History697

Experience of Creating Digital History

I have been starting to think about how much I have learned over the course of this past semester and it is a bit overwhelming. This has been a process of personal growth. Understanding my own character flaws, my strengths and weaknesses, and the importance of being with a bunch of great colleagues that were being tested in their own personal ways has been a key part of this experience. In fact, I have been thinking about the word experience a lot as I think about this class. To say that the class was a time-sink is an understatement. Every "free" moment that I had, especially in the last month, was devoted to applying what I had learned into creating this site. In the end, I am happy with the site but at the same time not happy with it...I see so many things that still need to be done. As I continue to reflect on this class I think may be the point. Not necessarily to create the perfect web-site. Instead, I think that this class is about the experience. Experience of failure, while it is still safe to fail. Experience of thinking about thinking. Experience with criticism. Experience in recognizing my particular limitations and not let my personal flaws dictate my outcomes. In the end, this project, and whatever grade I end up with really isn't that important but the experiences earned with each other...that is what matters to me. Thanks to all of you.

via clio.typepad.com

Quick link to consider if you use Special Collections in Virginia.

http://spec.lib.vt.edu/viva/links.html

I have stuff scattered all over the country for my web-project. I was thinking about what Dave wrote (concerns about being out on the web even though this might not be my best work) and I agree that this is a concern. I think that the reality is that so few people take digital scholarship seriously that I am not sure it will hurt us in the academic market...also I am telling people it is a class and I am starting at as a novice learner. If I really am embarrassed I will take it down and people can look at the 404.

I meant to include this link. These people have an interesting idea that will be important for libraries and scholars. The machine costs about $150,000 but it is still interesting considering the cost of storage.

G

http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm

...Original Post...

I have been reading lots about the future of scholarship, publishing and formats and ultimately libraries lately. Here are two examples.

http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/strategy/university-publishing

http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2010/chapters/electronic-books/

I think that most librarians and academics are in denial. Having recently gone through a planning exercise to build a new facility I am amazed that we are still building new facilities to hold the same books that UVA/VCU/W&M/VA Tec/JMU etc...all own. The vast majority of these redundant collections are never used. I think that the model of everyone buying the same books will be changing. Perhaps if become more usable the print can be stored in collaborative dense off-site storage facilities as long as their is a robust delivery system that mirrors the commercial options available through Amazon etc. I know if I were a state legislator the prospect of adding new libraries (and staff) at the various institutions to house the same collections (that aren't really used) would not be a cause I would be excited about leading...Good thing I have that experience as a butcher.---Hate to be so negative but ultimately I worry about the future of research when I see undergrads that are so impatient that they will not use a print reference source in order to start their work. The scale of people that I see that behave this way suggests that perhaps their work acceptable to the faculty therefore maybe we don't need the library in the same way that it was needed a few years ago...

Brown Article

Here is the citation and link for the Forum Article that we discussed last night. There are lots of ways to find it...I used the ISSN in Prof Petrik's given URL found that the name of the journal was Rethinking History and found the citations that had Josh Brown's name and the word Forum in the record...and perhaps I was being a little lazy in not tracking it down before class but i think it illustrates the issue that a user is not going to track down broken links that I have on my site.

Brown, Joshua. 2004. "Forum: history and the Web." Rethinking History  8, no. 2: 253-275. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 14, 2010).

http://mutex.gmu.edu/login?url= http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=13559663&site=ehost-live

I will post later about the Open Text Book issue I brought up and send examples.

Different focus--Manassas Industrial School

I have come to realize that I don't have the time to learn aspects of design, new code, and do research on a historical topic. In order to help reduce my own stress I have decided to use an old paper as the basic topic of my website rather than the work I am planning to do later in my career. I wrote a paper for Dr. Jefferey Stewart several years ago that looked at the Manassas Industrial School. This school was the only institution that provided secondary school (and higher) education for African Americans in Northern Virginia. It was founded by a former slave and supported by a wide ranging extended community of philanthropists from the north. I think it will be useful site to the local community and the school is an important example of conflict when local African American community visions of education conflict clash with the ideals of the local white community and the extended community of white supporters from the north.

