The last few days have been a whirlwind of microfiche, architectural terms and heritage priority ratings as I worked on the heritage designation research project that I am putting together for the London Advisory Committee on Heritage (LACH). As a reward for finishing my Building and Property Evaluation Sheets and my 250-word summary (suitable for use on a historic plaque or in a walking tour pamphlet), I decided to give myself a break from school work.
Of course, 10 minutes into the newest episode of Dexter, my curiosity got the best of me. How many heritage structures had been designated in my own town? How many others had been inventoried as being of historical, architectural or contextual value to my town but had not yet been designated? More importantly, what - if anything - was the Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee (LACAC) Heritage Whitby doing with this information?
The short answer to those questions is this: 55. Roughly 350. And not a whole heck of a lot.
Well, okay. Maybe I'm being a little harsh. LACAC Heritage Whitby does seem to be hard at work doing a number of things in the community. Its members help out with Doors Open Whitby, as well as host displays at a number of community events such as the Brooklin Spring Fair, County Town Carnival, Harbour Days, Harvest Festival, and Heritage Day. Right now they are working on a few more designations, monitoring renovations and alterations to houses that have already been designated and are doing their best to make sure that the planned extension of the 407 into Whitby doesn't irreparably destroy anything worth preserving.
What they don't seem to be doing is making a presence for themselves on the internet in a way that is user friendly or interactive.
One thing that the website does provide is a LACAC Self Guided Walking Tour. Unfortunately, while the PDF file provides the reader with a significant amount of information on local movers and shakers and buildings of historical or architectural importance, it's map leaves a lot to be desired. Faded, crowded and generally difficult to read, I found myself looking at it and thinking: there's got to be a better way.
Eager for an opportunity to experiment with Google Maps and Google Street View, I decided to take the information in LACAC's Heritage Structure Inventory on homes that had already been designated, combine that with the background information provided in the walking tour guide and plot all of this information on a Google Map.
As this was my first time working with Google Maps, I took a few minutes to watch the video tutorial and then I was off and running. The following map is the result of my efforts:
Although the program is so easy a literate toddler could handle it, I encountered some frustration when I realized that I had plotted a point on my map (416 Centre St. S) that was supposed to represent the location of the Centennial Building (c. 1799). Problem was, Google Maps had already integrated this landmark onto the map of my city... and placed it a full inch and a half away from my location marker. It's not a big deal, but I could see how it could be confusing to someone viewing the map. Also, since Google Street View is still in its infancy, it has a number of kinks to work out, especially in terms of accuracy. Oftentimes the program fails to accurately take you to the location of the marker you've clicked on. Other times it takes you to the correct location, but labels the building with an inaccurate address, once again confusing the viewer.
The final result is far from perfect, but I think that it's a pretty decent start. Check it out and tell me what you think.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Digitizing Books Faster Than the Speed of Copyright
The Internet is arguably the greatest thing to happen to reading since the invention of the printing press (I can’t help myself – here I have to give credit to the Koreans, not the Germans, for their invention of the first metal printing press in 1377). While some detractors might rail against the fact that the Internet is changing the way that we read, it’s also true that efforts in digitization have forever changed (in a positive way) how we access that content.Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last seven or eight years, you’re likely aware that websites such as Google Books, the Gutenberg Project and the Infinite Archive (to name but a prominent few) have been working to digitize millions of books that have entered the public domain since they were originally published. Our Digital History assignment for this week is to peruse the books section of the Eaton’s Fall and Winter Catalogue from 1913-1914, choose a half dozen books and attempt track down full online copies of them.
I decided to start my book search with Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty: the autobiography of a horse and Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. My reasons for starting with these books were two-fold: first, I’ve always had a soft spot for classic children’s literature. Secondly, I have a sneaking suspicion that anything in the Western canon that has had its copyright protection expire is going to be relatively easy to find since, according to Choudhury et al., the more widely quoted the text, the more likely it is that a well-transcribed digital version exists.
Sure enough, Google Books returned a search for “Black Beauty” in 0.17 seconds, with the top result a full-view of its 1922 printing. A search for Carroll’s book was similarly simple. The novel was found easily enough in Google Books (as plain text only), but out of curiosity I also typed it into Google’s search engine just to see what I could come up with. Oddly, the second search result (even before that on Google Books) was for a full copy at Literature.org and the third was the complete text as found on Project Gutenberg’s website.
Still within the Western canon, my next book was Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Originally published in 1850, it was a snap to find a copy of an 1869 printing on Google Books. Presumably with a classic such as this, it would be just as easy to find it on a multitude of other websites as well.
After Dickens I decided to branch out and try to find some of the more obscure titles that were advertised in the Eaton’s Catalogue. I’d never heard of Rosa N. Carey’s Not Like Other Girls before, so I tried to look it up on Wikipedia to see if I could find a basic plot outline and original publish date. No such luck. As far as I can tell, Wikipedia doesn’t have this information available. But apparently this book isn’t nearly as obscure as I thought it was as I was able to find copies in Google Books, the Internet Archive and Open Library.
