The Canadian Historical Association is in the process of re-designing its website and has announced a soft launch of the re-design. You can check out the new look for the website and vote in an online opinion poll about the site. Unfortunately, an online poll is a rather limited way to get feedback so I thought I would post my thoughts about the soft launch version of the site here so we can start a conversation on this topic.

While I realize this is not the official launch of the site, there are a few things missing that I hope make it into the final version:

1. RSS feeds: Right now, the site is not a very useful portal for news and information about the Canadian history research community if it doesn’t provide subscription services. Adding an RSS feed will also allow that content to be redistributed through other channels (like this blog, *wink wink*).
2. User-generated content: It can be a lot of work to actively maintain regular content for a website. Why not outsource that work to your community? The re-design should include some basic Web 2.0 functionality for members, including commenting, user-created news, wiki-based content, and media uploading.
3. Content aggregation: The CHA website should be a central portal for Canadian history content on the internet. The links section of the soft launch page is missing some significant online resources in Canadian history, including H-Canada, Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History, Canadian Historical Review, and Early Canadiana Online. While the links section needs to be fleshed out, the CHA website should also develop more innovative means of integrating open online digital history content. This could include embedding video and audio content, highlighting and re-posting new open journal articles, and compiling an aggregated feed of Canadian history blog posts. There is a lot of open online content out there and the CHA website should channel this content to the Canadian history community.
4. Online social networking: Does the CHA have a Twitter account or a Facebook page? If so, this should be made evident on the new website. As it stand, it looks like only the CHA Graduate Students’ Committee has a Facebook page (although it has been relatively inactive since May 2009). The site should also include social bookmarking buttons to help disseminate news and information to a wider audience.

These, of course, are just suggestions and shouldn’t detract from the tremendous improvements made from the previous version of the website. It is important, though, that the CHA website include some of these suggestions to take full advantage of the rich digital resources and tools available to Canadian historians.

What do you think? Please leave a comment with your thoughts about the site re-design.

I came across the DiRT page this morning, run by Lisa Spiro. What an awesome resource! If you know of tools that are useful in your own research, suggest them to Lisa and get them listed on this page. From the front:

This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively.  Whether you need software to help you manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts, Digital Research Tools will help you find what you’re looking for. We provide a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools in which we not only describe the tool’s features, but also explore how it might be employed most effectively by researchers.

Please provide feedback on DiRT and recommend tools not included here (yet).

If you’re interested in contributing to this wiki, please email Lisa Spiro at lspiro@rice.edu.  Please see Guidelines for Contributors to learn how to add new information to the wiki.

I love how it is organized by asking what it is you want to do.  While focussed on the humanities and social sciences, there is a distinct lack of Agent Modeling or other simulation tools, which I suppose indicates that simulation hasn’t made great inroads amongst the digital humanities set yet.

Some great dynamic map tools though!

• ArcGIS: ”an integrated collection of GIS software products that provides a standards-based platform for spatial analysis, data management, and mapping” (Commercial, Windows)
• GeoNames: “GeoNames geographical database covers all countries and contains over eight million placenames that are available for download free of charge.” (Free, web-based)
• Google Earth: “Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places, and share with others.” (Free, with Pro version available; PC/Mac/Linux)
• Google Maps: allows you to view maps and directions, with practical applications for transportation and diverse viewing options to further specify location (Free, web-based)
• Open Street Map: “a free, editable map of the whole world…allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth” (Free, web-based)
• Platial: “the world’s largest social map service…hundreds of thousands of people around the world share and discover all kinds of Places. Anyone can map just about anything including their towns, lives, travels, feeds, files, photos, video and stories in one simple interface…Maps are free and can be embedded on any Web page” (Free, web-based)
• TimeMap: A Java-based client-server/standalone temporal mapping applet for distributed datasets, developed by the Archaeological Computing Laboratory at the University of Sydney (Open Source or support license)
• UUorld: a program that “provides an immersive mapping environment, high-quality data, and critical analysis tools” through the production of four-dimensional, interactive maps (Free, with Pro version available; Windows/Mac/Linux)
• Yahoo! Map Mixer: allows you to create your own basic map, view maps and directions, and search existing maps (Free, web-based)

Resources:

• ECAI – Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative online directory of cultural datasets with search and user contribution functions based on TimeMap.
• Evan Ratliff, “Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World,” Wired (June 26, 2007).
• Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (Google Books), Franco Moretti. Published 2005.

Examples of Usage:

• PoliMap: Will Riley’s students gathered location data about politicians using a Google spreadsheet and mapped it on a Google Map

A thought occurred to me the other day concerning the nature of academic blogs.  Funnily enough I was thinking about my blog at the time.  I must update my blog, I thought to myself, after all it’s the method by which I will be evaluated on the Digital History course.  If only I could think of something good to post.  Herein lies what I believe may be the problem with the way some (myself included) approach blogging.  We think of it as an activity essentially for others.  When I think the I must come up with a good post to add to my blog, I am in effect relinquishing ownership of the blog.  The focus of the blog becomes less about me and more about others image of myself, reflected through my blog.  That’s the difference you see.  It is the incorrect attitude to have.  A blog is not an advertisement of your intellectual skill.  It’s not there to impress people.  A blog is a personal journal.  That is where the word blog comes from (web)(log)=(blog).  When Charles Darwin sat down to write the Origin of the Species, the source material he used was from the many journals he kept during his travels aboard the Beagle.  In the same way, my blog should act as my academic journal.  It should be updated with discoveries, notes, questions, theories and whatever else relates to the subject of the MA program, and in doing so will allow me to record and access my ideas and questions in the future when it comes to pulling all the strings together and forming a thesis.  So now for a new departure.  Instead of sitting down and trying to manufacture something for the blog, I’m going to start digitizing my class notes.  I might even start doing out my essay plans on the blog.  I’m going to change the orientation and become a little selfish.  This blog isn’t for the reader any more, it’s for the writer, and the reader can look and comment, but be aware that the purpose of the blog is not to inform or entertain the reader, but rather to allow the writer to see the development of his own thoughts and ideas.

