When You Look Into a Digital Abyss, Does It Also Look Into You?: A Look at Historical Abundance on the Internet

It seems fitting that this blogging assignment on the abundance of materials available on the internet will be my last post of the semester. Assigned in September, it’s taken me nearly four months to get past more than a sketchy outline of what I wanted to discuss in this post. It’s not through lack of trying though – I’ve probably sat down at my computer to write it more than a half dozen times only to find myself quickly distracted by an errant thought or query which led me to an internet search for information which led me to a hyperlink for a related topic which led me to either another hyperlink or another question and so on and so on until the time that I’d set aside for writing that day had run out.

Over the course of the semester I have likened this process of traveling from hyperlink to hyperlink to that of Alice falling down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland – you never know what weird and wonderful things you’ll see during your trip, nor do you end up quite where you expected to when all is said and done. I’m not complaining; I’ve come across hundreds of amazing websites, useful tools, interesting articles and countless pieces of fascinating information this way. In truth, I think that my education and knowledge base are probably significantly broader as a result.

But this “infinite archive,” [1] as the internet has been described in recent years, is something of a double-edged sword, especially for academic and public historians. In the words of Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig [2]:

The digital era seems likely to confront historians—who were more likely in the past to worry about the scarcity of surviving evidence from the past—with a new “problem” of abundance. A much deeper and denser historical record, especially one in digital form, seems like an incredible opportunity and gift. But its overwhelming size means that we will have to spend a lot of time looking at this particular gift horse in the mouth... (2005)

As Cohen and Rosenzweig point out, in the past historians had to build their craft on the sometimes tenuous threads of the surviving evidence, a harsh reality which certainly restricted historical research. I also think that the caveat “that they could get their hands on” needs to be added to the aforementioned quote. Historical records and artifacts did not rest in a single, central and easily accessible location. As a result, historical research was often regional, not necessarily in terms of topic but in terms of sources used to support the arguments of historians. It’s not unreasonable to think that historians in the past could become acquainted with all of the materials available to them on their subject in their area and still be missing that critical document or artifact that had the potential to either cement or refute their claims.

Thankfully, these constraints of time and distance have largely been removed by improvements in technology. With the growth of the internet and the sheer abundance of information that is now available online, academics in even the most remote regions of the world suddenly have access to primary and secondary sources they may have previously been unaware even existed. For instance, the internet and massive digitization efforts have made it possible for students of history, like our own Megan Arnott, to be able to research and write on the Medieval Era without ever having to leave her home in Canada. Further, through email, chat rooms, Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave and any other number of social networking tools, Megan (and historians, in general) are better equipped than ever to quickly and easily communicate and collaborate with colleagues around the world.

Unfortunately, this is where the “‘problem’ of abundance” that Cohen and Rosenzweig speak of comes in. Those same digitization efforts that seem amazing at the outset do have their drawbacks – even as early as 1996, the internet had become “a sprawling megalopolis that no one person could fully explore” [3]. With thousands, if not tens of thousands of new websites added to the internet each day, how does an historian keep up?

The short answer is, we can’t. Instead, we must do as Cohen and Rosenzweig suggest and work, as historians in concert with computer programmers, website designers, researchers, publishers, museum curators, librarians and archivists to create “sophisticated statistical and data mining tools to do some of the looking” for us [2]. And, while the internet currently acts as an amazing archive of human record, no singular database has yet been created in which all historical records within it are stored. Because of this, I believe that it is the job of public historians to support the creation and use of these data mining tools and smaller databases in order to help make as much of the digital record as possible both knowable and useful to academics and the public alike.

Another issue that must be considered in connection with the growing abundance of historical sources on the internet is that of authority within the study of humanities and social sciences. As we discussed in class earlier in the semester, while the constraints of time, distance and availability no doubt frustrated historians in the past, they also helped to make the professionalization of history what it is today. For instance, with the scarcity of information came a tight control on existing intellectual materials; museums, archives, and libraries, especially those housing extremely rare items, were often restricted to only the most respected historians in the field (and largely only those associated with a trusted institution). This resulted in the control of scholarship resting in the hands of the few. It likely also served to privilege certain interpretations of historical events.

But one of the more amazing “gifts” to come out of the abundance of materials on the internet is the growth of democratization of the historical process. As more items that were previously inaccessible to the general public are digitized and compiled in databases like the Internet Archive, more grassroots historians are popping up each day. They read, research and comment on what they see and learn, adding a unique perspective and voice to literature on a variety of historical topics. They now have not only the ability to share their interpretations of historical events, but now they also have the primary and secondary sources to support it.

Don’t get me wrong, even the internet hasn’t been able to overcome the entrenched intellectual hierarchy which privileges the contributions made to the field by professional scholars in universities and other elite institutions [3]. I’m not even arguing that it necessarily should. After all, academic historians have spent years training in proper research methodology and historiography. But neither should the amateur historian be dismissed out of hand. As someone who is untrained in this type of research, I believe that there is a lot that historians can learn from these amateurs about how those outside of the ivory tower interact with history, what they need and want from it, and perhaps where academic research needs to go in order to satisfy the interests of the wider public.

And that’s where I believe public historians come in. I think the task now falls to us to mediate between the two groups (the public and the academics) in order to ensure that the contributions of both sides are acknowledged, valued and made accessible to the other.

Sources:

[1] Turkel, William J. Digital History Hacks: Methodology for the Infinite Archive (2005-08). [Weblog.]

[2] Cohen, Daniel and Roy Rosenzweig, “Web of lies? Historical knowledge on the Internet,” First Monday, Volume 10, Number 12 - 5 December 2005, http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1299/1219.

