Humility in History

Reflections on Public Reflection

2009-07-19T13:42:00.003-04:00

It has been almost a year since I last published a post on either of my blogs and nearly eighteen months since I last drafted a post. While I have been reflecting on my experiences as an educator in New Brunswick during the intervening time, that reflection has often occurred "on the fly" between classes or in conversation with colleagues.

Public reflection through a blogging medium has been productive in as much as it has helped me to organize my thoughts and present ideas in a more concise fashion than the essays I wrote for the majority of my university career. Upon entering the arena of public education, the immediacy of learning moments coming from a failed lesson or discussion with a mentor proved much more useful to a new educator trying to balance lesson planning, classroom management, the challenges of teaching to all levels of learners, and have some small form of a life outside of work.

The posts in my blogs are evidence of some of the challenges I grappled with as a student of History and Education during the last years of my own university education; however, these blogs in their present form do not seem suitable for reflection on my professional practice now that I have left the safe confines of the university campus. I imagine that successful reflection in a web-based medium would more likely come from sharing projects posted in a digital portfolio for review and discussion with like-minded colleagues. In the future, I hope that I can be a participating member of such a community.

For the time being, it seems a responsible choice to prioritize my professional responsibilities and the knowledge to be gained from mentors and colleagues above the creation of an intentional, thoughtful online presence. Though control of one's online presence will doubtless continue to be of increasing important in the coming years, I must content myself with the initials forays into such a goal that my blogs represent.

Thank you for reading.

Inshallah and the Unfettered Place

2008-08-03T07:58:00.003-04:00

“I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow!”

“Inshallah.” (If God wills it)

“Inshallah (God willing) she will grow up to be a strong and intelligent young woman.”

“He was hit by the car crossing the street.”

“Inshallah.” (God willed it)

Syrians with whom I conversed often referred to the will of God while I was teaching in Aleppo, but this ubiquitous philosophy was driven home when I explored my first castle on the Week Without Walls trip with the Grade 6 and 7 students I had been teaching for the last three weeks. The absence of railings.

In Canada, it seems that every historical site and tourist attraction is bound by railings or barriers intended to keep unobservant individuals from plummeting to their doom, being ground to bits, or otherwise being seriously wounded. In our litigious society, parties that manage spaces which are open to the public must go to great lengths to ensure that those individuals with a chronic lack of common sense have no opportunity to injure themselves.

While I do not deny that a teacher would likely experience a certain degree of comfort in the knowledge that a waist-high railing will to a certain extent deter his 11-year old charges from running headlong off a castle tower, the absence of typical safety barriers did give wider scope to one’s historical imagination. It was easier to describe the purpose of castle architecture and paint a picture of a vibrant castle community existing eight hundred years ago when there were no recently-installed barriers to ignore. As was the case at the other castles I would visit, the only barriers to sections of the castle or the hard ground below at Qalat Salah al-Din were heavy blocks of rock from fallen walls that had been moved to a new location. These barriers rarely reached knee-height. Thank goodness we did a good job of impressing upon our students the importance of moving carefully along stairways and castle walls.

If somebody was to be injured at a castle as a result of leaning out too far to take a picture or losing his or her balance on a narrow and eroded set of stairs, this would simply be a matter of God’s will at work according to the dominant set of beliefs. While this is doubtless of little comfort to the victim of an accident, on those days when there are no accidents at a castle, (and I presume that these days vastly outnumber the days when there is an accident) visitors are treated to a historic place less fettered by modern influences and additions. Each of the castles has suffered deterioration and probably lost a great deal of the grandeur that accompanied lit hallways, constant habitation, and regular upkeep; however, visitors today to the castles today have access to spaces and views shared by people who lived almost a century before.

A Historian's Dream

2008-06-18T11:42:00.009-04:00

One of the most wonderful parts about living and teaching in Syria was that I had so much time to reflect upon my experiences. As soon as I returned to Canada, that luxury seemed to disappear again. It is my intention in the next few days to reflect both upon my last week in Syria and the trip on the whole. I hope that my long absence will be excused and that the following pictures will act as an exciting teaser for the thoughts to come.