I have experimented more with both Delicious and Zotero and have grown increasingly impressed with both applications.

The bookmarking aspects of Delicious are proving most convenient for compiling a database of interesting articles, web pages, and news reports. The tagging system allows my bookmarked pages to be arranged in an easily navigable format allowing me to select and separate articles based on the subject matter. This is a great way to build up a reservoir of knowledge on any particular subject that I wish to study.

Zotero as well has proven itself to be a useful tool, particularly as a labour saving application. It is considerably easier to have Zotero extract the pertinent bibliographical details from a book or journal article then to find and type them up oneself. The create bibliography function also allows me to construct said information into a proper bibliographical format which can then be copy and pasted into an essay or into my thesis.

I feel that both these applications would have benefit to undergrads and post grads, and I personally feel that it is a shame that knowledge of these applications is not more widespread amongst undergraduates.

Ok… the acronym was an absolute accident, but hey, I’m with the Government, I am a card-carrying official acronym producer. I guess it is natural… or a gift…

This week’s reading really obviates the need for my project in some ways and really opens the curtain to the real issues surrounding digital tool sets. At the root, I am working a Text Encoding Initiative where I do a basic text capture, presentation, preservation, encoding and then some investigation into the power of metadata and the presentation of the text as data. But the problem is… and I suppose this is a legitimate concern across academia… why is my idea any better or different than anyone else’s?

Amidst the concerns of Rosenzweig’s excellent synopsis of the digital challenges and opportunities, how are professional historians supposed to move forward? I think the answer to both questions may be captured by Rosenzweig’s conclusion: “What is often said of military strategy seems to apply to digital preservation: ‘the greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.’ We have never preserved everything; we need to start preserving something.” As my efforts are targeted at low-budget, standards-based efforts this seems to fall into line with both the NINCH and Rosenzweig articles.

We must train ourselves in basic standards of historical method using the new tools so we can have any hope for effectively digging through the mountains of data that are emerging for historical analysis. Simultaneously, as the mountain of data is growing efforts must continue to ensure archivists and historians preserve the right documents and data. For historians studying governments, this can be a little easier, but still very challenging. NARA is one example of how little is actually being saved. Costs, legislation, and technology all impact how and what we save. But the historian wants to have the opportunity to look at it all.

The digital realm is covered in opportunities for success and dangerous mines ready to blow up the unsuspecting historian. These issues include technology, ownership, distribution, accuracy, preservation, cost, as well as myriad other dangers. Now is the time that these issues have to be solved. Rosenzweig points out that schools have to train their graduate students to grapple with the issues and even master them. George Mason University’s attempts at digital history are a great start, but leave many specific and highly particular issues at bay.

To paraphrase Rosenzweig, we have to start something digital.

Agent based modelling appears to be gaining traction as a methodology in historical investigation. Good!

Just seen:

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/8/2/3/2/p82320_index.html

“Everything They Ever Wanted”: ANetLogo Case Study of a Model of Rebellion in the Tobacco Dark Patch ofTennessee and Kentucky

Abstract

The Night Rider Tobacco War during the period 1904-1909
in Kentucky and Tennessee provides a model case study of rebellion/revolution/ social banditry. The use of platoon- and company-size unit operations, guerilla warfare, boycotts and sabotage by the Dark TobaccoGrowers Association against the Duke Tobacco Trust followed the trajectory of a revolution, from inception through success in overturning the power relations in the traditional small tobacco farm country. Success in gaining the aims of the movement was followed by a
melting away of the footsoldiers despite strenuous attempts by the leadership of the Association to continue activities after victory in the original aims of the group—destruction of the economic and political stranglehold the Duke interests had achieved. As the factual background of the events in the Dark Patch are known and—in most instances—well documented, it is possible to use NetLogo programming to test the validity of causational theories of revolution. NetLogo is a computer modeling environment in which agents are programmed to carry out specific, simple rules of behavior and allowed to interact—a “virtual laboratory” in which the behavioral rules can be altered to test different hypotheses and the result permitted to emerge based solely upon the operation of those rules. For each posited causative factor (Goldstone’s triad of inflation, heightened elite competition and strain on governmental finances, for example) the original position
and dominant motivation(s) can be set up and the situation allowed to play itself out to see how closely the predictions of the theory mirror the historic record. The further a theory’s predictions deviate from reality, the greater the doubt cast upon its validity.