[3] Cohen, Daniel and Roy Rosenzweig, “Exploring the History Web,” Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving and Presenting to Past on the Web, http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/exploring/1.php.

Reflections on a Semester of Digital History

Growing up, whenever I had a problem with the computer, I would go to my big brother and ask him for help. Far more tech savvy than I, Dave (who later went to school for computer programming) usually had the answer or at least an idea of how to go about finding it. However, in the way of big brothers, he also quickly lost patience in my constant requests for help and eventually resorted to pointing at the DOS manual every time I asked him a question and telling me to figure it out for myself. At 12, 15 and even 18 years-old, I stubbornly refused to go anywhere near those 1000+ pages of incomprehensibly techno-babble. That’s likely how I ended up in the Public History program at UWO faced with a course in Digital History, only passably competent with computers and the internet and with not the slightest idea of how either of them really worked. More importantly, nor did I have the first clue about how I could make either of them work for me in my future career(s) in public history and teaching.

Fortunately, over the course of the semester my understanding of and competence with digital tools has increased enormously. As has my understanding of how these tools can and should be used by academics and public historians to inform and improve upon the practice of history. Through readings, assignments and class discussion, I have had the opportunity to learn skills such as HTML, CSS, website design, image manipulation, data mining, visualization techniques and digital mapping skills. I have reconnected with my love of blogging and resigned myself to using social networking tools (like Twitter) as a method of staying connected with peers and colleagues and as a way to quickly access and/or share information about developments being made in the field. I’ve learned more about copyright than I probably ever needed to know and took part in conversations about the merits of open versus closed sources, augmented versus virtual realities, web 2.0 tools, crowd sourcing, mashups, the Deep Web and dozens of other topics that I didn’t even know existed before I took this course.

But learning is rarely a linear or simple process and along the way I encountered my share of frustration with the course material. Some of what I read flat-out remained outside of my grasp of understanding (like those pesky APIs I just couldn’t visualize). Or, like Braden, some of what I thought I had grasped through readings proved fleeting as I listened to my peers discuss what they had taken away from this or that author’s work. Still, just being exposed to some of that material was learning enough... for now.

Of course, my most constant frustration during the semester was the roadblocks I always seemed to hit when working with the digital tools for one of our mini assignments on the basics of digital history. Even on those tasks that seemed simple at the outset, I knew that there was something there, lurking, lying in wait to trip me up the instant I got smug and thought I had it nailed. But, while understanding why historians should use something is great, actually being able to apply that understanding to the manipulation of the tools for the betterment of the field, is critical. This is why, even though several of these assignments made me want to join Shelagh in throwing my laptop across the room, I applied a considerable amount of what I like to think of as plucky “stickwithitness” (“stickwithitness” being the homely cousin of “truthiness”) and (usually) came out with something concrete to show for my efforts.

Except for this one time...

For good or for bad, I often used writing or editing posts for this blog as a way to put off doing other, more pressing work for one of my classes this semester. I’m not sure what assignment it was that I was putting off, but at the end of October, I suddenly decided that it was the perfect time (read: the worst possible time) to redesign my blog layout. Inspired by a fancier layout used by one of last year’s crop of PH students, Krista McCracken, I decided to hunt up a new, more artistic layout for my blog. The one I eventually settled on was Notepad Chaos (although, as a history nerd, the cheeky ‘40s pinup-inspired Hello Sailor was a close second).

Although it took me the better part of an evening to choose my desired layout (something fun yet reasonably professional), that was the easy part. After downloading the file, I realized that it was zipped and I didn’t have any software (like WinZip) on my computer with which to unzip it. I got that problem squared away and overcame several other minor hurdles to get the layout up on my blog only to discover that I wasn’t able to personalize the darn thing like I could with standard Blogger templates.

Before our Digital History course, this type of obstacle would have been it for me; I didn’t have the tools, knowledge or confidence with which to troubleshoot this type of problem. As a result, my past inclination would have been to throw in the towel and either accept the template as is or revert back to my original Blogger layout. However, after being introduced to the basics of HTML via the W3 School’s HTML Tutorial for our first webpage assignment, I was now able to take that shaky next step.

I viewed the page source for the layout and tried to scan it for code that looked familiar, altering pieces here and there and then previewing the results to see if I’d managed to change the design elements that I was hoping to. The process was one of painstakingly slow trial and error, but I eventually got the superficial stuff (font colours, sizes, date-stamps, etc.) the way I wanted it.

My satisfaction was short-lived, however. I loved the colourful background of the layout, but I wasn’t happy with the 3-Column design. Compared with the 2-Column design that I had previously been using in my blog, I found the new layout crowded and distracting to the reader. I wanted to get rid of that third column (both in terms of its content and the coloured square that differentiated that space from the rest of the page’s background). I also wanted to extend my text boxes so that I could write in lines that were more than 3 inches wide, thus visually shortening my often lengthy blog posts. I struggled with it for longer than I care to admit, fixing the text problem but remaining stumped by the background issue. Eventually I had to admit that I was euchred – I could slap some make-up on her, but I still didn’t have the skill to give the old broad a facelift.

(Note: I’m pretty sure that the piece that I needed to be able to manipulate was in an image file rather than in the HTML code and therefore out of my reach).

In the end, I decided to go back to a clean and simple Blogger template (which is not as easy a process as one might think). At one point I was forced to delete my blog in order to reinstate the original format and then spent the next forty nearly heart-stopping minutes unable to find the file and fearful that I had lost the entire thing. Thankfully, I eventually managed to recover it.

