Digital Tools for Historians

I am a graduate student at the University of Central Florida, majoring in Public History. I graduated from Eckerd College with a Bachelor's in History in May of 2014.

[rebecca-roses]

Florida Historic Tour Proposal

With the vast amount of tourist attractions in Florida, deciding which places to focus on has been the most challenging aspect of this project thus far. With the help of the primary sources listed below, I extracted possible tours and routes. Within these routes, several of the same cities are mentioned every time. Orlando, Tampa and St. Petersburg, Miami, St. Augustine, and Jacksonville reappear as popular destinations; I only have primary sources to cover the 1945,1955, and 1975 decades but I am fairly confident that the same places will appear in resources from 1965. While these places are the common factor in all the decades they are not the only ones I propose we look at; listed below are the places I suggest we map out for each decade.

1945: Jacksonville, St. Augustine, St. Augustine Beach, Deland, Daytona Beach, Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Fort Myers, Miami, Miami Beach, and Key West. I have experimented with the digital tool historyinmotion to map out the route the WPA guide suggested. This tool is useful for our big picture analysis because it can map out several routes and color code them. I suggest using this along with StoryMap.

1955: Miami, St. Augustine, Daytona Beach, St. Pete, Key West, Orlando, Tampa Bay, Jacksonville.

1977: St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Pensacola, Panama City, Gainesville, Ocala, Tarpon Springs, Tampa, Fort Myers, and Orlando.

Primary Sources Used: 1. Grimm, Tom and Michele Grimm. Florida. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc, 1977. 2. Hines, Needham Christopher. The Truth About Florida. Miami: Florida Research Center, 1956. 3. Federal Writers’ Project authors. Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State. New YorkL Oxford University Press, 1939.

[rebecca-roses]

Making progress!

This past week I focused on creating deadlines for myself concerning the project, delegating tasks, and finding more sources. We have not been able to meet with you to get feedback and direction, so I am not sure what I can do to better in concern with this project. Last week David and I met up and finalized what we wanted to do with the project. Our next goal is to figure out which tourist spots we want to focus on, what our narrative is going to be, and the stories behind the characters we create for each StoryMap. 10/27 Finalize bibliography, narrow down destinations, start taking notes. David and I will finalize which places we will focus on and I will use my preliminary notes to storyboard about what conclusions we can come to about tourism in Florida. 11/03 Finalize which digital tools I will be using for my part in the project and take more notes from the sources I have. This week I will decide which other tools besides StoryMap I will use. I need to be practical and consider how many weeks are left and decide how much I can complete in the rest of the semester. I tend to bite off more than I can chew, so this is an extremely important step. Right now I think I am going to the Shiva Timeline tool as a supplement to the StoryMaps. I also want to use notes from my sources to think out of the box and use tools to tell a story that could not be told with just traditional methods. One of my big goals of this semester is to really grasp how digital tools can transform narratives.   11/10 Delineate which StoryMaps are going to be created by which team member. I would also like to start thinking about what characters and stories we can tell with the StoryMaps. Ideally I would like the stories would coincide with at least one of the videos on file (for example if there is a honeymoon video we create a road trip around that). 11/17 Finalize timeline points, finalize stories, and start creating my half of the StoryMaps. This is the last date I planned because I am not sure which tools we are ultimately going to choose or where our narrative is going to take us. But I keep updating this as the semester progresses.

I’m not sure if I am trying to rush through this project too quickly with these guidelines, but even if these steps take longer than I have estimated at least I have a framework for what I want to do and where I want to go. The most difficult aspect of this project is going to be figuring out which other tools to use with this project. I feel like last semester I was learning the basics of digital history and digital tools and my work reflected that; this semester I really aim to grow and learn how to use tools more analytically.

[rebecca-roses]

Inventing the Medium Janet H. Murray

*Note: I used the kindle app to read this book so I cannot cite page numbers because they are not provided.