I’m hoping that Amazon doesn’t actually put this into action:

Method and apparatus for programmatically substituting synonyms into distributed text content. A synonym substitution mechanism may programmatically replace selected words in textual data with synonyms for the selected words. The modification to an excerpt performed by the synonym substitution mechanism may not significantly alter the meaning of the excerpt to a human reader. By replacing one or more selected words in an excerpt with synonyms for the words, illicit copies of the excerpt may be recognized by comparing a copy of the excerpt to the original. Particular permutations of synonym substitutions may be provided in excerpts to particular requestors. The particular permutations may be recorded and used to determine a requestor as the source of a copy of the excerpt. Synonym substitution may make programmatic excerpt chaining difficult by substituting different synonyms for the same word(s) in an overlapping portion of two adjacent excerpts.

The dangers are obvious, albeit entertaining:

“We have nothing to fear, but apprehension itself.”

“I have nothing to offer, but blood, toil, tears, and elbow grease.”

“We few, we happy few, we unofficial association of brothers.”

“I am a jelly donut.”

So much for textual analysis or the linguistic turn.

[Hat-tip to John Scalzi]

In history some figures are ambiguous. Were they heroes or villains or, as some claim, simply too big to judge?

In his provocative book Revolution At The Gates, Slavoj Zizek maintains that we have much to learn from just such a figure. Once hailed by half the world as a pioneer of a new and better world, now widely disparaged and reviled, Vladimir Ilych Lenin is not to be thrown on the trash pile of history. Zizek maintains that Lenin the thinker has something to offer us in the twenty-first century. What he has to offer us is not a selection of his views on Marx, or at least that is not all that he has to offer. Rather, it is Zizek’s view that Lenin’s utopianism, his ability to envision new possiblities out of sheer necesstiy that is most valuable and most saliently relevent in this most urgent of times for humanity. In short, it is not how we can assume a patronising view of Lenin’s thought and politics, but how he would view our situation that is most important.

Zizek focuses on Lenin in 1917, the year of two revolutions, to emphasise the point. Lenin was not satisfied to reform the state but insisted that after the February (March) Revolution to seize the levers of power a second revolution would be necessary to transform the nature of power in the state and achieve the true socialist state. The author is in fact an editor in this case. He presents Lenin’s 1917 writings with substantial commentary. In the bracketing introduction and conclusion, Zizek emphasises the context in which Lenin wrote and his hope to create a socialist state rather than brutal dictatorship.

This book is quite challenging considering modern perceptions of Vladimir Ilych Lenin. Not only the right (who can dismiss as rose tinted and delusional any attempt to understand such a figure) but even moreso the left can expect to find this book most disturbing. Having discarded Lenin and often falling into ambiguity over Marx, any attempt to postulate truely revolutionary action from the left in the state of twenty-first century modernity becomes problematic to say the least. The leap into the unknown of 1917 did not bring about the fall of capitalism or a beneficent rule of the proletariate. Arguably we cannot aford a similar disaster in the nuclear age. However, in the light of our immediate dilemas in regard of environmentalism, economics and biogenetics; crises of survival, of wealth and of identity, failing to take a similarly daring and necessary leap may be at least as devestating.

One thing the author cannot be acused of is hidden bias – his is clearly stated. Zizek acknowledges his ‘Marxist – Lacanian’ pedigree openly. This book is certainly worth reading if only to provoke critical thinking though as noted above the challenge is really to the left, to re-engage in revolutionary as well as reformist action.

The proliferation of linguistic tools for analysis has opened new avenues for historians working in the digital realm. Textual analysis is the study of newspaper articles, books, laws, oral histories, and other forms of human communication. Textual analysis digital tools better enable historians to decipher language usage, frequency, and significance in the context of discourse, rhetoric, and ideas. These robust digital tools thereby provide numerous possibilities that can inform historical research and communication strategies that can introduce new thinking into the current historiography. Brian Pytlik Zillig at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln developed TokenX as a powerful tool for analyzing text. While TokenX continues to undergo revision and further development, tools like this one can help historians integrate textual analysis in their research to analyze connections in language and across several texts.

Accompanying language analysis tools are encoding standards manifest in eXtensible Markup Language (XML), a Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) standard that defines textual elements without compromising the integrity of the original document. Text encoding becomes necessary for making digital representations of original analog materials, a particularly crucial step in digital research for scholars studying eras prior to the proliferation of computers and electronic-born texts. Encoding not only serves to structure sustainable projects but allows for sophisticated analysis of text by a flexible ability to define elements within a document. Furthermore, making texts digital with proper encoding allows more rigorous examination and manipulation of said texts. The more digital texts available for analysis, the better for digital textual analysis tools to articulate and produce visualizations that can create a framework to define, query, and highlight the associations in the record of the past.

TokenX analyzes XML files that can be manually input to the software (assuming the XML document is stored on a server) or built into a digital project, a task accomplished by Pytlik Zillig and CDRH (see, for example, Framing Red Power, William Jennings Bryan and the Railroad, and What Shall be the Character of this Vast Western Territory?). Once a file is “Tokenized,” users can generate word clouds, highlight keywords, view keywords in context, create word counts, and a host of other forms of analysis. Newer features currently being integrated into TokenX allow for n-gram analysis and concordance views of text, both of which help deconstruct texts even further by counting phrases containing an n number of words. Word clouds provide a visual depiction of the frequency of words in a document’s content. Shown by a variation in font size or color depending on their frequency, the word clouds identify the most crucial words used in a document. Another impressive feature in TokenX’s textual analysis rests in being able to view particular words in context. Emphasizing words in their immediate context allows one to visualize that word’s usage in several instances within a document. Through such features, researchers and historians can mine the text for information not visible without machine-aid to demonstrate some connective tissue between the text and a historical argument. Textual visualizations allow scholars to glean what a text or corpus of text is narrating about particular themes, people, or events. Certain elements are highlighted and scholars can investigate these texts in numerous ways to determine why particular words or contexts come into focus while others fade in importance. In terms of scholarly communications, the digital presentation provides an accessible way for historians to narrate their argument. TokenX’s visualizations provide in-depth insights into word contexts within individual and corpus texts and serve as a method for analyzing the connective tissue within language and across texts in time and place.