I didn’t relate the above anecdote in order to pat myself on the back but as an attempt to illustrate how useful I feel this Digital History course, especially its more hands on aspects, has been. In just under four months I was able to learn, understand and utilize basic principles of HTML and apply that knowledge within a new context with confidence. Even more surprisingly, I now had not only the skill but also the inclination to troubleshoot in areas I never would have thought myself capable of. It’s these more intangible outcomes that I know I will carry with me into future historical or educational endeavors. And the best (and perhaps most daunting) part is that this is only the beginning; even after taking this class, I have barely scratched the surface of what historians are capable of using the internet for.

One of the things that I will definitely take away from this course is the belief that the internet is not an unknowable and scary place that historians should avoid at all costs. In fact, those that retreat back into their cramped offices filled with dusty books and use computers only as a modernized typewriter on which to peck out their latest article, are doing themselves and their field a disservice. Thankfully, as time passes more and more historians seem to be embracing the internet and everything that one can do with it - the future is looking bright.

My Inner Feminist Hates Jane Austen

I know that as historians we are not supposed to judge the past by the standards of the present, but in this instance, I just can’t help myself; the piece of my personality that’s a little bit feminist hates Jane Austen novels. I think her male characters could benefit from being socked in the jaw a time or two and I dislike her female characters enough to think that they might actually deserve the idiots they end up married to.

This week’s experiment in data mining reminded me of a paper I had to write for my first year English Literature course on the theme of love and marriage in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. After reading the novel, I ended up going through the book page-by-page and physically highlighting all of the sections pertaining to either love or marriage before I began to formulate my arguments and write my essay. Needless to say, it was an extremely tedious process and one I’m not eager to repeat.

But now it seems there’s a simpler way to gather the same information using a free, Canadian-made digital data mining tool. Using a plain text copy of the novel available on the Project Gutenberg website, I copied the URL into TAPoR (Text Analysis Portal for Research)’s Word List and Concordance Tools, and ran three different word/pattern searches for “love,” “marriage” and “money.” I was interested in seeing how many instances of each word were present in the novel, if the words were used in relation to each other, where in the novel the majority of these three words were used, and if that would help me to come to any new conclusions about the themes of the novel.

The first thing I found out from using TAPoR’s Word List Tool was that the word “love” was used 91 times, “marriage” 66 times and “money” only 29 times in Pride and Prejudice. Considering that we know money was a major factor in the marriages of the period in which Jane Austen was writing, these results were somewhat surprising. I then used the Concordance Tool to tell me where and in what context each word was used. “Love” was used most often in the first third of the novel, with a small spike again towards the very end. “Marriage” spikes mildly towards the end of the first third of the book but is practically off the charts in the last quarter of the book when Austen is working to tie all of the relationships between the characters into neat little bows. And “money”, of course, is mentioned most often just as the discussions about marriage start to heat up.

My favourite aspect of the Concordance Tool is that although you can set the program to only return the specific words you are looking for, it also lets one look at their search results in terms of the context of the words, lines, sentences or paragraphs surrounding the specified words. Essentially the tool allows a historian to look at a text both quantitatively and qualitatively.

The one downfall, as Sara mentioned in her blog post about TAPoR, is that the returned search results lack page references. I understand that this is due to the fact that one can currently only use a plain text copy of a text with the TAPoR tools, but it does seem like an aspect of the program that could benefit from some improvements. This improvement would be especially beneficial for those in an academic environment who must be careful to adhere to copyright protections and site all of their sources in footnotes/endnotes and bibliographies.

Putting Out the Welcome Mat

Several months ago I used Google Sites to create a professional webpage for myself and forgot to post the web address (http://sites.google.com/site/catherinecaughell/home). The information on the webpage is pretty bare bones at the moment and it's not exactly what I want stylistically, but it should provide a solid start for any similar effort I make in the future to expand my professional presence on the web.

However, should I decide to move forward on this project and correct some of the things about the website that I'm not happy with, I doubt that I'll be using Google Sites for it. Yes, the process this time around was easier than writing HTML code from scratch, but I found the whole website clunky to work with and their layout options were unforgivably boring. I also found their FAQ/Help section largely unhelpful. I'm usually pretty enthusiastic about Google and all of the techno gadgets that their people come up with, but this time I just found my whole interaction, as well as the end result, underwhelming.

Achieving World Domination One Website at a Time (Or, My Procrastination Destination)

Look at the logo to the right of this sentence and say it with me, now (I know you know what I'm about to say): "Wikipedia is not a reliable source."

How many times have I heard that one from teachers, professors, the media, etc.? In fact, I think I may have even been guilty of saying this to my high school students once or twice during my teaching blocks (all the while feeling hypocritical because I typically use the website on a weekly - if not daily - basis to look up all kinds of trivial information). But the trouble with that attitude is, Wikipedia, as our class has discussed numerous times over the course of the semester, is a decent source of information depending on how one uses it and what they are using it for.

Interestingly, it seems like corporations and organizations might actually be beginning to buy into this new vision of Wikipedia as a "worthy" source of information.

Traditionally, the direction of hyperlinks has flowed from Wikipedia to outside websites like official homepages (for bands, businesses, etc.) or sites recognized as being authorities on some subject or other. But, as I was searching for upcoming concerts for the city of Toronto, I came across the homepage for the revival of Lilith Fair. The "About" section of this page offers a very brief history of the concert series and finishes with "For the complete history of Lilith Fair, please visit our page on Wikipedia" (hyperlinks emphasis is theirs). This is the first time that I've come across an official website that has linked from them to Wikipedia, essentially giving their stamp of approval to the content of the page that bears their name.