     The introduction and Part 1 of Janet H. Murray’s Inventing the Medium gave me a lot of insight into how my team needs to progress with our Florida tourism and memory project. Murray argues that “designers must be hyper aware of the conventions by which we make sense of the world” because those senses will be used by interactors to interpret projects (Introduction). This seems like a ‘no duh!’ statement, but Murray points out that because the web changes so much, design and ease of use are often neglected in favor of innovation. This has been very true in my own research, having spent so much time in vain trying to find a free, open source, fairly simple to navigate tool to use to convey my teams objectives. As modern historical methodologies also promote, Murray too states that agency should be at the forefront of digital projects because they are being made for consumption. Just how special effects, well thought out story lines, and human interest create in myself a suspension of disbelief when watching Doctor Who, an “active creation of belief” will be given to digital projects that have “interactive environments”, clear boundaries of navigation, and agency (Introduction). For my part of the project, this means finding a digital tool that host multiple maps and in those maps can hold a series of photographs and a narrative. David and I were playing around with the idea of creating multiple StoryMaps to show how our four quadrants of Floridian tourism (amusement parks, roadside attractions, historical monuments, and beaches) have changed over 4 decades (1945, 1955, 1965, 1975). We initially chose StoryMap because of how easily navigable the projects are, but after digesting Murray’s arguments I do not think a series of 16 StoryMaps would give agency or be simple to navigate.

To start the design process and brainstorm ideas of what our project should look like, I will use Murrays 3 levels of questioning as found in Chapter 1.

How will specific end-users employ the product in particular tasks and activities?

a. Specific end users will be the very general internet user such as Floridians interested in their state’s pasts, tourists who are interested in an ‘authentic’ Floridian experience, and those interested in how Florida and its tourist industry has changed over time. So these interactors will explore pictures, videos, and narratives of certain points over time for either nostalgia’s sake or for planning a vacation or for learning about the evolution of Florida.

What social and cultural customs, relationship, institution, and value structures does this product reflect or subvert?

a. Maps, atlases, and GPS are all different mediums that people use to get from one place to another and understand their relation to the space around them. Using the space of Florida to guide interactors through a guide of different points will draw on this ingrained institution. By adding photographs and videos, both huge cultural customs of vacations, the end-users will be able to reflect and relate our findings with their own experiences.

What deeper, enduring general human activities and values does this object serve?

a. The need to remember the past and feel connected to traditions and customs larger than ourselves is the most important function this project serves. Scrapbooks, vacation videos, and photo albums all catalogue happy, interesting, and unique aspects of life that differ from the everyday; this need to document specific life experiences is also fulfilled by this project’s objective.

By framing my goals for this project, I can get a sense of the design choices I need to focus on. Clearly the visual aspects of the project should be at the forefront, making StoryMap an unwise choice because of its limit to only one photograph or video per item. While it might take time to find another tool, I would rather search longer and test more tools than simply choose the easiest and most well-known tool.

[rebecca-roses]

Distant Reading and Topic Modeling

To understand distant reading, one has to first have a grasp on big data as well as topic modeling. Big data refers to the large quantities of information and interactions “travers[ing] the internet”.1  All this information lies unorganized, waiting for forward thinking historians to wade through it and use it at research material. Topic modeling refers to the programs that sort through this big data to “extract topics from texts”.2  Topic modeling tools sort through large quantities of data to create lists of words sorted by, you guessed it, topics that represent what is said in that data set. For example, if a newspaper is examined topic mining tools will find out the main concepts of the newspaper and sort each section into a resulting category. This is still considered raw data, as interpretation and meaning still needs to be given to the model. Big data and topic modeling relate to distant reading, because distant reading is a method of understanding literature through using topic modeling tools. In this case literature is the big data to be sorted through and organized. The reason Franco Moretti and the Lit Lab use this model and consider it useful is because a computer program can sort through a larger sample of books than any person could read in a lifetime. Distant reading can show the big picture of genres of literature as well as the structure of chapters and books on a much larger scale than humans could accomplish. Distant reading and topic modeling could influence the way I research very much. This semester I am in a World War One Colloquium and one of our projects is to find how involved Florida was in the war and what changes occurred in Florida because of the war. After reading this material I instantly though of all the digitized newspapers in Florida and how topic modeling tools could give me a sense of what concerned Floridians at the outbreak of war and how they remembered the war after it ended and possibly even how Floridians viewed Germans before, during, and after the war. I think topic modeling and distant reading could do a much better job at finding key terms and correlating topics than I could. I know it could, especially when looking at the project Mining the Dispatch. When looking at this project, I was completely amazed at the theories on social life in Civil War Richmond that topic modeling helped to uncover. By using topic modeling tools along with close reading and a savvy mind, the researchers connected the spikes of fugitive slave ads to the movements of the Union Army to conclude that the Union gave slaves opportunities to take the risk of escaping. This conclusion would not have as easily come to the researchers without the help of topic modeling tools because of how the tools look at bigger themes and overall trends.