My fifth book was Robinson’s Book of Conundrums, a book that claims it’s a “veritable dispenser of cheerfulness and dispeller of the blues.” As much as I wanted to find this book, I couldn’t have done it if my life depended on it. A number of similarly titled books come up Google Books, but none that fit exactly. The search was made a bit more difficult by the fact that I was only able to make out the author’s last name (Allen) in the Eaton’s catalogue. Alas, maybe my blues just weren’t meant to be dispelled.
My sixth and final foray into the world of online books was to look for Fred T. Hodgson’s Modern Carpentry: A Practical Manual (Vol. 2) (1917). Despite (or maybe because of) being reprinted several times, only a snippet view is available of this book on Google Books. The Internet Archive, on the other hand, had links to two full-length digital copies of the book, one more effective than the other. The first version was plain text only, something that puzzled me a bit considering that a carpentry book without pictures and diagrams seems a little counter intuitive. But I.A. came through in the end and linked me to a page-by-page scanned version of the original text, diagrams and pictures included.
It’s no surprise to anyone who knows me that I love books. I like their look. I like their smell. Call me old-fashioned, but I like physically holding an object as I’m reading and being required to turn pages as I progress. In my day-to-day life I read a lot of content online, but I’m still somewhat of a sceptic when it comes to reading entire books using the Internet. It just doesn’t feel the same.
Having used the Google Books website before, I was relatively familiar with the site’s layout and the fact that their books are page-by-page scans where each page is presented individually to the reader who will then scroll through them “vertically” (for lack of a better word). With all of the money Google has to put into projects such as this, it isn’t surprising that their website has a slick, user-friendly design. That said, I still feel as if there is something missing from the reader’s experience when I view content in this format. Project Gutenberg’s “read online” option is positively stark in comparison to Google Books’ flashier site. It still allows you view pages individually, but its plain text approach is perhaps just a little too plain for my liking; it feels a little soulless.
Open Library, on the other hand, is positively “homey” in comparison to the other two sites. It doesn’t seem to have the same selection as some of the bigger websites in terms of number of titles available, but I enjoyed that they’ve designed their scans to look like real books. Readers get to see two pages presented side-by-side and animation gives the effect that you are flipping through the pages just as you would in a real book. On top of that you still get the visuals like wear and tear, stains on a page and writing in the margins that you would from any well-loved print book. This format was definitely friendlier to this user.
Still, it’s not the same.
And it’s because it’s not the same that I don’t think that ebooks and the digitization of existing books are going to make print books obsolete any time soon. They may eventually, but I doubt that it’s anything I need to be afraid of seeing in my lifetime. But who knows, as quickly as technology is moving, I may be eating my words by 2050. Of course, by then they’d be nothing more than words on a computer screen, so eating them might prove rather difficult.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Searching for Sophie Scholl Online is Like Trying to Find the Smallest Kid in a Game of Hide-and-Go-Seek
For the purpose of our latest Digital History assignment, our class has been asked to write a brief introductory guide to some of the sources and tools that are available online about any subject of our choosing. The only stipulations are that the topic must be something we are personally passionate about, has a historical dimension and can be boiled down to just a handful of essential websites or methods of information trapping.In honour of this year’s Holocaust Education Week theme of defiance and resistance, I decided to focus my Digital History assignment along the same lines. I understand, however, that there’s no possible way to concisely treat the topic of defiance and resistance without doing an injustice to the millions of people affected by the Holocaust and their tens of millions of acts of resistance, both large and small. Instead, I decided to narrow my focus to Sophie Scholl’s participation in the White Rose, a non-violent organization made up of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor, Kurt Huber. In brief, Sophie and her brother, Hans, were caught distributing anti-Nazi leaflets on university property. They, along with their friend, Christoph, were then arrested, tried for treason, found guilty and executed within a week. Soon after, most other members of the student group were arrested, tried and executed. Few survived the war.
Now that we have the basics, it’s time for the research:
Like any good student, I know that I’m not supposed to admit to using Wikipedia as my “go-to” source for quick introductory searches. But I do. Sue me. As long as the person using Wikipedia is aware of its downfalls and refrains from sourcing it (just as you would any other encyclopaedia), I think that it is a pretty good starting point, if for nothing else than for mining the footnotes and helping to develop stronger research questions. With that in mind, you may want to check out the Wikipedia pages for Sophie Scholl and/or The White Rose.
If this were any other research topic I would likely head from Wikipedia to Google to continue my search. However, since this particular search concerns personalities and organizations concerned with the Holocaust, I prefer to make the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website my next visit. Although I was disappointed in the lack of biographical information that the USHMM provided, I was pleased to see that they had included a list of print resources to consult at a later time, links to FAQs about the group, a short memoir by one of the surviving members (which I will get to in just a moment) and educational resources about resistance during the Holocaust. The general affect of the USHMM site is to give a reader an inclination as to how Sophie and the other members of the White Rose fit into the narrative of the Second World War as a whole.
