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.