  1. James Grossman, “‘Big Data’: An Opportunity for Historians?” Perspectives on History, March 2012.

2. Scott Weingart, “Topic Modeling for Humanists: A Guided Tour.

3. Mining the Dispatch. University of Richmond. http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/pages/home

[rebecca-roses]

Project Inspiration

1. http://mallhistory.org/

      This online exhibit is really interesting because of the interactive map feature. It’s simple, clean, and gives a really nice visual to how much the national mall has changed over the years. I feel like if I do something like this with Weeki Wachee, it could be very effective. 

2. http://www.ushmm.org/propaganda/exhibit.html#/gallery/results

     While this exhibit on the Holocaust is technologically too sophisticated for me to consider using, i really like the idea of grouping pictures, documents, and other artifacts by theme. I feel like this technique could make a simple gallery organized and easily give it a sense of interpretation.

3. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/churchill/interactive/index_test.html

     I really like the idea of combining pictures with sound bytes. Perhaps this technique could be used in an oral history project on the Weeki Wachee mermaids? 

I had a hard time finding projects with aspects that could be viably created in this semester honestly.

[rebecca-roses]

Edward Ayers and the Civil War

      Simply, Edward Ayers strives to innovate how history is written and published. His vision is to preserve the complexity of the past without depriving viewers of interpretation in a way that both decreases the time span between publication and digestion as well as offers easy access to all primary sources. Ayers began this journey with the evolution of his Valley of the Shadow project; what first began as a book developed into one the first digital history projects (Ayers 70) .  As technology advanced so too did Ayers’ vision and presentation. The Valley of the Shadow project, published in 1993, relies primary on transcripts of letters and diaries and timelines in the form of graphs while his later feat, Hidden Patterns of the Civil War, is comprised of interactive maps as well as sophisticated word mapping graphs and other text mining visualizations. Both websites are displayed in a precise manner, offering context and an argument (although it is more difficult to determine the thesis of one website over the other), cementing these projects as more than just a digital archive. While these projects are not perfect, Ayers continues to inspire historians and students to challenge the traditional and to use technology to advance the field of history.

     As repeated in nearly every article Ayers appears in, his main goal in creating these tools is to “find patterns hidden in masses of scattered records” (Ayers 71) to “change the focus of our arguments about the ‘primary cause’ of the Civil War” (Civil War 2.0) . Both of his projects successfully fulfill this goal in ways that traditional scholarship could never do. For example, while a book can describe or list some of the occurrences of emancipation, African American abuse, and the locations of the Union Army, no single book or single scholar could encompass all of that information and lay it out legibly in a book. Hidden Patterns of the Civil War’s interactive map has all that information (all which can be customized to suit many types of viewings) and is as well an on-going project. Any updates to this map would presumably be quickly published and easily accesses, although I could not find information on how often the map is updated or if there is documentation on when each update was added. While the general argument lies in the types of information the collaborators decided to include in the map, anything more specific arguments about the end of slavery are only found in the resources for teachers. This website is much more spatially organized compared to The Valley of the Shadow project which was limited by the technology available in the early 1990s. However, this project is a seminal one that still remains relevant to this day because of the vast amount of primary sources present and the timeline that compares and contrasts events in two counties on different sides of the Civil War. For me the thesis of The Valley of the Shadow project was difficult to ascertain from the website alone because all of the links led to different clusters of sources; I personally needed Ayers accompanied explanation to fully understand his argument.

     Edward Ayers’ career has the ability to teach a lot to those new to digital tools. The power of collaboration and the ability to share authority, the value of presenting all of one’s primary sources and the significance of opening up the past for future interpretations, the effectiveness of employing innovative and unconventional methods to create new perspectives as well as the real constrains of time and money on projects are all indispensable lessons especially for students who plan on entering the field in the near future.

Bibliography:

Edward L. Ayers, “The Causes of the Civil War,” 2.0, New York Times., April 28, 2011. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/the-causes-of-the-civil-war-2-0/

Ayers, “A Digital Civil War,” in What Caused the Civil War? (2005)

http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/

http://dsl.richmond.edu/civilwar/

[rebecca-roses]

Site Visit to Weeki Wachee

     I visited the state park Weeki Wachee on March 13th with Porsha and David. Our visit was very helpful for the project and gave us all ideas for how to collaborate to create digital and physical resources for the park. After arriving at the park we walked around the premises and caught the last mermaid show of the day. The only interpretation at the park consists of a map of the premises located near the entrance of the park and a short informational video played before the mermaid show. A 5-10 minute video giving an overview of the park’s history was narrated by someone over a loudspeaker. The video told of the park’s founding, of the celebrities that visited in the 50s and 60s, and what the mermaid’s jobs were throughout the years.