Williamsburg and Image Assignment

I just got back from Williamsburg. My family and I had a nice long weekend trip back to ye olde capital city. I was able to find lots of great books and some nice prints. I also was able to get some nice pictures. I am hoping that one set from the Governors Palace may end up in my final project. We shall see.

I really enjoyed this assignment. I know that the final product is going to look so lame compared to my talented classmates but this was fun and I am generally happy with what I have learned through experimentation. I have lots of reading to do because I didn't get any done while swimming in ye olde swimming pool.

I am still playing around with my image assignment. I haven't really linked it to my site yet but it is uploaded on the mason server. Here is an example of the colorizing project that I am working on. I still have lots to do but I am making progress on this and am generally happy so far. I have used layers for the different areas, like the trees and the rocks, in order have the most flexibility when I make mistakes. I need to practice a few more clean-up skills so I am looking for another B&W Image. Maybe my first mammoth picture or there is a great picture of a guy at a museum exhibit looking up at mammoth bones that might be nice.

These go to 11

Tufte makes great points in all of his work and I have been a big fan of his for years. I actually always think of the movie This is Spinal Tap when I think of visual display of information and the line "These go to eleven." Tufte is at his best when he discusses both the importance of using good images and visualizations that are actually relevant to the story being told. The book that we are using doesn't have my favorite image that Tufte uses in his work. That is in The Visual Display of Quantatative Information. This shows Napoleon's invasion of Russia and retreat from Moscow. This print visually shows the destruction of Napoleon's Grande Arme'e.

Tufte and Professor Petrik have made me a more critical consumer of the visual elements of texts. For example I am reading the 20th anniversary edition of the book Chants Democratic for a major field readings class and I noticed that the line height in the text was consistently skewed in the middle of the right side pages. Also I noticed in his work and others at the time seemed to create lots of tables. These tables were not very good at making the points that he, and other social historians were trying to make. They would have been better served in using graphs. My guess is that the publishing industry limited this type of work because it was costly. I also noticed that tables, maps and images were often separated from the text that explained their context. This made the impact of the arguments less significant to the reader and decreased the affective element of the arguments. Digital technology allows for better display of visual information and more importantly when it is carefully thought about technology can offer a clear example of the power of the convergence between text and visualization. In short it allows us to think of expressing information in a way that can engage our senses. Tufte's, and Nigel from Spinal Tap, arguments may be debatable but the visual power of their arguments are undeniable. After all...it does go to 11.

Tech Problems

I ran into a snafu this weekend when I tried to add some elements to my Type project. I couldn't log in to the GMU mason cluster. (aka osf1 account...that is the old term for our personal web space at mason.) I didn't change my password or anything but now it refuses to let me in. I tried multiple ftp software tools including terminal/cyberduck/dreamweaver. No dice. I decided to go with ipage as a web host because I wanted to get back online and make progress. (I was able to call and talk to someone who was helpful on a Saturday afternoon...I will let you know if they are good over the long haul). Only problem was I needed to get oriented to the way they managed files etc. Meanwhile I felt like I was in the Steve MIller song time keeps on slipping...into the future. New site is at http://www.clioweb2.com/ .

Nevertheless...no animals were hurt in this process although I am sure that my profanity laced tirades makes my wife wonder why grad school has not improved or expanded my vocabulary beyond four letter words.

Typ-o'd

I am going to stop tweaking this thing for now. Enough all ready...It is driving me crazy. I fixed the "tiling" problem by creating a very small image of the blue background. I also created my own parchment from an old map so I feel like is more my own stuff now. I have a tacit understanding of good design and I just keep seeing problems with mine. I still need to fix my quotes so that they are the correct ones. I really like what lots of folks in the class are doing. I am enjoying looking at what everyone is putting up. I already commented on how much I like Lynn's. I also like Dan's. His postcard site is awesome!  Rebecca's is also very cool. I especially like the old wall texture. Tracy's typewriter style is really cool. It is hard to believe that I have been through 5 different versions of this thing but I know Prof. P will believe it when we all tell her how much work we have all done on this. Can't wait to see everyone.