Above: Back on the Damascus Highway...

Below: The road we drove down in the school's mini-buses to get to our first castle

Yes, we did have to drive up the other side of the valley.

And yes, every single corner was terrifying.

Above: Standing in the dry moat of Salah al-Din's Citadel. The moat was mostly dug out of the bare rock - only the top-most part of the wall is actually constructed of brick and mortar.
Below: Ryan explains as the students get ready to look at their first castle. Even for a number of the Syrian students, it was the first time visiting these historic sites!

Above: Two deep valleys form natural impediments to any invader who might attempt to take Salah al-Din's Citadel.
Below: Students explore the most fortified side of Marqab, a Crusader castle overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

Above: The brick and mortar of Marqab.

Below: Students prepare to explore the enormous Krak de Chevalier.

Above: This space was home to some 250 horses when Krak de Chevaliers was garrisoned by the Knights Hospitaliers.
Below: Michael demonstrates how the sunbeams coming from small openings in the ceiling were manipulated to light an entire underground room.
Far Below: Looking past the solid walls of the Krak.

Historical Tourism*

2008-03-25T10:24:00.005-04:00

(Above: A naive and happy tourist in the Syrian desert;
Below: The closest I'll ever get to Iraq)

*Alternative titles for this post: How I Was Scammed in Palmyra; The Longest Post I Have Written in a Long Time; Why Ruins Are Less Interesting Than Real Cities; Our Unnecessarily High Tolerance for Big, Heavy Blocks of Old, Carved Rock; The Relative Merits and Detractors of Camels as a Mode of Transportation; Proof That Reflection is Preferable to Narratives of My Experiences in Syria.

When discussing housing for students in southern Ontario, my dad often jokingly claims he would be very happy as a slumlord to charge inflated prices for lousy apartments. Well dad, if you want to be a slumlord and laugh all the way to the bank on a monthly basis, then I want to work in a tourist town selling overpriced novelties to suckers on a daily basis.

These are the words of an embittered tourist. The short story: I paid the equivalent of one hundred Canadian dollars for a four-hour camel ride in a country where a fifteen-minute taxi ride costs fifty cents and a shwarma is under a buck.

It was only at 8 am on the first day of my five-day weekend that I received a call from a fellow Canadian teacher asking me if I wanted to accompany him and his wife on a three-day trip to Palmyra, which Lonely Planet calls “Syria’s prime attraction and one of the world’s most splendid historical sites.” Since my weekend plans had been fluid to begin with, it was a matter of minutes before I was packing my bags for a little road trip into the Syrian desert. We arrived in Palmyra after a four-hour drive and just in time to view the ruins as the sun was setting. Before we sat down to dinner, our innkeeper, who ran a somewhat questionable establishment, introduced us to a fellow who would take willing tourists on a camel ride past the ruins and into the desert to have breakfast with a Bedouin family before returning via the oasis beside which Palmyra is situated. We paid S£3000 ($60 CAN) in advance, and our inquiries as to the remaining payment were met with the response “Just a little bit more.”

Why should I have worried? I was traveling with a couple who, despite only having lived in Syria for six months, knew their way around Aleppo better than many of the Syrian teachers at the school in which I am teaching; furthermore, they proved themselves effective bargainers as we went through the different shops that evening. Both John and Wain (Yep, that’s her name. It was a constant struggle to avoid making John Wayne comments during our time together.) effectively and repeatedly brought venders down to sixty, fifty, and even forty percent of the original asking price through effective haggling. If they were not worried about having a price nailed down, who was I to argue?