I checked to see if maybe the organizers of Lilith Fair had been able to arrange for their page to be closed to outside editors or if they had veto power over the information that was added, but that page doesn't appear to be different from any other page on the collaborative digital encyclopedia project. This development seems to suggest that those in charge of Lilith Fair have faith that the wisdom of crowds will prevail and any errant edits suggesting that Sarah MacLachlan is an alien (or other similar nonsense) will quickly be corrected.

Examples like this give me hope that as Wikipedia becomes more ingrained as part of our regular internet information-finding routine more trustworthy sources of information (e.g. historians or other experts in their fields) will feel compelled to come forward and participate as contributors in order to ensure the accuracy of the information on the site. And if this happens, maybe we can finally put a stop to those people that outright dismiss Wikipedia as a source, while at the same time improving its content.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I made a fantastic discovery yesterday while reading for Digital History (totally unrelated to the subject of the readings -- it's that "rabbit hole syndrome" again): Kindle 2 is now available in Canada!

A wireless reading device from Amazon, the newest incarnation of the Kindle has 3GB of space and can hold up to 1500 books. At the moment the Kindle Store on Amazon.ca has just over 300 000 books available for readers to choose from with more being added every day (a product review of the Kindle 2 written in Feb. 2009 indicated that Amazon had 230 000 titles available at that time. That means that more than 70 000 new titles have been added in just under 10 months! The thought of how many more titles could be available by this time next year is mindboggling.)

What makes the machine even more enticing is that you can download most books wirelessly in less than 60 seconds which makes it both quicker and potentially much more environmentally friendly than the other print-on-demand (POD) options (like Espresso) that are out there. And, unlike Espresso (which is still awesome despite being less than environmentally friendly), Kindles are now readily available to the public in more than 100 countries worldwide. Book prices aren't standardized, but the majority seem to sell for $9.99 which is significantly cheaper than the cost of a new hardcover, and even most paperbacks. Admittedly though, charging $9.99 for a book which no one has to print, package or ship in the traditional sense (and won't ever take up shelf space in a bookstore or warehouse somewhere) is uncomfortably close to highway robbery. On top of that, the $259.00 price tag for the reader makes me hesitate before buying a Kindle. I mean, a person can buy a LOT of paperbacks for $259.00.

That said, Kindle 2.0 has some pretty fun features. At the moment, Amazon is experimenting with a text-to-speech feature which allows any book for which the publishers have given them the audio rights to to be read aloud (in either a male or female voice, depending on what floats your boat). I'm not a fan of audio books, myself, but I can see where this feature might be useful in those situations in which you need your hands free to do other things (driving, cooking, etc). Plus, the Kindle 2 also lets you annotate the books that you’re reading, which is a pretty handy feature to have, especially for anyone using the reading device for work or school purposes. And I know it’s a relatively minor feature, but I also love the dedicated Wikipedia application; just think how helpful it is to have all of that information at your fingertips, wirelessly and without charge, at all times.

The Kindle 2 isn’t without its shortfalls. Customers have complained about numerous aspects of the product from its physical design and font sizes to the compatibility with various wireless service providers and the fact that you can’t arrange your books into organizational folders. Still, that last one can be partially resolved by tagging your books by genre or subject matter.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m still a confirmed “old school” bibliophile – I love the look, the feel, the smell of print books. I cringe when I see dog-eared pages and I’m not above buying a new copy of an old favourite that suffers from torn covers, yellowed pages or water damage. I don’t see the Kindle as signalling the death of the print book, but I do appreciate its portability and sheer storage size. I guess I see the Kindle as complimenting my collection of books, not as a replacement for them.

Note 1: I realize that this post came uncomfortably close to sounding like a cheesy infomercial, but can you really blame me? Kindle = awesome.

Note 2: I also realize that Kindle has competition in the form of a Sony product (the somewhat clumsily named Reader Digital Book). But, from what I can tell, it's currently an inferior product (holds less books, screen size is smaller, no annotation feature, etc.) so I feel safe to reiterate: Kindle = awesome.

Mapping Whitby's Past

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:

View Designated Heritage Structures - Whitby in a larger map

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.

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.

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:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/rose.html

http://roses-at-noon.blogspot.com/

http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/holocaust/articles/sophie-scholl-white-rose.2786.htm

[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.

Museum London Goes Digital (and It's Not On The Web!)

While working on my museum visit report for Museology I stumbled across a special event going on at Museum London this week that I thought might be of interest to some of you considering the content of our Digital History discussions over the past few weeks.

This Thursday, October 22nd at 7:30pm, Museum London is showing RiP! A Remix Manifesto as part of their film series.

The following is taken in its entirety from the Museum London website (although the hyperlink emphasis is my own):

"In RiP! A Remix Manifesto (Brett Gaylor, 2008, 86 min, 14+), Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and breaking down the wall between users and producers. The film's central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. A participatory media experiment, from day one, Brett shares his raw footage at opensourcecinema.org, for anyone to remix. This movie-as-mash-up method allows these remixes to become an integral part of the film."

Admission for the movie is free, but Brett Gaylor has also set up a pay-what-you-want approach for US residents at ripremix.com. It's nice to see that not only is he walking the walk, but he's talking the talk as far as open source and accessibility go.

"You're So Vain" - Google & the Vanity Search

Tim's tweet last week about finding himself during a vanity search sparked my curiosity - what would a similar search for my own name reveal about me?

I should be upfront and tell you that this isn't my first vanity search. I vaguely remember typing my name into the Google search bar a few years ago to see if there were any other "Catherine Caughell"s out there. It turns out that there were only two, both born in the 1800s and they are long since deceased, so it's possible that I'm the only living person with this name.