     After the show we met up with the park manager, Toby Brewer, who then escorted us to Weeki Wachee’s archives. Their storage space is a converted house that was originally used to house the mermaids before the park became property of the state. When we walked in, Mr. Brewer showed us two refrigerators filled with film reels of all types. Mr. Brewer mentioned that the staff was nervous to play any of the films again because of how fragile they are, and mentioned that the park wants the films digitized but do not have any way to complete that project. He led us into another room filled with boxes, older props, and older costumes. He explained that most of the artifacts were accessioned by a part-time intern using Past Perfect. We were then led into another room that had more boxes and closet filled from top to bottom with rolled up draft paper, consisting of blue-prints. Mr. Brewer remarked that the park eventually wants to build a museum, and many of the older mermaids have a lot to donate once that happens, but the money required to complete the project greatly exceeded their budget. He estimated over a million dollars would be needed to complete that project. He then took us around the park’s main office, showing us even more of the park’s memorabilia and history. After we finished speaking with Mr. Brewer, we spent some time at the park brainstorming what we could do to help the park. Because there is so much blank wall space inside the building where the mermaid shows are held and the doors open 30 minutes before each show, it would be inexpensive and fruitful to perhaps create posters detailing the park’s history. We could include photographs housed in Weeki Wachee’s inventory and literature written about the park to create a narrative about the park; also included on each poster could be a QR code that linked either to existing footage or of a documentary of found footage that David could create. Because I have a background in exhibit creation I could be the one to set up the exhibit and also detail inexpensive ways for the parks to showcase some of their artifacts without spending over a million dollars building a new structure.  Porsha, who has the most experience with social media, could create a Tumblr blog and Pinterest account that include collections of photographs and artifacts from the park, to generate interest and supplement the posters.

     Another idea I suggested is something the World of Coca-Cola museum does that could work very well for Weeki Wachee. In one of the exhibits at the World of Coca-Cola there is a sign that asks visitors “What are your memories of Coca-Cola?”. Paper and pencils are provided for visitors to write about the ways in which the iconic drink has interacted in people’s lives and a box for people to slip them into. On a wall they have a case filled with these pages and a “featured letter of the month” to the side of it. I think Weeki Wachee could employ this idea as well, to capture the community’s memories of the park. People of all ages could describe what they like about the park or memories they have of past family vacations. This is another inexpensive way to begin accumulating a sort of oral history of the park and a way to connect visitors to the area. There are so many opportunities to explore with this park and so many ways we can promote further interpretation for visitors.

[rebecca-roses]

Interactive Visualization

     Bill Ferster’s book Interactive Visualization: Insight through Inquiry provides a methodology for using digital tools to create visualizations that both use and complement primary sources. Visualizations are an interactive medium that allow viewers to “make sense out of data” by taking advantage of the brain’s capability to see patterns and retain information (Ferster 9). In the historical profession, visualizations can be useful in organizing many different types of primary sources (from photographs to letters to legal documents, etc) through timelines, maps, etc. in order to “tell a meaningful story” (Ferster 41). Ferster’s book and his ASSERT model gives students and educators alike guidelines for conveying this information. Interactive Visualizations pleasantly supplements other readings in this class, as it gives a way for nontechnical historians to jump into the digital world by laying out a methodology for research that is much different from that used for traditional historical research.  Also the later chapters, nine through thirteen, provide guides and advice for creating visualizations through using several different types of digital tools. This book is particularly useful in aiding our class as we can use the ASSERT model to decide how to create maps, infographics, and other visualizations for the Wish You Were Here Project.

     I believe the ASSERT model can help our class organize our ideas about the Florida Parks Department project and make decisions about what visualizations are going to be the most realistic and practical. I feel we have a lot of disjointed ideas and haven’t made many firm decisions yet, and employing this model could speed up that process considerably. To show how useful this method can be, I will be applying what I understand of the project to fulfil the first step in the ASSERT model, ask a question.

• Defining the Audience      - The project is entitled “Wish You Were Here” and the focus is on the State Parks that were popular destinations before Disney World and many Florida interstates were built. Therefore, the audience is tourists young and old alike.

• Audience Needs and Capabilities      -The project revolves around a five day itinerary, which seems to imply that the Parks Department wants visitors to make a family vacation out of all the destinations. Visualizations need to be understandable and interesting to people of all ages, and be available on the most common digital devices and preferably be available for free. 

• Their Background knowledge     -As the audience (tourists) can vary from Florida natives to out-of-state travelers, we need to assume that the audience knows very little about the parks. As Ferster argues that “providing too much detail will discourage an audience that already knows that information”, using several forms of visualizations (as we have discussed in class) would be a good way to space out the information presented and allow for a wide variety of visitors to appreciate the knowledge presented without being disinteresting or overbearing (Ferster 46).