Recently, TokenX was integrated into student projects with assistance from Pytlik Zillig. This digital tool has aided the students in crafting original historical arguments by highlighting language and word trends. The students first transcribed each of the historical documents used as their source base. Transcribing textual documents into a digital form also provides the historian a deeper familiarity with the document’s content, context, and type of discourse. With a significant corpus of documents made digital users can investigate different keywords and perform the other functions of analysis offered by the tool. Having TokenX integrated into digital projects enable the authors of those projects to make their argument interactive rather than static screen captures of visualizations. The integration of TokenX into digital projects requires you to work through Pytlik Zillig to “Tokenize” the documents and host the material on a server, thus limiting the design capabilities of TokenX. However, the design limitation does not detract from the usefulness of the analysis tool and the value it adds to digital scholarship.

Historians and history instructors will find textual analysis tools, like TokenX, critical for piecing together and visually demonstrating historical analysis to students and colleagues alike.

Brent Rogers and Jason Heppler
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Reviewed: August 2009

Cross-posted at Digital History.

I set up both my Delicious and Zotero accounts to allow me to bookmark pages and gather information on books.  Both seem fairly user-friendly, of course I had an advantage in that Mike had prepared some videos demonstrating how to use both applications on Blackboard.  I’m particularly impressed by Zotero, I think it’s going to be a useful tool to compile a bibliography for my thesis.

Andrew Torget and Brent Rogers, speaking on a WHA panel titled “Exploring and Visualizing the Mid-Nineteenth Century West Through Digital History,” each showcased their laudable efforts at using digital tools in historical research.

Torget, perhaps best known for his efforts on the Valley of the Shadow archive, spoke primarily about his latest work on slavery in Texas. As he addressed the specifics of his project he also spoke of the potential of digital history, even as he acknowledged its limitations. I especially appreciated his explanation of how data must be contextualized. As in the example of his current project, knowing when the numbers of slaves increased doesn’t answer the how or why–that’s where the work of the historian figures in, because as he said “digital data is agnostic as to causality.”  With this type of project his data sets are transparent to anyone who might want to challenge or build upon his work, which is quite different than a traditional history project where the work behind the project is generally hidden from anyone but the historian himself. Torget repeatedly emphasized that digital projects such as his foster greater collaboration among researchers.

Rogers’ presentation centered around the use of available digital tools: Wordle and TokenX. He applied these in a textual analysis of documents related to the Utah War.  His presentation offered a solid example of how a researcher with limited programing background can still use digital tools to enhance their research.  My own observation about Rogers’ work was that as he showed the outputs of his text mining, the visuals from Wordle were difficult for many audience members to understand–they wondered why some words were larger, or sideways, or in different colors?  For those of us who are used to seeing ‘word clouds’ this was self-evident, but for a different generation of historians this was mystifying.

In the Q&A portion of the session I asked the panelists what digital tools they thought every graduate student should know.  The initial response was fairly vague, Torget noting that you should learn that tools that are most relevant to your work (and my pained sigh…what if you’re on your own with this and you don’t yet know which ones are most relevant?).  But Torget and Rogers did suggest the following links to specific tools or to sites that host a variety of tools:

Wordle
MIT-Simile project
Stanford’s Spatial History Project
Tools from GMU/CHNM
Google suite tools
ArcGIS (though offered with the caveat that it can be overwhelming and KMZ is much more easily learned)
Both SHANTI and UNL Tool Reviews were recommended as good places to learn more about digital tools

The session ended with a note of frustration about the way the academy continues to dismiss the efforts of digital humanists.  Torget lamented that such projects are always done ‘on the side’ and don’t count towards tenure and suggested that there should be larger conversations happening at the AHA to affirm the value of digital projects.

As an audience participant in this session I found it disheartening that it was not more widely attended, that the audience had very few women (none were on the panel itself), and that there were only two projects featured (as opposed to other panels which typically had 3 or 4 presenters).   In my experience, data or text mining projects are best presented in an informal environment where audience members  can ‘play’ with them and experience their varying levels of functionality–so I’d like to see next year’s WHA offering a ‘hands-on’ session to teach participants how to access and use existing projects.*  It would also be ideal for the WHA to offer a training session for members who are new to text or data mining tools, especially for those of us who are affiliated with departments that don’t have strong digital presence.

*Note: I found it ironic that a conference titled the “Wired West” had very few presentation rooms with projector setups and no free wireless offered to attendees.  Though I understand that this was due to the budgetary constraints of the hotel venue, perhaps such services can be negotiated into the contracts for future WHA conferences, so all participants have access to digital resources.

Episode 10 Digital Technologies and Environmental History: October 21, 2009.