Anyway, the only results I remember that came up pertaining to me was an OHASSTA reference and a broken link to a project that I did in my OAC chemistry class back in 2002. With that in mind, I was curious to see how my electronic footprint had changed over the last few years.

Here's a list of what comes up when you Google my name now:

• A lesson plan containing a virtual tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau that I created in my first teacher's block and posted on the OHASSTA (Ontario History and Social Sciences Teachers' Association) website two years ago.
• My Blogger User Profile
• Minutes from a GLTBQ Youth Advisory Committee Meeting that I attended as part of my extracurricular responsibilities during my first teaching block. The meeting was part of the research that the school's guidance counselor and myself were doing in consideration of setting up a GLTBQ support group in the high school.
• Entries from my blog The Perpetual Student
• Room and bus confirmation for a cultural excursion I went on in South Korea
• Links to comments I posted on Dana and Tasha's blogs
• my name on a list of PhD and MA students currently enrolled in the History Department at UWO
• Description and results of an experiment I did in high school as part of an ISU
• A thank you for a minor contribution I made to The Brock Press a few years ago

I was completely surprised by all of the new links my search turned up. In the last two years, my presence on the web (or at least in Google's search results) has skyrocketed. Instead of only a few small references buried underneath a mile-long list of unrelated 'Catherine' or 'Caughell' results, I am now the top search result for my name. And thankfully, my increased exposure didn't come about as a result of being tagged in dozens of embarassing Facebook photos; the majority of them are evidence of the electronic footprint that I've been making professionally over the last few years, something that I'd be happy for any employer to see. I look forward to all the ways that the rest of our public history year will allow me to continue to make my mark on the world wide web.

As a side note, it's also interesting to see Google search results at work. Three different types of results came up attached to my blog - my user profile, example blog posts and comments that I have left on other people's blogs. I'm sure that all of these results were broken down into separate elements and pushed forward because Blogger is powered by Google and I used the Google engine for my search. (Running a similar search in the Yahoo! engine, the only blog result that comes up is the main page, itself.)

Wordle Wordle Wordle

It's amazing what you can find and/or learn when you're surfing the web on a whim rather than as a means to an end.

Sandra's mention of Twittersheep today in Digital History got me thinking about Wordle, a similar tool that I discovered a few months ago. Like other word/tag cloud generators, Wordle takes any given text (from a website, a blog or a list you input) and uses it to create a colourful and attractive visual design. The program uses font sizes and colour to show you those words that are used most frequently in the text. Once the inital generation of the image has been done, most programs will allow the user to tweak colour schemes, add or delete words, fiddle with the layout (presenting the words vertically, horizontally, both, or placed randomly), etc. Pretty neat idea, right?

Wanting an excuse to play with this technology, I decided to use the labels that I had attached to my blog entries so that I could see what a more visual representation of The Perpetual Student looked like (the image at the top of this blog is the result). It's amazing to be able to see at a glance the breadth of topics that I've been inspired to blog about as a result of class discussions, course readings, newspaper and magazine articles, etc. It's immediately apparent that my studies this year are concerned with public history, digital history and museums. It's also pretty obvious that I'm a student at UWO and that I have a personal interest in human rights issues and the Holocaust.

I'm curious; what would a similar Wordle look like in another month? Six months? A year? Would it show the same trends or new ones? Would it be an accurate visual representation of my Public History interests, or might it reflect a conscious effort on my part to include new topics in order to diversify my posts?

I also found myself wondering about other ways data clouds could be used. I remember reading a blog post when I first discovered Wordle that suggested that data clouds might be used to visually display the slant that newspapers take on particular topics. For instance, by taking an article from the Globe and Mail and and using Wordle to compare it to coverage of the same event in The Toronto Star, one might be able to visually discern the journalist's or newspaper's bias depending on the words that are given more or less emphasis. Or maybe the image could be used to determine the focus within an event - is it on the people involved? The politics? The geography? Wikipedia also provides an example of a word cloud that used information that might traditionally have been expressed in graph form (in this case population data) and re-imagined it as a cloud, with population densities attached to specific colours within the cluster. And I can easily imagine a student using it to determine the topics a professor has emphasized in their lecture notes (and therefore the material to study for the exam) or a secondary school teacher using it to show the themes of a novel. I suppose the options are endless for a person willing to use a little imagination.

But Wordle is not all moonbeams and roses. Due to their use of Java Script, you aren't able to save your Wordle image to your computer using the obvious cut and paste options. You have to jump through the hoops of using the "Prt Scrn" option, pasting it into a Paint document and editing it from there. (Conveniently, though, you can choose to save your Wordle image to their database and share it with the online community hassle-free)

In my case, however, the print screen option on my computer wasn't playing nice and I was forced to troubleshoot (something that I always resent, and yet feel smug about when I eventually find a method that works). Anyway, I did what I always do, which is to Google it and came up with a handy About.com entry that led me to a new and fascinating discovery - the Vista Snipping Tool. I had no idea I even had a feature like that on my computer. And from the Snipping Tool I was given the option of saving my file as a GIF, a PNG or a JPEG. I had no idea what these acronyms even meant, so I was then forced to go look that up and figure out which would be most useful for my situation.

It was like tumbling down the rabbit hole. What should have been a quick and playful experience turned into hours of playing, troubleshooting, contemplating and blogging. Before I knew it, all those wonderful intensions I had of doing my Museology readings tonight had slipped away. But, as the saying goes, "The More You Know."

Fee-Free Museums a Good Idea?

This past weekend was Thanksgiving, and for me that meant coming home to Whitby to see my family, gorge myself on turkey and mashed potatoes and get my hot little hands on the newest issue of The Beaver.