(Our fearless leader, aka An accomplice in the scam)

As I discovered at 5 am the following morning, camels are a comfortable mode of transportation for approximately fifteen minutes, and this quantity diminishes as the camel’s speed increases. We rode out into the freezing desert as the sun rose behind our backs, but since I was more concerned with staying warm and atop my hump-backed steed, it proved particularly difficult to turn around and capture the ruins against the first light of the day. After riding for a little less than two hours, we broke our fast with a meal of flat bread, olives, pickled peppers, and apricot jam in the tent of a Bedouin family. While I definitely questioned whether invading this family’s home was a responsible choice or not, I was grateful for their hospitality and the opportunity to stretch my legs by playing some soccer with the two boys living in this particular tent. I even got a laugh out of the entire family when I was putting my kufeyya back on. Upon returning to our camels, our guide led us through more of the desert and then into the oasis. It was beautiful but way, way, WAY too long a camel ride. Of course, when we finally arrived at our stopping point and John informed me that we still needed to pay another S£7000 ($140), I knew two things: that we had indeed been taken for a ride in more ways than one, and that Palmyra would never be a place fondly-remembered.

(Top: Two soccer-playing champions;
Middle: Worst form of transportation ever;
Bottom: Okay - so you can get some pretty impressive pictures)

Palmyra reminds me of Niagara Falls. In both instances, I navigated though dozens of tourist traps, souvenir shops, and over-priced hotels to arrive at the attraction I had actually come to see, and in both instances I found myself wondering if these sites garnered more praise and hype than they actually deserved. The Falls are impressive, but I would not return more times than absolutely necessary. The same is true with Palmyra – I would not try convincing somebody to visit this ancient city unless she or he was going to be in Syria for more than five days. Don’t get me wrong – there is something incredible about standing in the ruins of a city predating the Roman Empire, but… what is left of that city is only the briefest outline of what once existed. A good deal of what is standing has been roughly re-cobbled together, and in the absence of reliable interpretation, most visitors will take away little more than some neat pictures, a booklet on the history of the site, and an over-priced necklace (unless they bargained successfully).

(Tourists are often followed right to their car by locals trying to sell a variety of trinkets)

I arrived back in Aleppo in the afternoon on Good Friday just in time to get changed, start a load of laundry, ride a taxi downtown (all by myself), and meet another teacher to watch the Passion processions taking place that afternoon in the Armenian Quarter. The Roman Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, and Maronite Christian churches hold afternoon services on Good Friday, and each church, led by a small band, servers, and the local bishop, process with a shrouded image of Christ through the square into which each church building faces. Afterwards, we followed the tradition of visiting and saying a brief prayer at seven different churches located in the vicinity.

(Top and Middle: Two pictures of the Roman Catholic scouts playing for their procession into the square;
Bottom: Cross-bearers, servers, and the bishop, who is near the back-right)

When I was having dinner with yet another Syrian teacher (you can tell that I’m being looked after while I am here) that same evening, we ended up talking about how being present at the Passion processions, along with hundreds of other Syrians and Armenians who lived in Aleppo, was so much more meaningful and tangible for me as a visitor in comparison to my trip to Palmyra. Maria and I agreed that Syria comes alive through its people. The history of the country would complement and inform my experience, but it was more important to interact with Syrians or at least people-watch to gain a more genuine and real-life appreciation of the country. This conclusion leads me to think that public historians might want to spend more effort fostering authentic encounters between visitors and host residents rather than only mediating the visitor’s experience through a historical trip and a camel ride. (This is not to say that somebody has given extensive thought to a tourist’s experience of Palmyra but rather that place and history are only two of the many facets by which it is possible to understand a culture)

As a combined result of my own weariness, my “ruin-fatigue,” and my conversation with Maria, I did a very unhistorical thing and decided to cancel a visit planned for the following day to Apamea and a museum filled with ancient mosaics. Instead, for the next two days I slept in a little, finished my laundry, and went on some long walks through Aleppo. I may not be as good as John and Wain at making friends wherever I go in spite of language barriers, but I nevertheless can take pride in finding my way home after getting a little lost and buying groceries all by myself!

I am still incredibly excited to visit the Crusader castles next week. These fortresses, which are more complete than the ruins of Palmyra, will without a doubt be a wonder to behold. Until that time though, I believe that I will very content encountering the living history of the souqs in Aleppo and the people of Syria more generally.