• The Information They Want to Know     -This is where we need to decide who we are really targeting with this project. Are we trying to reach out mainly to families, or do we want our target audience to be educational groups or older travelers? I think it would be most successful to have our target audience be families so a wider range of information and history can be presented. It wouldn’t be interesting to just offer up the most well-known information, even though doing so would appeal to all groups I think a “greatest hits” approach would serve as white noise to those who are Floridians or those who have done research while planning a trip. 

• Their Availability of Technology     -Again, since the audience ‘tourists’ cover so many different types of people, mapping out this requirement is going to be difficult. Assuming each family has access to at least one computer and/or smart phone, we need to employ digital tools that are easily accessed on mobile devices as well as those that can be printed out. I think this knocks out 3D visualizations and those that use Flash. 

• Personifying the Audience     -Answering the seven questions provided in this section would take up too much space, but as a class I think this using this activity will allow us to narrow the type of information we want to present. Personally, I think the average tourist wants to see unique photographs that are paired with short but interesting “fun facts” about each park. 

• Narrowing the Question’s Scope     -A couple weeks ago we were assigned to read over the park’s overviews and pick out things we thought could be included. Environmental concerns, Seminole tribe artifacts, and the side-show attractions were all brought up as information that could potentially be presented. However, since the project’s focus is on the decades before Disney World was built, I believe we need to focus mainly on the attractions of those decades and experiences people would have had visiting the park in that time. Perhaps our question could be: What would a typical tourist’s experience be at these parks in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1980s? 

     Just by answering a few of the prompts Ferster suggests, a more clear picture of who the project is geared to and what information they want to hear has been answered.  Using this method will clearly spell out our approach as well as lead us to the digital tools we need to use and the information we need to look for. As we will have limited time with the park’s archives, knowing what we are looking for will allow us to get the most out of our time there.

[rebecca-roses]

Spatial History

      Spatial History is a topic that is difficult for me to wrap my head around. I understand that spatial history used digital technologies and maps to acquire a different perspective of how space relates to history. Richard White describes the turn as being “modest and humble”, comprising of collaborative efforts that use visuals to make clear human “constructed spaces” (White 1-2). William G. Thomas III adds to this definition by arguing that special history has the advantage of other perspectives to historical narrative other than the literal narrative (Thomas 4). I really don’t know much about positivism or “empirical approaches”, but Thomas names them as the qualities that spatial history rejects; qualities that “normal” history heavily relies on (Thomas 5). Mapping out the accusations of the Salem witch trials revealed conflicts between different churches, mapping out the different construction periods of Auschwitz gives reasons for periods of with higher escape numbers, mapping out the topography of the Gettysburg battlefield allows historians insight into what and who General Lee could and could not see, and mapping out farms affected by the Dust Bowl gives new insight into the debate o the causes of the environmental disaster. GIS tools and digital mapping techniques have the ability to allow historian to physically see patterns that might not surface using traditional research methods.

     Thomas noted however that with his collaboration on a project looking at two communities at the beginning of the Civil War, that Extensible Markup Language (XML) aided their project more than GIS (Thomas 6). As a person who is not all that technical, I quickly became confused by the terminology, but XML is an open source “markup system” that “mapped relationships” in the evidence and primary sources Thomas had collected (Thomas 6). From what I understand this system annotates documents to find relationships; however, even looking up unfamiliar terminology did not help much in my understanding of the technology. Richard While explains GIS as a tool that layers historical photographs and maps onto the modern landscape to reveal things the documents themselves could not show (White 4). These tools allow historians to view geographic space alongside of other theories of space, like the space Lebfebvre describes, the socially and economically created versions of space; basically it shows how space is laid out and how humans interact with that space. These visualizations then bring about unique research questions, thus the visualization becomes a research tool (White 6).

     I believe graduate students can do spacial history without the support of a major research center, but probably not on as grand of a scale as the projects mentioned. I believe our class has already dipped our feet into spatial history by our use of mapping tools in creating the itinerary for the “Wish You Were Here” Florida Parks project. These road-side attractions were popular because there was no interstate and because Disney World had yet to be built, which tells how human movement through the state of Florida changed with infrastructure and priorities. Maybe by attaching older road maps of Florida to modern maps we can see how tourists moved through the state and why certain areas became more popular, and why these private businesses were established in the first place. With an entire class collaborating with the Parks Department (who can allow us into their records and archives)  I believe a lot can be accomplished with the free tools available on the internet.

