip to the National Mall to do some live testing of the site. Since I don’t have a smartphone, I brought an iPad with me. Unfortunately for us, the wifi on the Mall wasn’t functional that day, so I was unable to do any testing (except for one minute when I was right outside the National Gallery of Art). Jordan and Stephanie graciously let me look at their phones so I was able to have some interaction with the site. At least our visit was a true visitor experience. After our field trip, we were each given a Mall Exploration to review and revise. I learned quite a bit about alternative plans for the Washington Monument. First I edited the content and trimmed down all five sections to under 50 words (apparently I’m unable to read directions that clearly state the sections can be 100 words or less). Then I fact checked the Exploration, using Dan Savage’s Monument Wars, a Washington Post article, the Library of Congress, and the National Park site. Editing and fact checking is a part of the writing process that I really enjoy, so I had fun with the Exploration.

Our final two weeks were spent on the 911 Digital Archive. We worked with several documents from the Boston Federal Aviation Administration Filings. I was given five of them, which I read through and then added metadata to the item record. Using Dublin Core, each document was given a title, description, date published, subjects, contributor, rights, and an item type. I never used Dublin Core standards in library school since I didn’t specialize in archives, but I am fully convinced as to the utility of the standards in museums and archives. Working with the Boston Federal Aviation Administration Fillings reminded me of my love of metadata and collection description.

Working in Public Projects has been incredibly rewarding. I greatly enjoy working in the public history field, and was pleased that we were able to work on so many different projects during our time in the Division. I found that working with the Histories of the National Mall Exploration and creating metadata for the 911 Digital Archive to be fun, which isn’t something I would have expected, but I attribute my love of editing content and creating metadata to my library background. Since this Division undertakes public history projects, when working on them I found it helpful to keep the audience in mind. What would a person creating a poster need or expect? Where might they run into difficulties? What type of wording in my Mall Exploration is the most concise, cohesive, and easy-to-read for a variety of reading levels and ages? When someone accesses the Boston Federal Aviation Administration Filings what sorts of data are they looking for? Is the wording of my description descriptive enough?

While I cannot believe our time is already over (I say that at the end of every Division but time really does go by too quickly), I am looking forward to CHNM’s 20th Anniversary Conference on Friday and Saturday!