(Note: I owe my readers an apology for both the length of the above post and for the number of posts appearing all at once. The amount of free time has enabled me to reflect copiously upon my experiences in Syria thus far, but the opportunities that I have to actually get my thoughts online are limited. It is likely that few will even read this footnote after having only scanned over the above post. This is the game that I am playing here. Sorry!)

Re-Thinking Syria: Clothing

2008-03-25T10:14:00.003-04:00

When I was flipping through my Lonely Planet book for the Middle East, I came across a passage that essentially read: “Take a look around – almost all men in Syria wear pants, regardless of the weather.” When I began thinking about the Syrians I had seen on the street, I realized that the majority wear not only pants (rather than the shorts that we Canadians sport once the thermometer hits a balmy nineteen degrees and the sun shines brightly again) but also usually have long sleeves on. I had been considering taking shorts to wear when visiting Palmyra, which is in the middle of the Syrian desert, but I decided to stick to shorts after re-reading this passage.

Even after being in Syria for two weeks and seeing otherwise, two general stereotypes still come to mind when I first consider what people wear in this country: dusty clothing and women wearing the hejab. If I think about pictures that I have seen from the Middle East, the people photographed often look like they spent their morning rolling in dust. The hejab, a scarf worn by many Muslim women, is well-known to many Canadians thanks to the coverage that it gets in the media.

I hope it is not too surprising to read that Syrian clothing reflects the diversity of ethnicity, religion, and wealth that exists within the country. While it is true that in most neighbourhoods of Aleppo, one can hardly walk two blocks without seeing a woman who is wearing black and fully covered from head to toe, one is far more likely to encounter Muslim women wearing the hejab along with a long dress and jacket. When I visit the Armenian quarter of Aleppo, I come across Western hairstyles, make-up, and clothing. When considering the men of Aleppo, the vast majority are wearing Western-style clothing. Jeans and long-sleeve shirts, sweaters, or blazers are the norm for both Muslim and Christian men. There are some older men who I have seen wearing full-length robes, but these have been made to match the coats the men are wearing, and to my eyes go together as naturally as the jacket and pants of a suit in Canada. Bedouin men wearing the kufeyya are essentially the only people sporting any sort of headwear, so I know that I will probably stick out as a tourist whenever I wear a hat!

The quality of clothing varies among people as well. Some people are wearing clothes that are faded, worn, or look slightly out of date, while others are clothed in fine fabrics with bright colours, brand names, and intricate designs. I have seen a number of people who do look… well… dusty, but to be perfectly honest, this is a dusty city! Even after a rainfall there is a haze from both the pollution and dust in the air, and people cannot hang their clothes to dry outside because of the layer of dust that will accumulate over the course of a sunny, windy afternoon!

I usually wear pants and a short-sleeve button-up shirt to school, but I have been switching into shorts at home if I know that I am not going out again in the evening. I cannot say that I particularly enjoy walking around wearing pants when the sun is shining and feels like 25°C outside, but suppose one would get used to the habit after suffering through a summer here! Thank goodness I am here in the spring!!

The Hash

2008-03-18T13:22:00.003-04:00

This past weekend I became a hasher. No, this is not some bizarre, drug-induced psychedelic experience but rather a run through the ruggedly beautiful Syrian countryside. Of course, it should be noted that hashers are always proud to say that they are a drinking club with a running problem!

(Baptized a hasher)

I will leave Wikipedia to describe the history and essentials of hashing, and simply begin by saying that our course started about a half-hour’s drive out of Aleppo. The course was marked with blue chalk powder that took us over five kilometers of stony hills, through abandoned towns, under the shade of well-tended olive trees, and up to the walls of a pilgrimage point dedicated to St. Simeon. It was an absolutely beautiful day – the mountains of southeastern Turkey were visible in the distance - and a wonderful way to escape the noise and smog of the city. Throughout the day, I got a good sense of how life worked in the villages of Syria: I maneuvered in between grazing cattle, saw families out for picnics, and saw the challenging farming conditions from which many Syrians must make their living. Contemporary Syrians can in no way be blamed for the erosion of topsoil due to thousands of years of agricultural mismanagement. Cattle and sheep can graze among the rocks, but a Herculean effort would be required to remove all the rocks that have been laid bare by over-farming!

I could not help but feel that I was both an observer and participant of history. When visiting the former home of St. Simeon, a hermit who dispensed advice from atop the high post that he chained himself for over thirty years, it was amazing to imagine how the hilltop must have been transformed over the years from an isolated dwelling to a popular pilgrimage point to a large chapel and later to a ruin of that chapel. I have a lot to look forward to when I visit the castles in two weeks! Soon after making my way past the ruins of St. Simeon, I was initiated into the worldwide community of hashers. After wandering over hills under the bright midday sun, I was baptized with blue chalk and beer alongside other hash initiates and then downed a Heineken while veteran hashers cheered us to drink it or pour it on our head. (Fear not friends – the cool and refreshing beverage was in no way wasted on the colourful crown of my head!) It was a bit of a cultish experience, but it is funny to think that this tradition was started by a bunch of British diplomats living in Malaysia in the 1930s!

With tongue slightly in cheek, I cannot help but wonder whether this is what Public History ought to resemble: experiencing the modern and ancient history of a country by spending the day outside, exploring farmland and historical ruins, and winding down with a some laughs and a few drinks. (My professors: “Great Jeremy – bribe them into enjoying history with beer.”) Well, all I can say is we would certainly be making steps towards appealing to and engaging a new and broad audience!

(In the midst of the ruins at St. Simeon)

Re-Thinking Syria I: Weather

2008-03-17T09:25:00.001-04:00

While I prefer to capture moments of my trip rather than give a simple narrative of my days in Aleppo, I can appreciate that some of my readers might be looking for something that is a little more linear and gives a better taste of life in the Middle East. Allow me to inaugurate the "Re-Thinking Syria" series of posts, which should satisfy the aforementioned needs while also allowing me to provide a little critical analysis of some the assumptions people hold regarding Syria and the Middle East.

The last few days in Syria have been cold. I may not have been putting on a toque and snowsuit to go outside, but as I write this wearing socks, pants and three shirts, I am strongly considering putting on my rain jacket to keep a little bit warmer. That's right – my rain jacket, which I brought because it has been raining so hard today that water was seeping through the windows and doors of the balcony and onto the tile floor of my bedroom. The words "weather" and "Syria" probably do not invoke images of chilly weather, but there you have it – the weather here in Aleppo is comparable to a cold and rainy October day in southern Ontario.

Of course, I should not complain too much. After all, the latter part of this past week has been sunny and breezy with highs averaging around sixteen to twenty degrees Celsius. I have not put on shorts, but it has certainly been comfortable to wear short-sleeves in the evenings!

So have a little pity for me – it's freezing here!

First Impressions

2008-03-14T09:49:00.004-04:00

When the plane touched down in Aleppo and I made my way up the boarding ramp, I was seized by a fit of chills. I do not know whether they were caused by my tiredness, the cool morning breeze that was coming through open doors in the airport, or the anticipation that I was feeling as I stepped onto Syrian soil. I had arrived in Aleppo.

Aleppo International Airport is about the same size as Windsor Airport, but the similarities end there. The fields surrounding the tarmac are more rocky than grassy, signs inside the terminal are written in both English and Arabic, and Middle Eastern music plays over the loudspeakers. The airport was relatively deserted because it was 6:00 am local time. I had only to clear customs, pick up my bags, and meet a representative from my host school.