Side Note: I stumbled upon an interesting subreddit that pertains to spatial history. http://www.reddit.com/r/DesirePath/ is filled with pictures of routes that have been carved out by human (and sometimes animal) movement, that many times differ from the established, “official” route. 

Works Cited: 

2004 -William G. Thomas III, Director of U.Va.'s Virginia Center for Digital History, "Is the Future of Digital History Spatial History?"

2010 - Richard White, Director of Stanford University's Spatial History Project: "What is Spatial History?"

[rebecca-roses]

TripLine, StoryMap, MapScholar, and the "Wish You Were Here" Project.

     I made a map of all the sites included in the “Wish You Were Here” project using the mapping tool www.tripline.net. This tool was straightforward and easy to use, and has many features that connect it to other social media outlets. All it takes to make a map is creating an account, which can be connected to a facebook page. While open to everyone, this feature allows institutions, such as the Florida State Parks Department, to create their official map of a project to be connected to an official facebook page, to let visitors know they are not following a random itinerary, but one endorsed by the state.

     Creating the map using Tripline was extremely straightforward. All I had to do was selected a map title, choose the type of trip (of which there were many options including vacation, historical event, road trip, etc), select a main location (I chose Florida as the State Parks in the itinerary are all over the state), and decide the visibility of the map (I chose Public, so everyone can have access to it). I then started to create the map. The website uses Google Maps, making searching for the parks simple. Once I had added all the parks and other places mentioned in the official itinerary I went through the list and added more description. A huge strength of Tripline is the details that can be added to each destination. Any title can be chosen for each destination along with a description, private notes only visible to travelers, an address, a phone number, and a link to a website. Specific dates can also be added to the maps which would be helpful for individuals mapping out a vacation, but this tool would not be applicable for the “Wish You Were Here” project.

     I was let down once my map was created, as the visual aesthetics were far from pleasing. As I imported the descriptions for each location directly from the Florida States Park itinerary, the map became very text heavy with little visualizations. When exploring the website I saw from example maps that images could be added to the descriptions, but failed to figure out how to accomplish that. Upon reading the about page, it seems that Flickr and Instagram pictures can be added to any map, but as I do not personally have any Instragram photos of the state parks it seems I will not be able to take advantage of this feature.       I chose Tripline to make a map as the tool has an Iphone app as well as a moble website and printable option for maps, which would allow any tourist ease of access to the “Wish You Were Here” itinerary. However I am disappointed by the lack of customization, as the final product is not very engaging. Customization is StoryMap’s (http://storymap.knightlab.com/) strongest feature, as images, videos, and text can be attached to each map from an wide array of social media websites including by not limited to Vine, Wikipedia, Youtube, Soundcloud, Flicker, Instagram, and more. The aesthetics of StoryMap are far better than TripLine, as the map is side-by-side with the text description and images rather than under the map, giving visitors a better sensemaking tool. However, no direct addresses, phone numbers, or website links seem to be allowed to be added making this tool ore appropriate for mapping out past events rather than current itineraries.

     MapScholar (http://mapscholar.org/) delves even deeper than StoryMap into the historical aspects of places and events, by integrating images of historical maps with Google Maps along with an accompanying explanation. However, the examples I viewed ran very slow on my browser, meaning this site would not be the best for the “Wish You Were Here” project as many visitors would be using their data throughout the parks- I believe this website would eat up a lot of data. As a tool for historians, MapScholar is very useful, as historic maps can be layered over Google Maps, making visualizing where cartography occurred easy and visually stimulating. The timeline accompanied with projects of MapScholar is also a strength of the tool.

     Overall, I am torn between TripLine and StoryMap in regards to the Florida State Parks Project. I would have to delve deeper into TripLine’s features and create a map in StoryMap to be able to make a final decision. The map I created can be found at: http://www.tripline.net/trip/Wish_You_Were_Here-3320057534001010846CD3911DD2B434

[rebecca-roses]

"The History Manifesto" and German Historiography

     I dislike a huge chunk of modern documentaries because of their obviously biased one-sided approach and the sensationalist life-or-death position they often place their subject matter into. It is infuriating to see issue after issue being presented as the biggest threat to life on earth, frustrating to not being able to trust what I’m seeing, and debasing to the subject matter to be used for the creator’s own gain. The History Manifesto is guilty of employing this cheap method of presentation, making the book both difficult to take seriously and exasperating to read. The first paragraph of the introduction presents problem after problem escalating in level of threat, culminating to assert questions such as: “Where…is safety, where is freedom?” and “What place will our children call home?” (Guldi, Armatage 1). This resort to sensationalism is a huge cop-out meant to stir readers into a scared frenzy, making them eager to back up whatever claims to be the ‘quick-fix’, which in this case is long-term history. This ridiculous premise certainly does not live up to the standards of academic argumentation, and, as Deborah Cohen and Peter Mandler prove, neither does Jo Guldi and David Armitage’s evidence.

