GIS and History

While looking at various maps used to present historical data, I found an article that used ones of these maps in a wonderfully visual way. The topic of the article and map is the loss of Native American lands over time. The article can be found here:  http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/06/17/interactive_map_loss_of_indian_land.html.

It references a map created by Claudio Saunt, a historian at the University of Georgia. The map can be found here: http://usg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=eb6ca76e008543a89349ff2517db47e6.

The map uses the ArcGIS mapping tool. From the examples on the University of Georgia website, the ArcGIS mapping tool seems like it has been very well designed for displaying historic data.

My final project is coming along nicely, and I hope to have all of the text and pages completed by tomorrow (Sunday, July 7th).

As a side note, this week I read an article about a new app that is relevant to this course: https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/indigenous-dc-there-s-an-app-for-that-BJ9S8QV6EUKdp0PKYXjSLg/. The app is called "Guide to Indigenous DC" and it is available for free for iPhones. The Android version is in development. The app allows users to take guided or virtual tours of DC with information about Native American historical events and perspectives. I look forward to downloading and using the app the next time I go into DC to explore.

Crowd Sourcing History

I believe that crowd sourcing history is one of the most fascinating aspects of public history, and one that is the most ready for innovation and out-of-the-box thinking.

I've been following NARA's Citizen Archivist project for the past couple of years. This is incredibly important work. Computer programs are able to convert most type-written text into searchable text these days, but most historical documents are difficult for computers to handle. Handwritten text, text that is somewhat blurred from damage to the paper, or other more complicated documents cannot be auto-scanned in this way. There are thousands of people in the world who would love to have the opportunity to volunteer on a worthy project like this, though.

One of the best uses of crowd sourcing history that I have found is for tagging photos. This is a task that is more difficult for computers to do than converting text to searchable text, and it is something that humans can do very quickly and easily. Tagged photos allow researchers to quickly search through large databases to find what they need. I would like to see more projects that partner with descendant communities of the subjects of the photos, such as immigrant communities, indigenous groups, etc, to tag the photos using their cultural and historical knowledge. There are many opportunities for these types of partnerships with museums and archives today.

There are two issues that make it difficult to create these crowd sourcing projects, though. First, most museums and archives do not have the manpower or budget to create high quality scans to upload to the internet to begin these projects. Having worked on digitization projects myself, I know that it takes an incredibly large number of hours to do and the machines are very expensive. The majority of museums and archives in the U.S. have a hard time just cataloging and caring for what they have in their collections. They certainly don't have time to digitize it, as well.

Second, the technology platforms for starting a project like NARA's Citizen Archivist project are difficult to program and out of reach for most museums and archives. If the platform does not run smoothly and the user interface is not intuitive and easy to use, volunteers will not want to work on the project. I did find this platform that is already designed and available at a cost to institutions: https://fromthepage.com/software. However, the cost plus the internal employee manpower needed for these projects still puts this out of reach for most institutions.

When I was looking for other examples of history crowd sourcing for this unit, I came across this lovely Wikipedia page (a very meta example, a crowd-sourced list of crowd sourcing within a crowd-sourced project; and yes, Wikipedia is on the list): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crowdsourcing_projects. It includes many examples of history-focused projects. Some of the ones that interested me were:
-Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection
     Right on the homepage it has a list of the top text correctors, which is a nice way to encourage participation. Here is the link to how to edit the text: https://cambridge.dlconsulting.com/?a=p&p=help&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------#correcttext
-Colored Conventions Transcribe Minutes Project
     This project is not active at the moment, but the work from the project can be seen here: http://coloredconventions.org/transcribe-minutes
-The Historical Marker Database
     https://www.hmdb.org/
-DIY History by the University of Iowa
     http://diyhistory.lib.uiowa.edu/
-Shakespeare's World
     A historical document transcription project focusing on documents from Shakespeare's contemporaries: https://www.shakespearesworld.org/#/

For my final project, I am working to complete all pages and text this week so that next week can solely be for any last edits and revising.

Data Visualization and Draft Final Project

Data visualization can serve as an incredible resource both for teaching about history and for researchers looking for historical trends. It is very hard to process long lists of numbers, such as those seen in census records or other sources of historic data. But once you see the numbers on a graph or chart, they start to make sense.

As a historian, seeing data in graph form can help shape questions for research. For instance, if you look at the population for a certain city and see that there is a drop one decade, or the start of a growth trend, that can raise questions about what caused these changes. Then the population data can be compared with other data sets that the census might give, such as number of people who moved from other locations, education level of the population, average household salary, numbers of people employed in certain professions, etc., to learn more about the historic happenings in that city.

Census data is the easiest to access for populations. However, depending on what you are studying, you can draw from all kinds of data sets. If you are studying Civil War history, it might be interesting to create data visualization of the number of combatants in each battle on each side, number of deaths on each side, and how those numbers changed over the course of the war. Or if you want to look at something like how building a new company headquarters or a transit system in a town impacts the population, you could create a data visualization of the census data from shortly before the event through the decades after. There are many ways in which data visualization can be useful.

My final project website has been published in draft form. It can be found at: https://sms244924.wixsite.com/cherokeecarvings. There is still a lot of work to do. On the artists list page, each of the artists' names will link to their own page on my site with information, photos of the objects, and signatures of the artist. I will also add additional information about the history of the art form. I also need to finish the "Sources" and "To Find Out More" sections on the "About" page. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions. I welcome any feedback. Thank you!

Digital Archives

For the Northern Virginia Digital History Archive, I chose to take photos of the town in which I live, Tysons, VA, because of the fast and remarkable changes that have been occurring in the town over the past few years and will be progressing into the future. With the rise of huge corporate headquarters and government contractors in the town, and then with the expansion of the Silver Line of the WMATA through the town, the town has completely changed over the past few decades.

The process for uploading the photos into the archives was easy. I had no difficulties, and the instructions were very clear.

One of my personal favorite online digital archives is the Find A Grave website (https://www.findagrave.com/). I use it frequently for my personal family history research and for searching for information on Native American artists and craftspeople for my job. It is extremely easy to search for a person, a location, or a specific cemetery. Each photo of a grave site or a person has attribution for who uploaded it. The range of cemeteries and people included is impressive. I have found very few weaknesses. Obviously the viewer cannot expect to have photos of every single grave site or cemetery, but I think anyone searching will be shocked at how often the website will actually have what they are looking for. The only drawback that I have encountered in using it for research is that the information people put on tombstones is not always correct and contradicts what can be found in official records. This is not something that the digital archive can be held accountable for, but it is something that researchers need to keep in mind. The same is true for obituaries and any other self-reported or family-reported sources.

My own final project is progressing. I have set up the basic layout of the website, taken photos of the objects for the exhibit, and conducted the research needed. Wix made it very easy to set up a professional-looking template that I am pleased with. I am mostly working out the best way to direct people through the pages of the website in a way that encourages them to access the background info first and then move into looking at the objects and artists that I've included.

Real or Not?

This week's focus on the dichotomy between real and not real with objects that have been digitized is interesting. I don't think the focus should be on whether one is better/worse, or if one is "real." Instead, like with most forms of technology, historians and museums need to figure out what the best uses of each type of medium are, and how to create "real" experiences for the viewers.

The recorded lecture for this week touched on some of the benefits of a student being able to hold a physical object. It creates a connection with the history. Holding a document that you know that George Washington held (http://catalog.mountvernon.org/digital/collection/p16829coll18/id/595), or even standing in front of it in an exhibit, is very different from reading a digitized version on a screen. This is part of the reason I chose museum work as my profession.

However, there are benefits to the digitized versions that the physical objects cannot match. The lecture said that seeing a huge painting in person is a different experience than seeing it on a small digital screen. But with that digitized image, the viewer can zoom in to see all of the tiny brush strokes (if the image is good enough). They wouldn't be able to get close enough to do this at a museum. I'd say that this brings you closer to being able to understand the workings of the artist than seeing the whole canvas does. Also, the digitized image can be placed side-by-side with any other digitized artwork to compare them, which a visitor obviously can't do in a museum. These experiences of the artwork are still "real," but different. Just like reading an e-book is still reading a book, but with a different type of experience.

On a side note, today so many things are "born digital" that this idea of real and not real becomes irrelevant. Photos, documents, emails - all are only in a digital form. The digital is the real in these cases. 3D printing is also changing this idea of the real and not real in very interesting ways, particularly in museums. But all that a philosophical matter for another day ...

Class Project Proposal and Informational Databases

As I have mentioned in earlier blog posts, I plan for the final project of the Intro to Digital History course to be an online exhibit of woodcarvings from Eastern Band of Cherokee artists. I will be using my own collection of woodcarvings to create this exhibit. Currently I am planning to create a website for this project.

By using only the carvings in my collection, I am limited in the scope of my exhibit. This happens to museum curators when they are creating exhibits, as well. They are limited to the scope of the museum's collection unless they can pursue a loan from other institutions. With those loans they might not have the rights to use photos of the objects in an online exhibit, though. 

For example, Amanda Crowe was the artist who popularized the Eastern Cherokee woodcarving tradition and taught almost all of the Eastern Cherokee artists who carved after her (or taught the people who taught them). Unfortunately I do not have any of her carvings in my collection because they are much too expensive. So, though I will speak about her work throughout the exhibit, I will not be able to include photos of her work. There are a few photos of her available in the public domain through the National Archives that I will probably use.

There has been very little scholarly literature written about these artists, and all of the carvers created their works within the past 50-70 years, so there is not much information in electronic databases that I will be using. Western Carolina University has created a wonderful website with information about Eastern Cherokee artists, and this will be my main source for information for the exhibits. It is called "Cherokee Traditions: From the Hands of Our Elders" (https://www.wcu.edu/library/DigitalCollections/CherokeeTraditions/People/Carvers_AmandaCrowe.html).

Digital Materials

During my time working in museums and libraries, I have digitized many materials. I worked on book scanning at Widener Library at Harvard University. Due to copyright restrictions, there were many rules about how these scans were accessed, the number of users of the scans, the percentage of a book that could be scanned, etc. It was interesting to see how these copyright laws worked in the real world.

In museums I have taken photos of artwork and objects to be published online in web-base catalogs or online exhibits. Research both on the object itself and the museum's rights to the object are required to learn whether the museum can publish these photos online.

I plan for my final project to be an online exhibit of wood carvings made by members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. I own the carvings and will be using my own photos. I am excited to create a publicly accessible exhibit of these objects to share with the wider world. There are many sources online for digital images, including of similar wood carvings. But a web publisher (which includes all people creating web content) must consider copyright issues when sharing or posting digital images, both for ethical and legal reasons. By using my own photos, I can guarantee that the content is legally used.

Copyright and Digital History

Copyright issues are a continually troubling matter for museums and archives when it comes to digitizing collections or giving permission to writers or researchers for use of images. 

Many museums now require donors to give all rights to an object or document to the museum when they donate the object/document. However, this was seldom (if ever) done in the past. Museums and archives have entire collections of materials that they might want to digitize and make available to the public online, but they do not have the right to do so. 

Most of the public does not realize that just because a museum has clear ownership of a photograph or a letter in their collection, that does not necessarily mean they have the right to publish it online. If that photograph or letter is not in the public domain, and the creator of the photograph/letter (or their estate) never gave the rights to it to the museum, it legally cannot be published online. As an interesting coincidence with the material in this class, I actually attended a training on this topic taught by archivists at the National Park Service just a few weeks ago.

Alternatively, because I work for a Federal agency, many of the archives and photographs that I work with are in the public domain or the rights belong to the agency for which the creator works. Any document, photograph, artwork, etc., created by a Federal employee as a part of their employment cannot be personally copyrighted by the creator. 

Museums need to make the issues surrounding copyright law clearer on their websites. This can easily be done on the main page of their online databases and/or the search page for their database. Each object page within the online database could have a small-print warning about the use of images at the bottom of it, or at least a link to a page to contact the museum for permission to use an image.

Websites and Web Presence

Website Design Tools

This week in class we are studying how you create websites and how they should be formatted. I have been in charge of updating and creating web pages for a couple of the nonprofit organizations in the past. For this work, I always used website builder programs that allow the user to design the website without any programming skills. For instance, the one that I used most recently was Wix. Wix is extremely easy to use with very little learning curve for beginners to the platform. They have beautiful templates (https://www.wix.com/website/templates) for the user to start from.