One of the first things that I was told by one of my hosts at the school was that Syria seems stuck in the 1950s. Whether or not this observation is true, it is undeniable that the history in this country comes in tangible and intertwined layers. During my time walking or driving though Aleppo, I have seen (and dodged) cars in various states of repair from around the world that are brand-new or fifty years old. I have visited beautiful, modern apartments and driven past homes that seem like they are half-falling apart. I have bought Kellogg's Corn Flakes at a grocery store and purchased vegetables off the street. I can sit at a computer to type an email and hear the call to prayer from at least three different nearby mosques – and I can tell you that that was a surreal experience when I was experiencing severe jetlag my first day here! It would be unfair of me to describe Syria as being stuck in the past though because such a description would categorize and pigeon-hole a country that is clearly in the midst of change. In the last week, I have encountered and met Syrians who are generous and friendly. People might be aggressive on the road – the meanest, most aggressive driver from Toronto or Boston (the two cities in which I have seen the craziest drivers) would not stand a chance on the streets of Aleppo – but nobody I have spoken with, whether from Syria or abroad, has spoken of concern for their general safety.

(The current and former presidents of Syria - Their faces are everywhere in the city)

Many people have asked me if Syria is what I expected. Because I tried to purge generalizations from my mind, I really did not know what to expect. At the same time, I have been very happy to discover that kids are still kids here in Syria and that the sense of history, tradition, dynamism, and community are all so powerful and ubiquitous in Aleppo.

(Banners in one of Aleppo's many narrow streets)

To Syria

2008-03-03T20:32:00.004-05:00

In September, it was a possibility: “Yeah, Syria is one of the places I’m thinking about.”
When December arrived, it was a choice: “I’m hoping everything works to go to Syria.”
By January, the wheels were in motion: “So I’ve got my ticket to go to Syria!”
In February, I was assured: “I think you will be pleasantly surprised about traveling to Syria.”
This past weekend, I began saying adieu: “Check out my blogs while I’m in Syria!”

Being a somewhat less eloquent writer than some others, I find myself at a loss for the words to appropriately describe my intentions at the outset of my visit to Syria. The official reason for this trip is to gain experience teaching and learning in an international context. I have the incredible opportunity to introduce students the history of the Crusades and accompany these young individuals on trips to a number of the castles that were built during this period of history. As a historian, the prospect of traveling through one of the cradles of civilization where innumerable historic figures lived, fought, and traveled even now leaves me awe-struck. While I hope that friends will never peg me as merely the guy who will always be happy as long as you find him a museum, historical site, or dusty manuscript, I simply cannot wait to find myself surrounded by the walls of castles that once sheltered Salah al-Din and his armies or crusading knights from Europe.

To understand my most deep and fundamental desire to visit Syria though, my reader needs only to recall recent history, hysteria, and horrors. Despite its rich past, its cultural diversity, and its devotion to religious values, the Middle East has been characterized in black-and-white images as a haven for terror, a region of instability and intolerance, and a breeding ground for religious fundamentalism. This is simply an unfair characterization of a region inhabited by hundreds of millions of people. If it is the historian’s job to present and analyze information in a fair and balanced way, then this historian is seeking to address the imbalance in the story of the Middle East that is being told and retold in the media and in households today. If educators are responsible for preparing students to live well and make thoughtful and intentional decisions, then this educator believes that students need to hear an alternative narrative to the prejudiced, conflict-driven message that is currently being circulated. If there is ever to be lasting peace on this little planet of ours, that peace is going to come from understanding.

To this end, as I write over the next month and when I return to Canada after my trip, I hope to be an ambassador for Syria. I do want to describe the amazing experiences that I am having and reassure worried family and friends that I am indeed safe and sound, but it is my deepest desire to convince my readers and listeners that we need to consider these people – Syrians, Arabs, Muslims, people from the Middle East – as individuals who are our friends and neighbours rather than a faceless mass to be feared and contained.

I am not the greatest storyteller –I can never think of the appropriate story at the party unless it occurred in the last two months and often need to be reminded of events that happened only a few years before; consequently, my blog posts and the photos I take will help me to recall teachable moments and surreal experiences in the unlikely event that this trip does not leave a profound impression upon me. At the same time, I will likely comment on matters historical here and educational in Humility in Education, and some posts (like the one that you are now reading) will appear in both blogs, so please look forward to posts that are academic but hopefully not too irregular or uninteresting! When you read though, it is my desperate hope that you will also consider the serious purpose of my visit.

Syria-usly? Yep. Seriously.