     As a history student whose undergrad focus was on Modern Germany, I became deeply offended by the evidence brought up to explain how short-term histories are negatively affecting the field. Guldi and Armitage bring up the example of Geoff Eley, a German historian, who wrote his dissertation on less than twenty years of German history to track the rise of nationalism before Hitler took power. They then argue that this transition into looking at short periods of time to shed light on the present means “fewer and fewer students [are] trained on the long term perspective”, thus confining the sources used and ultimately limiting and skewing the perspective of the scholar. The chapter goes on to say that this micro-history approach led Eley to perpetrate the continuation of the false claim that Germany had a special path (Sonderweg) that led the country to eliminationist anti-Semitism. So by this argumentation, micro-history perpetrates discredited theories because the larger perspective of a nation is lost by only looking at a small amount of years. (Guldi, Armatage 39-41)

     But what about the famous (well in the German historian’s circle anyway) controversy between Daniel Goldhagen and Christopher Browning about this exact topic? Christopher Browning published Ordinary Men:Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland in 1992. The book is micro-history looking at a battalion filled with older conscripts and involvement in the genocide of Jews in Poland to argue that the men committed the atrocities that they did out of a sense of careerism and comradery rather than due to strong feels of anti-Semitism and Nazi indoctrination. Browning concludes the book by warning the future that under the same circumstances, of looking out for one’s career and one’s fellow soldiers, any person could become a perpetrator of genocide.

     After this book was published Goldhagen attacked Browning in a book review, calling Browning’s interpretation incredulous as he was looking at the same sources for a section of his own book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, published in 1996. Goldhagen’s book is a macro-history, looking as far back as the 1800s to argue that the type of anti-Semitism bent on Jewish annihilation existent in Germany since the medieval era made the people of Nazi Germany willing to carry out Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’. In sum, Goldhagen’s scholarship puts a new spin on the Sonderweg theory, claiming Germany’s racism to be totally contingent on the history of Germany, thus inferring that genocide on this scale could not happen again. After the publication of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Browning responded to both Goldhagen’s review and his book by writing an afterward for the second edition of Ordinary Men.

     These two books and the debates that occurred between the authors has become an instance brought up regularly when discussing the historiography of Nazi Germany and shows that macro-history can limit perspective just like any form of history. And for Guldi and Armitage to mention a micro-history of Nazi German written in the late 60s as evidence of why not to continue the trend, without ever mentioning the aforementioned seminal debate, proves that Guldi and Armatage only chose examples that furthered their agenda and ignored obvious evidence that proved them wrong. The History Manifesto is filled with similar logical fallacies and skewed data. The existence of these inconsistencies make how two people decided to speak for an entire discipline all the more insulting.

[rebecca-roses]

"Writing History in the Digital Age" and "Ask Historians"

     Writing History in the Digital Age is a collection of articles that address the both positive and negative impacts of digital technology on the historian’s craft. Several articles concerning the crowd-sourcing of history and historical blogs interested and excited me the most. Several discussed Wikipedia, one created a discourse on Facebook, and the last spoke on blogging in general. The threads that connected these five articles together are their deliberations on the validity and importance of easily publishable and accessible content that is viewed by general audiences as history.  All of the articles I am focusing on acknowledge digital media as challenging the traditional methods of creating and publishing histories, and several ask what role professional historians should have (if any) in these forums.

     An important conversation that “The Historian’s Craft, Popular Memory, and Wikipedia” by Robert S. Wolff, “The Wikiblitz” by Shawn Graham, “Wikipedia and Women’s History” by Martha Saxton, and “Teaching Wikipedia without Apologies” by Amanda Seligman addresses is the neutral point of view policy (or NPOV) of Wikipedia. Wolff describes the policy of a NPOV to not work in practice, as Wikipedia entries are judged by the moral compass of its editors, basically meaning that popular opinion will win out in most cases.[1] He later goes on to elaborate by stating that Wikipedia contributors believe history is based on known facts, but do not recognize that “historians interpret past events”.[2] In other words, as Amanda Seligman asserts, contributors and many readers do not recognize the arguments embedded in entries both because of the false assurance the NPOV policy gives and the ignorance of contributors to the basis of historical knowledge.[3] In example of this, Saxton encountered problems adding information about the discrimination of women into entries because many editors viewed this topic as having an agenda and not having a NPOV.[4] Graham adds to the pitfalls of the NPOV policy when noting that bots on Wikipedia automatically deleted his students’ contributions to a page simply because many edits were coming from the same place and the bots interpreted the mass activity as malicious.[5] By attempting to stop vandalism, the bots reverted the entry to before the students’ had contributed, thereby halting the addition of new information. While there is the opportunity to add less-known material or information on minority groups into Wikipedia entries, the opinions and views of non-scholarly contributors, bots, and the ability of anyone to edit any entry severely limits the website to having a very conservative viewpoint.