Final Project Tool

For the final project for this class I plan to create an online exhibit. I have not yet decided what web tool I will use to create this exhibit. I have created online exhibits for my current job using Google Arts & Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/bureau-of-indian-affairs. However, only partner museums can upload object photos to that platform to use in exhibits, so it is not an option for the project I am envisioning.

The tool that I choose will decide the format of the exhibit (or vice-versa). Here are a few ideas that I have for the format, the tools that would work with them, and my thoughts about each.

• A slideshow format. This could be done extremely simply with a Google Slides presentation. Or it could be done in a more complicated way, but more reader-friendly and professional, by creating a website in which the reader clicks through a set series of pages. I would appreciate any suggestions of other web tools to use for this format.
• A scroll-down-the-page story format with large photos between short text paragraphs. This would be a simple way to present the information that could be done on just one web page. However, unless done very well, this might not be the best way to capture the viewer's attention to read all the way through the exhibit.
• A full website, like in this example final project provided by the professor: https://sharonea124.wixsite.com/historyknittogether. In the real digital history world, this would be a great way to allow the creator to go as in-depth as they'd like with the history, and for the viewer to do the same with the amount they read. The main page can be used to get the basic information across, and then further pages in the site can give more detailed information about different aspects of the topic.
• A Pinterest board. This seems like the version in which the creator has the least control of how the viewer will take in the information, and the most limiting in terms of the story the creator can tell and the amount of words provided. I will likely not use this one for my project, but it could be a good option for other exhibit projects. It would be especially useful for exhibits in which the most important part is the visual aspect, such as a photograph exhibit.

Using Blogs and Social Media

For this week's assignments we were asked to find examples of blogs that are used in different ways for the study of history. In the lesson, the focus was on the different ways that the blog can be formatted. However, while I was looking at various history blogs, I also picked up on another way to categorize different ways that a blog can be used. This categorization focused on the blog themes, rather than the format. I found two main categories for blog themes:

1) Blogs focused on a specific aspect of history. These subjects include specific time periods, a major historical event, a single country or location, or an aspect of history (such as food history, women's history, etc). Some of these include:
Life in 19th century Paris - https://victorianparis.wordpress.com/
Ancient foods - https://ancientfoods.wordpress.com/
Scandalous women - http://scandalouswoman.blogspot.com/

2) Blogs focused on a specific way of telling history. This includes themes such as "little-known history," "on this day in history," etc. Examples of this style are:
Stuff You Missed in History Class - https://www.missedinhistory.com/
Today in History - https://todayinhistory.blog
BackStory (understanding the history behind today's news) - https://www.backstoryradio.org/blog/

For someone looking to begin a historical-focused blog, the first thing the blog author must do is find a unifying theme that he/she wants to write about. There are many factors that impact what theme a historian might choose. If the historian is creating the blog for a specific organization or publication, the theme will likely be determined by the mission of their employer. For example, if the historian works for a Civil War battlefield, the blog for that battlefield should focus on presenting the history of that site.

If a historian is not creating the blog for an organization, the theme will likely be determined by the historian's own specialty or the audience they are hoping to cultivate. A narrow theme like those in #1 above will have a smaller segment of the population that is interested, but those readers might be more devoted to the subject and likely to keep reading. This type of theme also allows the historian to dive deeper into a particular topic than can be done with a blog that has no particular historical focus.

A broader theme based on a way of telling history, like those in #2 above, is likely to attract a broader audience. The articles in this type of blog tend to be less in-depth and do not require extensive knowledge or research from the author. These types of blogs are great for reaching the broader public with historical knowledge, rather than fellow historians.

The other part of our assignment was to find historians or historical organizations to follow on social media. As a historian and a museum professional, I already follow many historical organizations online. Unfortunately very few of these organizations use their social media as a platform for furthering their educational missions. Many of the organizations I follow use their social media for updates about the organization itself, rather than for educating the public about the history that the organization was founded to disseminate to the public.

The Tenement Museum (https://www.facebook.com/TenementMuseum/) in New York, NY, is one example of a historical organization that does a wonderful job of using their social media to further their educational mission. They post frequently, and almost all of their posts cover themes related to the history that their museum was created to discuss.

Chick History (https://www.facebook.com/chickhistory/) is another organization that does a good job of using their social media to further their educational mission, rather than only posting about the organization itself. Chick History is a non-profit organization that was founded to provide resources for educators wanting to teach women's history. On their social media they balance posting about events that the organization is hosting with sharing interesting articles and news stories about women's history.