How have online digital technologies changed environmental history research, communication, and teaching? This episode of the podcast explores this question in the context of the recent NiCHE Digital Infrastructure API Workshop held in Mississauga, Ontario. Online-based Application Programming Interfaces or APIs are just one digital technology that holds the potential to change the way environmental historians access resources, analyze historical data, and communicate research findings. Within the past decade alone, the development of online digital technologies has offered the potential to transform historical scholarship.

This episode includes a round-table conversation with some leading figures in the realm of digital history as well as an interview with Jan Oosthoek, the producer and host of the Exploring Environmental History podcast.

Please be sure to take a moment and review this podcast on our iTunes page.

Visit the main page at http://niche-canada.org/naturespast

Works Cited

Sean Kheraj, Canadian History & Environment

http://seankheraj.wordpress.com

Dan Cohen’s Website

http://www.dancohen.org/

Digital Campus Podcast

http://digitalcampus.tv/

Heptanesian Archives

http://heptanesia.net/

NYPL Map Rectifier

http://maps.nypl.org

Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History

http://canadianmysteries.ca

Environmental History Resources

http://www.eh-resources.org/

Environmental History Teaching

http://www.eh-teaching.org/

MSc. Landscape, Environment & History

http://teaching.shc.ed.ac.uk/esh/msc_landscape/examples/

Music Credits

“I Bid Ye Farewell” by AndyExpandy

“Crayonz” by AndyExpandy

“Expandimonium!” by AndyExpandy

“Pancakes” by AndyExpandy

Last week’s assignment for Digital History was to digitize a section of the 1911 Census of Ireland conducted by the British Government of the day.  Basically it involved transcribing from the digital archive of the National Archives information from the census to a excel spreadsheet.  I was assigned the street (more accurately townland) of Cloughmacsimon in the district of Ballymodan in County Cork.  This was an interesting section of the census to be assigned as it also included the workhouse.  Amongst the categories used for the spreadsheet were the names, occupations, religious affiliation and relation to the head of the household.  A quick look at the census divulged some interesting sociological findings about rural Irish society in 1911.  I noted that the occupants of all the houses were Roman Catholics, including the master of the workhouse and all his staff.  This represented to a degree the inclusion of Roman Catholics in Irish society in positions of authority by 1911, an advancement from 100 years earlier when Roman Catholics were still second class citizens.  I was also interested to note that in 1911 most people under the age of 30 remained unmarried and lived with there parents.  In some cases, bachelor and spinster offspring remained in the family home well into their 40’s.  Another interesting point was that the majority of employment came from working family land, and that most households employed at least one domestic servant or agricultural labourer who seemed to be  permanently resident in the household with the family.   Another interesting aspect was the low number of individuals who professed a knowledge of the Irish language.  Indeed only one family was composed of members who were all fluent in Irish. This would lead one to believe that in this particular family some degree of emphasis was placed on retaining knowledge of the spoken language.  Literacy rates were also higher amongst the younger generations then their grandparents, indicating an improvement in educational standards.   The digitization process itself was quite incident free, in this case I found that I had mainly to check the information provided by the census website against the scanned census form to make sure it was factually correct and in most cases it was simply a matter of copying and pasting.  Excel also contain some handy time saving features such as remember previous inserts to  fields in the same column  hastening the process of  inserting multiple values of the same type.

Abstract

In a multi-phase project I will develop a low-cost methodology for digital archiving documents, develop and store them in a standards-based data storage platform, and set the conditions to scale up from this foundation with future phases and funding creating a collaborative, accessible, online digital archive with fully reproduce-able, searchable, capture-able, translatable, and malleable datasets and online sources.

Requirement

The requirement for this project is simple. Museums, archives and libraries have a mission to preserve and make available their holdings. The costs are often prohibitive for displays and for complex online archives thus limiting the effectiveness of smaller institutions’ ability to succeed in their missions. By establishing a phased approach, institutions and individuals will be able to choose when and how they implement this methodology. Ultimately, this “how” to can include a “where” capability as collaboration and external input can be presented to the host institution or institutions for inclusion in their dataset. The requirement is to develop low-cost methods and technologies to enable resource-constrained archivists, curators, and historians to develop a worldwide audience for their unique data.

Features & Functions

The primary capability of this project will be a “how-to” methodology in a resource-constrained environment detailing how to capture artifacts and translate them into datasets for future/other uses. To exemplify the methodology, a secondary feature will be the full presentation of The Militaman’s Pocket Companion, published in 1822 and held by the National Guard Education Foundation in Washington, DC. As fully developed the phases themselves offer staggered capability for each level of development.

Audience

The audiences for this project will evolve as scale and participation evolves. As such, anticipated audience is best defined by phase.

Technologies

The technologies for this project will evolve with the phases. As the initial intent is to get data available as soon as possible the technology will be completely off-the-shelf and easily available for less than $3000. The Infinite Expansion phase will involve detailed custom programming and expansive data storage techniques. Phase VI and V costs could exceed several million dollars for development and maintenance.

Web 2.0 – User Input

User input will vary with the audience. The initial phases of development present the user with information they can leverage and subsequently input on their own projects, but not directly within the scope of this project. The later phases are almost completely user driven.