     Despite the problems with the ways in which Wikipedia and its contributors decide what input stays and what is taken out, the website and the internet in general remains a popular place for people to find information and therefore impossible for students and professionals alike to ignore. Seligman notes that people cannot receive “professional credit” for their contributions,[6] Graham describes the wariness of students to contribute out of an unwillingness to have their input challenged[7], and Satxon addresses the feeling of “loss of ownership” of one’s work when submitting it to Wikipedia[8]. Is there any motivation for professional historians to be involved in Wikipedia or other websites? Amanda Grace Sikarskie asserts in her article, “Citizen Scholar”, that non-professional history ‘buffs’ “have created a massive, fairly cohesive body of knowledge online”[9] and the ability of non-professionals to contribute to “historical inquiry” strengthens the bond between the public  and professionals, allowing for greater opportunities for conversation .[10] And while Wolff asserts that professionals should not rush to mass-contribute to Wikipedia entries, he also calls for a greater relationship between professional historians and the digital world.[11] There does not seem to be a consensus about how this relationship should be strengthened because there is not any professional incentive to contribute to crowdsourcing websites, but historians should be concerned with how the general public consumes history.

SIDE NOTE:

     One website that I consider to accomplish the requirements that Alex Sayf Cummings and Jonathan Jarret suggest in their article “Only Typing? Informal Writing, Blogging, and the Academy” is Reddit, specifically a subreddit entitled “Ask Historians”. Cummings and Jarret argue that “a well maintained blog has the potential to provide a crowd for crowdsourcing, a forum for validation and advice, and a kind of collegiality that is no less real for being expressed in type” and I believe this webpage to provide all of those attributes.[12] The website Reddit is a huge forum accessed by millions of people around the world every day. This forum is organized into topical categories called subreddits, with every post and comment ruled by voting, with the most popular posts reaching the “front page” or top of the comment section like how google organizes the order of search terms. The “Ask Historians” subreddit is a place for inquiring minds to pose questions about history. Strict rules are placed both on those asking and answering questions, and a good answer is expected to provide sources, be in-depth, contain no personal anecdotes, personal speculations, political agendas, or plagiarism, and those who answer should be aware of historiographical fallacies.[13] Also, every post is actively moderated and any deletions made by moderators can be appealed. There are many professionals actively commenting and moderating the subreddit, and these same people also have run a podcast, a twitter account, as well as a tumblr page. The subreddit allows for curious non-professionals to engage with both professionals and very well read non-professionals in a format that requires legitimate answers and allows for rebuttal and non-conventional viewpoints.

[1] Robert S. Wolff, "The Historian's Craft, Popular Memory, and WIkipedia" in Writing History in The Digital Age, ed. Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, 64-74, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013), 66.

[2] Wolff, 70.

[3] Amanda Seligman, "Teaching IWikipedia I without Apologies", in Writing History in The Digital Age, ed. Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, 121-129, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013), 126.

[4] Martha Saxton, "Wikipedia and Women's History: A Classroom Experience", in Writing History in The Digital Age, ed. Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, 86-93, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013), 89.

[5] Shawn Graham, "The Wikiblitz: A Wikipedia Editing Assignmentt in a First-Year Undergraduate Class", in Writing History in The Digital Age, ed. Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, 75-85, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013), 81.

[6] Seligman, 124.

[7] Graham, 78.

[8] Saxton, 89.

[9] Amanda Grace Sikarskie, "Citizen Scholars: Facebook and the Co-creation of Knowledge", in Writing History in The Digital Age, ed. Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, 216-221, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013), 219.

[10] Sikarskie, 220.

[11] Wolff, 71.

[12] Alex Sayf Cummings and Jonathan Jarett, "Only Typing? Informal Writing, Blogging, and the Acadamy", in Writing History in The Digital Age, ed. Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, 246-258, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013), 253-4.

[13] http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules