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.
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Sunday, May 26, 2019
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.
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.
Friday, May 24, 2019
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.
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.
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