Although the magazine’s front cover promised me an article about Canadian spies outwitting the Nazis in WWII (always a fun time), it was a smaller article by Christopher Moore entitled “Land of the free museum” that initially caught my attention. Just a few hours before, we’d been discussing the cost of entrance fees in our Museology seminar and Professor Sendzikas had raised the question of how much we were willing to pay to go to a museum. We all answered the question in dollars and cents (in case you’re wondering, my threshold is around $20 before I really start to question my desire), but I think the discussion should have been bigger than that. Perhaps what we really should have been asking was: how much is our history worth to us (metaphorically speaking, that is)?

Moore’s article started out in generally the same way that our class discussion did – in terms of cold, hard, cash. He went through a list of Canadian museums and galleries and quoted the prices for a family of four at each of the institutions; they ranged from the relatively inexpensive ($18 for the National Gallery) to the moderately expensive ($47 for Fort Henry) to the exorbitant ($74 for the ROM... before the addition of any of the “blockbuster” exhibitions).[1] Moore’s next step was to compare our entrance fees to the entrance fees at even more prestigious institutions in the United States and England. I have to admit, I was intrigued. Canada has some amazing museums, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that any of them are in the same league as the Smithsonian or the Tate Modern.

Do you want to take a guess at how much admission costs for a family of four at the Natural History Museum or Museum of American History in Washington, DC? How about at the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum or the British Museum in London, England? You could guess, but you’d probably be wrong. There is no price; admission at all of these truly remarkable museums and galleries are free. [2] That’s right – zip, zero, zilch, nada.

I was floored when I saw these figures (so much so that I went to all of their websites and double-checked Moore’s data. For the record, it’s accurate). How can those museums afford to offer their visitors free admission?! How do they pay their staff, maintain their collections, or acquire new artifacts? The more I thought about it, however, the more I began to wonder how we, as Canadians, can afford not to do the same.

As I see it, high admission fees aren’t really in keeping with the values of our society. With our ridiculously expensive ticket prices, the museums and galleries in Canada have managed to commoditize our history to an extent that puts seeing and experiencing much of it outside the reach of a large number of Canadian citizens. This fact doesn’t sit well with me. Think of the message that this prohibitive pricing is sending to Canada’s poorer sections about their present and future worth in our society. Moore even suggests that museums teach people to appreciate their country and be better citizens. Do our high fees suggest that Canadians only care about middle- and upper-class citizens becoming “good” citizens? Possibly.

What real purpose do high entrance fees serve, anyway?

Although they contribute to the running of museums and galleries, the majority of funding for these institutions comes from government grants and private donations, not their admission fees. And if American and British museums have found a way to make up the shortfall caused by free admission, why can’t we do the same?

Some would argue that paying a higher entrance fee creates a perceived value of the contents of a museum in the mind of its visitors. This view may have some validity, but I would argue that those that visit free museums still appreciate them as repositories of our history and culture. It’s not like anyone walks away from the Smithsonian going, “Man, that sucked. If only they had made me pay to see it....”

Sources:

[1] Moore, Christopher. "Land of the free museum." The Beaver, October-November 2009, 13.
[2] Ibid.

Gimme Your Two Cents... For Every Paragraph I Write

Perhaps one of the more interesting tidbits I picked up from this week’s Digital History readings, (beyond the content itself), was to notice the form and function of the webpage Christopher M. Kelty set up for his book, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. His web pages are essentially broken down into three columns: The actual content of his book on the left, a comments overview that floats with the reader as they scroll down the page in the centre, and his book’s table of contents and a Browse Comments option on the right. I’ve never seen a website designed in quite the same way before, but I think it’s awesome and I think more people should do it.

Although I can appreciate that the parts of the web page combine to make a cohesive whole, it is the centre column, and how Kelty uses it, that I find of critical importance to his site’s success. Kelty has provided a tracking system for comments in the centre column that allows both the author and the reader to see at a glance what areas of the author’s writing are generating the most buzz or the greatest confusion. He does this by providing the means for his readers to comment on his writing on a per paragraph basis. This format not only offers a quick visual breakdown of activity on the site, but it also allows the readers and author to carry on an immediate dialogue about the pressing issues of his piece. By doing so, it engages the reader continually throughout the piece and works to stave off what I’ll call “reader exhaustion.”

This approach to web page design reminds me of our class’ discussion a few weeks ago surrounding the digitization efforts that have been going on that include the ability to cross reference different versions of a text and annotate them directly in front of you on the screen, essentially creating another version of the document with an entirely new meaning. It seems to me that Kelty is doing close to the same thing by using new technologies and design to reach out to his readership and involve them in the process of his thought creation and writing. Interesting.

"Isn't it ironic... don't you think?"

And, I’m back. There seems to be yet another issue being faced by the CMHR in regards to their construction project, and I thought it was interesting.

Despite only breaking ground in April 2009, the construction efforts of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights have not been without (somewhat ironic) controversy. In June, Leigh Syms, a retired archaeologist and former curator for the Manitoba Museum, accused the CMHR of cultural insensitivity surrounding their treatment of First Nations heritage in the area. Apparently the new museum is being located on top of what Mr. Syms considers to be one of the richest deposits of First Nations artifacts in the province and he doesn’t think the museum’s 5-and-a-half month archaeological excavation of the site sufficiently preserved the wealth of artifacts present at the site. [1]

Interestingly, it is one of Antoine Predock’s design features that is providing museum representatives with their strongest defense against Syms’ claims – the entire museum will be built on piles. These piles will raise the majority of the building aboveground, reducing the pressure that will be put on the cultural layers of the site. So, while the remaining artifacts will be rendered inaccessible beneath the building, the theory is that they will not be harmed by the creation of the museum. [2]

I’m curious as to whether this consideration for cultural sensitivity played a part in Predock’s design plans or if his use of piles to preserve the underlying artifacts was just a happy side benefit of a purely cosmetic choice. Nothing in my research suggested deliberate action on his part (then again, nothing suggested that it wasn’t). And, if you consider some of Predock’s other architectural feats (specifically the Logjam House), you can see how he has used natural elements from the building’s surroundings to add to the aesthetic of the structure. So, I guess it’s entirely possible he may have taken the preservation of First Nations heritage into account as he designed the building.