This week Mike asked us to transfer data from the 1911 Census of Ireland into an Excel sheet. The complete census is now available and searchable online at www.census.nationalarchives.ie

The section we are processing is in the parish of Ballymodan which is about 20 miles west of Cork City.
I did the 6 households that I was assigned this morning and although inputting the data is hardly riveting stuff the information contained was interesting. Especially the fact that out of 27 people only one spoke Irish! At that time Ireland was still under British rule so I guess that Irish was not taught in schools but am not sure. The majority of adults and school-age children could read and write. Only 4 adults out of the group could not. I found it interesting that one of the ancillary census forms about the types of dwellings wished the enumerator to list how many windows each house had at the front. I have heard it said there was a window tax in place in Ireland at one stage but will have to research further to discover whether this was the reason for counting windows.
When I was finished I searched through the census to see if I could find my maternal grandparents who were McCarthys from Bantry. I found both their census returns which was amazing to see. They were both 17 years in 1911 and lived down the road from one another in Chapel Street in Bantry.

One of the modules I am doing for my MA is digital history.  Its a small class of about 10 and our lecturer is Mike Cosgrave. Mike is very enthusiastic about the benefits of internet applications for collaboration and research. Although I email, facebook etc I never considered that blogging could be an effective tool for collaboration amongst historians. I think this could be really helpful to me as there isnt many in our university (UCC, Cork) studying the area I am researching (US foreign policy).

O tema da “historiografia” ganhou mais um espaço na rede!!!

Começamos esta semana uma coluna na Revista Médio Paraíba, que aborda temas acadêmicos e multidisciplinares.

Abaixo segue o editorial desta edição, por Renato Barozzi:

Temos duas boas notícias: a primeira é que chegamos à terceira edição de nossa Revista Acadêmica. A segunda boa notícia é que já possuímos conteúdo a ser analisado para uma quarta e, quiçá, uma quinta edição. Realmente estamos muito felizes com o desenvolvimento deste projeto.

Algumas coisas precisam ainda de ajustes, nos falta tempo para uma dedicação intensa, mas, apesar dos sobressaltos, nada irá sobrestar o aprimoramento, o aperfeiçoamento e amadurecimento de nossa revista.

>> Confira aqui  o sumário da Edição no. 3.
>> Confira as edições anteriores

A presente edição deixa claro o estado de espírito com que encaramos nossas dificuldades. Nela expusemos, como artistas da palavra, a diversidade e a flexibilidade com que agimos para experimentar conteúdos e formas. Neste momento, lembro-me de uma passagem do livro “Contraponto” de Huxley que reflete bem o que sinto: “Lorde Edward e seu irmão estavam tomando ar no parque de Gattenden. Lorde Edward tomava-o caminhando. O quinto marquês tomava-o numa cadeira de rodas puxada por um burro cinzento. Era inválido. ‘o que, por felicidade, não impede o meu espírito de correr’, gostava de dizer Lorde Gattenden.”
Não somos inválidos e já provamos isto, caminhamos. Entretanto, as circunstâncias tentam invalidar nossos esforços. Por mais que somos alvejados pelas adversidades, nossos espíritos não soçobram. Temos o apoio de vocês leitores, temos a sofisticada participação dos autores e colaboradores e temos ainda, a alma cheia da necessidade de realizar.

Por falar em realizar, entre as novidades desta terceira edição temos: um texto sobre a formação do Funcionalismo Público no Brasil, que ressalta a característica estamental da sociedade portuguesa e o modelo patriarcal da família. Outro que explora a atividade de “julgar”, sobretudo diante da tarefa de cuidar do mundo, calcado nas constatações da teórica Hannah Arendt.
Entre outros, temos ainda um artigo que expõe a medicina no Brasil no período colonial e um ensaio cujo titulo é: “Sorria, você está sendo filmado!” – Câmeras, muralhas e outros símbolos: a modelação na paisagem carioca pelo medo da violência urbana. Bastante pertinente em sua função de registrar o momento “cívico” em que vivemos.

No mais, caminharemos. A Revista Médio Paraíba não é estática. Ela está num ambiente difuso. E difuso também são nossos interesses. Temos por fontes de inspiração revistas acadêmicas ligadas a universidades, mas também bebemos no manancial de Serrote, Dicta e Contradicta e Inteligência e Insight. “Mundo, mundo, vasto mundo.”

Aproveitem esta profusão de idéias e deixem-se levar pelo roldão. O mundo da arte, da literatura e da ciência possui seu próprio reino e convidamos todos vocês a entrarmos nele de mãos dadas.

Boa leitura!

Nossa contribuição, nesta terceira edição da Médio Paraíba, foi justamente falando da moderna concepção de História segundo Hannah Arendt. Nos vemos lá ou aqui! Até breve!

Monday 12th of October and it’s only my first post. I think I was meant to have this up and running about three weeks ago. Still, never mind, its done now. So, the story so far. I have checked out several other blogs, mainly links from my lecturer Mike Cosgrave’s blog. Airminded is an interesting blog, dealing with air power and British society between 1908 and 1941. The cut off dates appear strange to me, I don’t think personally I’d have cut out World War II post the Battle of Britain. That being said, I suppose air power was somewhat less important after that stage though one could argue the use of parachute troops in actions in Arnhem during Operation Market Garden is worthy of some interest and linked to air power, as is Bomber Command’s pounding of German cities, particularly Dresden, in retaliation for the Blitz. The blog is maintained by the Australian scholar Brett Holman, and contains additional information on Brett’s other interests such as Anzacs, bibliographies and biographies that Brett has researched or written up as well as a link to Brett’s proposal for his thesis which deals with civilian fears about aerial bombardment, which explains the parameters of the chronology I suppose. I like the simplicity and user friendliness of Brett’s blog and I also appreciate how he can use it as a tool to further his research by providing him with a portal where by he and other scholars can share views, make points and compare notes on aspects of Brett’s thesis, which at the very least, provides Brett with someone (anyone!) to bounce his ideas off.