The aforementioned memoir by one of the few surviving members of the group, Dr. George J. Wittenstein, is reached via The History Place website (specifically its Points of View section). This source offers the reader a unique opportunity to see the effect that time has had on the recollections of someone who was in the thick of things and somehow managed to escape with their life. In his memoir Wittenstein introduces many of the key members of the White Rose, discusses the leaflets written by Hans Scholl, Alex Schmorell and Kurt Huber, the trials and the aftermath. He also includes selections from the leaflets, as well as partial trial transcripts from their sentencings.
The Shoah Education Project is also a helpful site when looking for unique information on the White Rose that I haven’t found anywhere else on the web. That is, Dr. Elizabeth Kirkley Best provides a list of the members of the White Rose and what became of them. It is interesting to see from the chart the different ways that men and women were charged for their involvement in the same organization.
The last website that I would like to suggest anyone interested in Sophie Scholl or the White Rose organization look up is the one run by The Holocaust Research Project. This website has a number of pages devoted to Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, but its biggest triumph is that it has translations for all six leaflets in their archives. That one’s a gem.
In addition to my usual search techniques, I thought I would try a few different avenues this time around and see if any of them were effective for the purposes of this assignment. Turns out, they’re largely not.
The first thing I tried was imputing my search terms into Google Search and then attempting to use the Google Wonder Wheel to see what, if any, different search results it would lead me to. I use the word “attempt” because as soon as I would click on the Wonder Wheel option, Google would bounce me out of the specialty search and back onto their main page. Strike one.
Next I tried image searching via Flickr (instead of using my old, reliable Google Image Search). and found that this worked with mediocre results – I found some images, but it was inefficient, largely disorganized and the results were underwhelming in terms of numbers. In short, my results using Google Image Search were both faster and better. Strike two.
Out of sheer curiosity, I then tried Google Timelines for Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl and the White Rose to see if I could unearth any new information. All of the timelines were sparse and largely unhelpful. Strike Two... and a half.
I also thought it might be neat to search for “Sophie Scholl” in different blog search engines, so I put the term into Google Blogs and into IceRocket’s blog section. I got very different hits on both search engines, but neither one was very satisfactory. With IceRocket I was bombarded with foreign language web pages. After I waded through the majority of those and through the Google Blogs results, I discover that the majority of people that are blogging about Sophie Scholl are doing so in response to the movie that was released in 2007 entitled Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Strike three.
I suppose I can admit now that this movie was actually my introduction to Sophie Scholl. After watching the movie I wanted to know more about this girl who had acted so courageously in the face of such strong opposition and such dire consequences. But then, just as now, it was extremely difficult to find a substantial amount of information on this small group of German students and their most famous female member.
Additional sources you may be interested in:
[Note: The picture seen above is of one of the White Rose monuments in Munich, Germany. This one is located in front of the Bavarian Government building and includes the text one one of the group's anti-war leaflets. The photo was taken in May 2007].
Tags: Sophie Scholl, The White Rose, WWII, Holocaust
Remembering the Shoah
Yesterday marked the beginning of the 29th Annual Holocaust Education Week in Toronto. From November 1st until November 11th, members of the Holocaust Centre of Toronto and affiliated Jewish organizations are hosting over 170 programs designed to honour the memory of those murdered in the Holocaust and to celebrate the survival of those who were not. The lectures, operas, films and exhibitions offer a perfect opportunity for the Jewish community to educate and promote understanding and remembrance of this tragic event among Jewish and non-Jewish community members alike.While I think that the majority of the programming is worthwhile attending, I find myself especially drawn to the “My Personal Testimony” segments that run several times a day at different locations around the city. Each testimonial features a survivor of the Holocaust recounting their personal experiences from the war. The stories cover a range of experiences, from living in hiding, to fighting with the partisans in the forest, to struggling to survive in ghettos and concentration camps, during deportations and on death marches. They cover liberation, the aftermath and the decisions made by these survivors to immigrate to Canada.
I think that this is part of the magic of oral history; each testimonial is unique, just as each survivor is unique, and yet their accounts combine together to create a single narrative with common elements, themes and outcomes. During Holocaust Education Week dozens of people will come together to say, “This is who I am. This is what I did. This is what was done to me. This is how I survived. This is how I triumphed.” But what they will come away with is a communal narrative that says, “This is who we are. This is what we did. This is what was done to us. This is how we survived. This is how we triumphed.”
I believe that the survivors of the Holocaust, just as veterans of a war, have a responsibility to recount their stories for the generations that come after them. Their testimony is their opportunity to have a voice, to be understood, to understand. In return, we, as their audience, have the privilege of bearing witness to their stories, gaining insight from them and taking the next step to preserving their memory.
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