One could hope, anyway.

Sources:

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2009/06/16/mb-museum-artifacts-human-rights.html
[2] Ibid.

The Rise of the "Starchitect"

This week in museology we briefly discussed the idea of the “starchitect” in response to mixed emotions surrounding Daniel Libeskind’s design of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition to the Royal Ontario Museum’s (ROM) original buildings in 2007.

As I understand it, a “starchitect” is an architect whose work has made them a celebrity in their own right (Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry come to mind). The argument that has been made by some is that in seeking to hire these celebrity architects, museums are placing a greater value on the aesthetics of the buildings that house their collections and the publicity resulting from the attachment of a famous name to their project, than they are on the ability of the new space to function as a museum.

Oftentimes these new museums (or additions to existing museums) are visually striking creations of glass and steel, full of clean lines or sinuous curves. As a fan of modern architecture, I have to admit to finding many of these buildings both beautiful and intriguing. And I have been known, on occasion, to take planes, trains and automobiles just to be able to see the outside of one of these buildings. [Note: The photo to the right is one I took of Frank Gehry’s Dancing House in Prague – affectionately nicknamed the “Fred and Ginger Building”]

Unfortunately, architects are not museum workers and their designs often reflect this fact. One of the biggest criticisms of “starchitecture” is that while beautiful (or an eye-sore, depending on your point of view) they fail to take into account the practical day-to-day concerns of museum staff, such as excess natural light, heating and cooling, the feasibility of easily mounting paintings or displaying their artifacts, office space, collections storage, etc.

Considering the brouhaha surrounding The Crystal, I was curious as to the approach that went into choosing the design for the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights that is currently being built in Winnipeg. Upon a little research, I discovered that Antoine Predock’s design was chosen by “an international Architectural Review Committee (ARC) comprising architects, distinguished Canadian public servants and representatives of Friends of Canadian Museum for Human Rights Inc” (none of which are explicitly museum professionals). The objective set by the committee for the architects to guide them in their creations was for them to create “an inspirational building that achieves a complexity relating to the diversity of human experience.” If this was the only criteria that the architects vying for the job were given, then it seems that Predock’s design is a worthy choice – the building certainly looks complicated enough.

But where's the consideration of the building as a museum!? I realize that the CMHR is planning on focusing on technology-based exhibits as opposed to collections-based ones, but where's the consideration of light, or office space or any of the other countless concerns that I, as someone who has never worked in a museum, couldn't possibly fathom?

As the building is not due for completion until 2012, perhaps only time will tell how functional the space is as a museum. I’ll be interested to follow this museum as it develops.

Oh, and if you would like to follow the museum as it develops, be sure to check out the museum's website, where the progress at the construction site is taped 24/7 and then edited down to a 1 minute clip that is posted once a week. It's a bit like watching paint dry at the moment, but it'll be interesting to see the changes made to the site over the next two years.

Source of Quotations:

http://www.dexigner.com/design_news/1739.html

Social Networking Tools: A Career Killer?

During our first Digital History class the question of accuracy was raised in response to Kheraj’s article “Will Twitter Kill My Chance at an Academic Job?” Kheraj’s take on the subject seems to be that despite popular belief, hiring committees in academic institutions are not currently investigating online activity to screen job candidates. That’s excellent news... for those of us that wish to pursue further education or academic jobs after graduation. However, while this may be true for academic positions, it doesn’t necessarily hold up for all job positions out there. And, as my peers and I embark on the Public History program and begin to establish a professional presence online via Blogspot and Twitter, I think it’s reasonable to be concerned about the consequences (mis)using them could potentially have on our career chances outside of academia.

In class, Dana asked the question I think a lot of us were probably thinking, which is “how is it [our use of social networking tools on our personal time] any of their [employers] business?”

The truth is, depending on your job, it is their business. People who hold jobs in positions of public trust like politicians, police officers and teachers are considered to have jobs in which they are never 100 per cent off-duty (forgive me, I forget what the official term for this is). This means that when you act in the public sphere you are responsible not only to yourself but also to your employer for those actions. And, since the internet falls under the category of “public sphere,” it is possible that potential employers may look to your online presence when interviewing you.

In the June 2009 issue of Professionally Speaking (the magazine produced by the professional organization I belong to as an Ontario Certified Teacher), an article entitled “Can We Be Friends? Watching Your Electronic Footprint” addressed these very concerns. One of the many examples in the article describes a school superintendent in Missouri who asks teacher candidates if they have Facebook or MySpace accounts. If the answer is yes, he offers them use of his computer and asks them to bring up their page for him to see.

Bottom line, I don’t think that anyone should shy away from using social networking media for fear that it may damage their employability, but it doesn’t hurt to exercise some caution as you build your online persona(s).

[Note: The photo at the top of this post shows a bulletin board display put together by a class of 3rd graders at Fallingbrook PS in my hometown of Whitby, Ontario. The board was part of their teacher’s efforts to explore the public nature of the internet.]