Ordinary Technology for Extraordinary Learning is the blog of one Robert Cosgrave of UCC’s Teaching and Learning Centre (Any relation to Mike, I wonder? Better be careful here!). It’s different to Airminded.org and MikeCosgrave.com in that rather then being a standalone blog it is hosted on Blogger.com, much in the same way as this blog is hosted on WordPress. One of the great things about the internet is the accessibility it allows to those of us to whom the arcane arts of html coding etc. are a mystery. By providing platforms upon which us non-experts can build, it allows the internet to be a useful tool for all and sundry, rather then just those who have put considerable study into Information Technology. But I digress. Ordinary Technology for Extraordinary Learning concerns itself, obviously enough, with the tools which can be used for teaching in a modern environment such as PowerPoint, Blackboard and Google Images to name just a few. The focus of the blog appears to be on making modern technology easier and more accessible for use in the classroom or other learning environment and as such it concerns it self with what it is, which brings me back to my first point rather neatly I feel. It is in effect a discussion board of the craft of teaching and learning. Robert posts interesting findings and news relating to the subject and the comment function allows others to respond if they feel the need to.

In many ways a lot of the blogs out there are quite similar in there construction and layout, if not there content. I suppose what I have learned from viewing the blogs attached to Mike’s page is this: Appearance, links and the rest of the paraphernalia that can be attached to a blog are all secondary to the primary use of the blog, which is to allow the blogger to post remarks, investigations, research, ideas, theories, hypotheses and whatever your having yourself, and in posting on a publicly or privately accessible blog allowing and indeed encouraging comment and feedback from those who share your passions and interests. You have to wonder, had this medium been available in 1517, would Martin Luther have nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg cathedral, or posted them as a comment on the Pope’s post on indulgences on the Papacy blog?

There is an interesting discussion going on over at the SHARP e-mail list about the differences between reading on paper and reading on a screen.The conclusion of most posters is that while we may not need a new word to describe reading on a screen – viewing? screening? diging? – there is nevertheless a difference between the two. Defining that difference, on the other hand, is a bit harder and is something many scholars are still thinking about.

I blogged about this a while ago, in the context of Early English Books Online (EEBO) and whether reading seventeenth-century pamphlets on screen can change how you read them. Prompted by the SHARP discussion, I’ve been doing some more thinking about this. It occurred to me that this has been an interpretative issue since before the creation of EEBO and other digital reproductions of sources. Microfilm versions of pamphlets also carry with them some of the same issues.

In the case of the Thomason Tracts, for example, a microfilm edition by University Microfilms International (UMI) has existed since 1977. This is the way that most scholars have probably read them between that time until a few years ago. Although you can print out pamphlets from both EEBO and from microfilm, both methods of access are primarily through a screen. So what are the similarities and differences between reading a pamphlet in its original format, via a microfilm reader, or through your computer monitor? And do the differences make any practical impact on how you absorb and understand the text?

My own answer is that I’m not completely sure, but I feel instinctively that there must be differences, which in turn must impact on the experience of reading. But I was worried that this instinct is more to do with the book historians I’ve been reading – for whom the importance of the reader is a pre-requisite – than anything that could be demonstrated empirically. So here are a few thoughts about how those differences might actually have a practical impact on reception.

One is colour. A bit obvious, perhaps, but microfilm often only reproduces texts in black and white. This is certainly the case with the Thomason Tracts, and in turn EEBO reproduces the microfilm edition of them so retains this monochrome reproduction. This can potentially blur the subtleties of early modern printing. Here for example are two images of the title page of John Milton’s Eikonoklastes (unfortunately I couldn’t find two versions of the same copy, although they are the same edition):

The notes page on EEBO does say that the title page is in red and black, and if you look closely you can distinguish in places where it must have been red. But it’s still very unclear. Why does this matter? One reason is in helping to distinguish between the impact of author and printer on the finished text. Was it the printer Matthew Simmons, or the author Milton, who decided to use red ink – which would have complicated the printing process significantly? Another reason is in thinking about the impact the text had on its readers. How would they have read the title page? Does it matter that the Greek letters are printed in a different colour, given that many readers would not have understood them? Does it matter that “Published by Authority” is in red, given the severe Licensing Act that the Rump Parliament had passed the month before publication had re-introduced pre-publication censorship. To answer these questions properly, you really need to look at the original edition.

Another is environment. The original Thomason Tracts have to be read in the British Library. Typically the microfilm version would also have to be read in a university library, unless you could persuade the librarian to run off copies. This imposes certain physical conditions, such as near-silence, the presence of other scholars, and the absence of other distractions. You can read EEBO at home in your dressing gown. I certainly work differently in libraries when I know I’m probably going to be there for most of the day, compared to at home where I might be snatching half an hour to have a look at something. Looking at EEBO, you also have the rest of the internet to distract you. You can imagine spotting things in one state that you might not in the other. One silly example of mine is searching late at night for something and forgetting that EEBO’s search engine doesn’t automatically include AND for strings of words. Two weeks later when I tried again at a more sensible hour I found what I was looking for. On the other hand, being able to read EEBO outside library hours does increase the time you have available to work on it. For time-limited projects like dissertations, this can make a big difference to the amount of texts you are able to read or the amount of analysis you are able to devote to a text.