Historical Websites

Museums have recently been experimenting with new ways to use their online presence to impart knowledge to their audience. There are many types of information that it are difficult to present in the classic museum setting, particularly about the work that goes on behind the scenes of the museum.

George Washington's Mount Vernon has what I consider the best example of this. They have used their website, YouTube channel, and social media to dig into the process of historical research and present it to the public. Mount Vernon has been conducting major restoration work in the past few years and has used web-based media to show how historians and archaeologists gather the information needed to restore the historic architecture and museum objects.

The website for this project is: https://www.mountvernon.org/preservation/restoration-projects/restoring-mount-vernon/.

The website has been formatted in a way that the viewer can delve as deeply into each aspect as they'd like. The initial website gives an easy to read overview of each aspect of the project. Then readers are invited to explore individual projects within the restoration work. There are videos, photos, information, and even a "terminology" page for definitions of words involved with the project that the viewer might not know. Everything is clear, informative, and easy to navigate.

This sort of on-going or completed restoration work is very hard to present to the public in a traditional museum setting. By using their online resources properly, the Mount Vernon staff is able to teach the public about what Mount Vernon was like in the time of George Washington, and at the same time show how historical research is conducted.

The Virginia Museum of History & Culture has taken a more traditional method of presenting information online. It has taken the exhibition material that you would see in the museum and presented it the same way to a larger audience. For instance, they have created an online exhibit of their main in-person museum exhibit -  The Story of Virginia. The online exhibit can be found at: https://www.virginiahistory.org/what-you-can-see/story-virginia/explore-story-virginia.

The online exhibit exactly mirrors what is in the physical exhibit. There are even 360 degree tours that let you navigate through the actual exhibit. Though little information is added, this method allows the museum to provide the information to a larger number of people who might not be able to travel to the museum. This website can be used in classrooms throughout the state, including in schools that do not have the budget to allow a fieldtrip for their students to visit the exhibit in person.

In Chapter 1 of Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, the authors Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig discuss how professional historians have had a harder time breaking free of the conventions of the history field when presenting history online. These two examples show both how older conventions can be used well to reach a larger audience, and how new methods of presenting history can be used for topics that are difficult to show the public in conventional settings.

Using Digital History to Record Multiple Perspectives

While I was reading the introduction to Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, by Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, I was reminded of an exciting digital history experiment that I learned about a few years ago. While attending the annual conference of the Association of Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums (ATALM) in 2016, I saw a presentation in which the speakers were discussing an interesting use of their online museum object catalog in order to collect and represent the stories and viewpoints of the Native peoples whose ancestors created the objects in their collection. Cohen and Rosenzweig list "interactivity" as one of the seven qualities of digital media that have the potential to positively change how historians operate. Personally, this is the aspect I find has the greatest potential to shift who creates history and want voices are represented in this creation.

In the presentation, museum staff and Tribal members spoke about a project that they worked on to develop an entirely new way of presenting an online museum catalog. They designed the platform from scratch, dividing each object's catalog record into sections in which both Western museum-style information and Tribal knowledge could be displayed. There was space for both the English-language museum title of the object and the Native language word for the object. Sections of each page were devoted to the museum's description of the object and to the Tribal consultants' information for the object. Within the website, Tribal members were encouraged to submit their own information or stories to the museum about how an object was used, corrections to the information in a record, etc. Most exciting to me were stories of Tribal members being able to identify people in photographs that had not previously been identified in the museum's records!

This is an example of one of the possibilities that digital history projects present for historians. However, thought has to be put into these projects for them to be effective. Today, many museums publish their catalog online. This alone does not lead to the creation of new knowledge or participation by the communities represented in the museums' collections. Partnerships have to be created for those communities to feel that their views are appreciated. The layout of the website has to show that the information the community members contribute is valued.

I look forward to using the knowledge presented in this class to think of new methods to present digital history in ways that incorporate the perspectives of individuals who were often left out of the narrative in the past. For my final project I would like to create an online exhibit. To avoid issues with copyright, I am considering using my own Native American object collection as the subject. I have an extensive collection of Eastern Cherokee wood-carved sculptures that would make an interesting informational exhibit.