We Are Not Alone

On a recent trip to Thailand I spotted this advertisement displayed outside of the October 14th/Democracy Monument in Bangkok:

I’m glad to see that other countries and cultures are concerned with some of the same issues that our graduate program will be examining this year. I only wish I could have read the details on the poster so that I’d have an idea of what the guest speakers would be lecturing on.

Virtual(ly) Auschwitz

Two years ago as a student teacher I took my tenth grade Canadian history class on a tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau. We started at the camp’s entrance – one teacher and twenty-eight students staring at a gate with its sly promise that “Work Will Make You Free.” From there we moved into the camp and spent the next hour exploring one of the most horrific examples of man’s inhumanity to man. And, while World War II’s worst extermination camp is located on a completely different continent, my students and I made the trip without ever leaving our school’s computer lab; the tour I took them on was a virtual one.

Although my students enjoyed the lesson and seemed to learn a lot from it, using virtual tours as a method of communicating history to the public is not one without its flaws. As amazing as virtual tours are in their ability to capture the physical environment of a historical site such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, I still find that they are at their most effective when combined with other forms of learning. For instance, in my case the majority of my students had participated in a Jewish Symposium as part of the Niagara District School Board’s Holocaust Education Week efforts before taking the virtual tour of Auschwitz. At the symposium students were treated to a lecture on Jewish resistance to the Holocaust given by a guest speaker from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, they watched a film entitled Paper Clips (2004) and spent the afternoon listening to survivor testimonies. Because of their previous experience at the symposium, students were able to make connections during the virtual tour between what they were seeing and reading on their computer screen and what Bill had told them of his time in Dachau. Without that personal testimonial to draw from, however, the major downfall of virtual tours becomes readily apparent; they often lack the ability to make the sort of impact that really resonates with learners.

We should also be careful to remember that not all virtual tours are created equally. These days, most webmasters have the ability to slap a bunch of photographs together, walk a visitor through them in a particular order and call it a ‘tour’. We’ve all seen it done. In contrast, I’ve found the virtual tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau to be one of the better ones that I’ve taken of a historical site. The site’s creators at Remember.Org have thoughtfully supplemented the 360 degree tour of the physical camp grounds with art work from survivors and links to relevant photographs and information on third party websites. This allows visitors to the site to complete the tour at their own pace, choosing for themselves which aspects of camp life strike a cord and warrant further examination.

It's clear that virtual tours can never replace the experience of actually visiting a historical site like Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, they do provide a unique way for people bound by geographic, monetary or time constraints to interact with history in a modern, meaningful way.

To: Russia. With Love, the American Historical Association

Surprise, surprise! Censorship has once again reared its ugly head in Russia. Fortunately, this time the international historical community isn’t taking it lying down.

In May, the president of the Russian Federation, Dmitrii Medvedev, announced the creation of the Commission to Counteract Attempts at Falsifying History to Damage the Interests of Russia, a 28 member panel charged with investigating historical works and debate and determining whether or not they are harmful to the country’s reputation. Works found to be “unfavorable” to Russia are to be suppressed and those responsible for them may face criminal charges or fines. No specifics were given as to exactly what sort of “falsifications” the commission would be looking into.

Perhaps one of the most troubling aspects of the commission is its makeup – of the 28 members, only 3 are historians (one archivist and 2 researchers). That means that the other 25 people responsible for categorizing historical works as “harmful” or “unfavorable” to Russia are bureaucrats and politicians. I’m sure that I’m not alone in questioning what qualifications those men and women who have been appointed by the government have to judge the merit of historical debates and pass judgement on those that take part in them.

Further, anyone who feels strongly about the freedoms of speech, thought and expression will likely take issue with this blatant attempt at censorship. In fact, historians both in Russia and abroad were quick to express their discontent with the new initiative. In the United States, Arnita Jones, executive director of the American Historical Association (AHA), has responded to the commission’s creation by writing an open letter to President Medvedev. In the letter (a link to which can be found here), she implores the president to reconsider the commission and support free and open debate amongst the members of the historical community. She argues (quite eloquently, I think) that:

"Any limitation on freedom of research or expression, however well intentioned, violates a fundamental principal of scholarship: that the researcher must be able to investigate any aspect of the past and to report without fear what the evidence reveals."

The AHA’s position on Medvedev’s commission is clear – it impedes intellectual freedom, seeks to influence the course of historical research and fosters an environment in which dissent, and therefore debate, are unwelcome. Since all of these conditions are intolerable, the commission must be disbanded.

Personally, I find the most interesting facet of the AHA’s argument against the commission to be one that I had not previously perceived as a connected issue – they have linked their stance on the commission with their stance on criminalizing Holocaust denial. While the AHA vehemently opposes the work of Holocaust deniers (as do I, just for the record), they do support their right to conduct research and enter into scholarly debate on the topic without fear of legal repercussions.

This is a fascinating argument. I have never questioned the fact that the Supreme Court of Canada and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunals have consistently found against Holocaust deniers. In fact, in the past these decisions have made me proud to be a citizen in a country that has taken a stand against what I see to be both ludicrous and hateful claims. However, the more that I consider it, the more I believe that the AHA might have it right. If we, in Canada, make certain interpretations of historical evidence related to the Holocaust illegal, how soon before we make similar restrictions against other topics? How soon before we move from criminalizing only truly hateful claims to the point where we start restricting historical debate on topics that are only mildly distasteful or tarnishing to Canada's reputation? Where do you draw the line? And, perhaps more to the AHA's point -- who should draw that line?

I worry about the work that this commission will do. It seems to me that it’s a pretty slippery slope from attempting to suppress the out-and-out fiction to calling something fiction so that you can get away with suppressing it.