A third is searchability. Apart from wider short-title catalogues, the Thomason Tracts have been catalogued at least three times: once by Thomason himself, secondly by G.K. Fortescue in a two volume edition published in 1908, and thirdly by the UMI microfilm edition. Before EEBO, you were reliant on these indexes, compiled by someone else with limited search variables, to find what you were looking for. Now you can search not just for author and title but also for subjects and keywords. Fortescue also altered Thomason’s cataloguing order and sometimes gives his own dates. In turn Thomason’s dates are more idiosyncratic than used to be thought, and don’t necessarily mean the day the pamphlet was actually published. The UMI catalogue then restored Thomason’s cataloguing. Using EEBO lets you search by Thomason’s ordering, but also by your own. Inevitably this gives you much more freedom to navigate the collection and find new things. Particularly powerful is the gradual conversion to free text that EEBO are making of early modern pamphlets. This in particular is still a greatly untapped feature when it comes to identifying links between texts, making authorial attributions, and so on. But while such freedom has its benefits – making connections that would perhaps not have been possible otherwise – it can also have its drawbacks in terms of making mistaken connections, as the story about William Lilly in the latest edition of Early Modern Literary Studies makes clear.

There is also the fact that pamphlets are three-dimensional objects made of particular materials. Again it is almost banal to point it out, but microfilm and EEBO reproduce these objects in two dimensions. Here is a title page from the royalist newsbook Mercurius Elencticus, singled out by Jason McElligott in his study of the later royalist newsbooks as an example of one printed on particularly thin paper:

You can partly deduce this from the digital version by the fact that print from the other side of the page has leached through, but you can’t get any real sense of comparison with other issues or other titles. Again, why does this matter? Partly because paper quality can tell us something about the cost of the title – how much the printer was prepared to invest in it, how much it sold for – and something about the audience – who could afford it. But in the royalist newsbooks’ case it also relates to the fact that they were produced underground in opposition to a strident Parliamentarian censorship regime, with limited access to raw materials, and printers had to make do with what they could.

Then there is the issue of resolution. All three types of media are ultimately viewed with the naked eye, but there are various ways they are mediated before we see them. Original pamphlets can be zoomed in on with a magnifying glass. Microfilm and EEBO versions can be zoomed in on mechanically or digitally. The resolution at which EEBO reproduces pamphlets could be an issue here – they can get slightly pixellated if you are looking at them at a particularly high level of zoom. On the other hand, it’s much easier to zoom on a computer than it is by hand. A ractical example of this is a pamphlet called The Perfect Politician about Oliver Cromwell, by a pseudonymous author. In his 1990 essay on Cromwell’s contemporaries, John Morrill identifies this as being by L.S.

It certainly does look like L.S. When you zoom in, though, it seems clear that it is probably by I.S and that L.S. is a misreading because of the full stop merging into the I.

The pamphlet is probably by John [Iohn] Streater, a radical and veteran of the New Model Army. Knowing this puts the pamphlet in a very different context. So the ease with which type can be examined through EEBO – despite issues with resolution – may well have an important role in bibliographic analysis of texts that have otherwise been well-examined.

These are some initial thoughts about the differences between original sources, microfilm and digital reproductions. I’m sure you’ll have more – what do you think? But in closing it occurs to me that all three have an important similarity. One thing that original pamphlet, microfilm and EEBO all have in common is a relatively static bibliographical apparatus. They all still draw on Wing’s Short-Title Catalogue  of Books Printed  in England, Scotland,  Ireland, Wales  and  British  America  and  of  English Books  Printed  in  Other  Countries  1641-1700. Some of the attributions in Wing can be dubious. The Perfect Politician is a good example of this. Here is what the information page in EEBO says:

Attributed to Henry Fletcher by Wing.
Sometimes attributed to William Raybould.

A quick look at the title page makes it obvious that Fletcher and Raybould are the booksellers, not the authors.

This misattribution is fairly easily sorted out. However there are others where it’s not so clear, or where recent scholarship has moved beyond Wing but EEBO doesn’t reference this. For me a great improvement to EEBO would be to give users the ability to set up an account with a real-life identity and let them annotate texts. You would know which scholars were working on something of interest to you; you would be able to flag where you disagreed with an attribution, giving reasons; and you could contact the person who’d made an annotation to ask them about any attributions you were unsure of. Until bibliographical catalogues go properly digital, there will remain this odd juxtaposition between digital texts and analogue descriptions.

Here’s an interesting vision of digital learning. I can’t make any use of it in my large History 100 survey courses, because it would require more individualized work on methods than I have time for. For a smaller, more specialized course, however, it could work in history, as long as actual books were integrated into the plan too.

What I especially like about this idea is how it would help students learn about the social and institutional structures within which knowledge is produced and passed on. But is that even possible in a general education course, even if the number of students were smaller? Or is this more for undergraduates already in their third year or working inside their major?

[hat tip: Ed Webb]