Finally, I hope that you will share in my travels by commenting on my posts. Well-wishes and wish lists, comments and concerns, stories and suggestions are enriching for everybody who will continue read on.

“What’s new with me? Well, I’m going to Syria.” What an adventure!

Working at Library and Archives Canada

2008-03-03T18:26:00.003-05:00

I had the opportunity to work at Library and Archives Canada for the summer. I am truly sorry that I found myself too busy to blog regularly about what I was learning as a historian working in the public sphere, so I will be unable to do real justice to the institution and my experience there. It is nevertheless important for me to post a few enduring understandings I realized during the summer.

First of all, I would like to say thank you to the folks with whom I had the opportunity to work. For students studying both Public History or subjects in History, the archives provided a terrific mix of short- and long-term projects as well as the satisfaction of knowing that the majority of this work would benefit clients down the line. Overall, the internship proved to be a great opportunity to employ my historical skills in an forum that was both accountable for storing and managing information while also making historical sources available to the public.

Secondly, I gained an incredible appreciation of the challenges that archival institutions face. If Canada’s national archive struggles with the enormous challenges of acquiring, assessing, organizing, and describing collections, I can only imagine the state of smaller archives with fewer resources. It will take increased financial resources to maintain the massive volume of information acquired annually archival institutions. In order for governments and taxpayers to agree to the allocation of greater resources towards archives though, I believe that archivists will have to prove and demonstrate to the public that archival institutions have value to an audience broader than historians and genealogists.

Thirdly, I cannot say enough times that I think it is more important make documents available than to preserve them. I strongly believe that documents should be put at some level of risk if it means that more people will appreciate the historical, educational, and social value of archives. While some documents have legal value and are kept for that purpose, there are certainly documents of purely historical value that should be more widely used in traveling and in-house exhibits and educational programs.

I wish Library and Archives Canada and my co-workers all the best as they continue on with their very important work. They can look for me soon when I bring a class of students in to cause a ruckus in the reading room at the building on Wellington!

Whither Blogging?

2008-02-17T18:47:00.002-05:00

As has happened a number of times in the past eight months, I find myself wrestling with the purpose of this blog. Blogging has become like going for a run after a month of not running. It is really hard to get back into a groove, and I am not even sure what my new groove should be.

Do I jump into conversations that this year’s Public History class at Western is having? Perhaps I should stick to the discussions and challenges presented by the digital historians I try to read regularly. Should I seek out K-12 teachers blogging about many of the issues that I am coming into contact with as a teacher candidate? I did start a second blog on education, but I can’t help but think that it might be easier for my audience, which because of my absence from the blogosphere has likely dwindled down to a few hardcore readers, to read just one blog. On the other hand, a different blog might be a more appropriate forum to discuss my upcoming practicum in Syria or my challenges with teaching Chemistry.

The one question that overshadows all of these considerations is: “Why blog at all?” Indeed, my motivation to publish my reflections online deteriorated rapidly after my Public History coursework was completed last spring, and the moments that I have found to actually reflect and write have been few and far between since I began my B.Ed year. Yet the professional value of maintaining a blog has not diminished in my eyes. There have been numerous occasions where I have thought, “This assignment could easily be turned into a blog post.” My “Blog Drafts” document has grown into a fifteen-page long stream of consciousness that could be converted into brief flashes of brilliance if I ever found the time to get back up to date.

I welcome any thoughts on how I should continue to blog. Let me conclude this stream of consciousness by setting out a renewed direction for my blogging: Both Humility in History and Humility in Education will be maintained in order for me to continue wearing both my Public Historian’s and Educator’s hats. While I cannot promise that my posts will be regular after this next burst of writing, I can promise that I will continue to do my utmost to provide genuine reflections on what I am experiencing, reading, and learning about. Where I deem it appropriate, I may even publish the same post on both blogs, but in general I will keep my comments in each blog geared towards my intended audiences.

Time to get to it!

Constitutional Matters

2007-10-23T21:09:00.000-04:00

This summer Canadians flocked to the Public Archives and National Library in Ottawa to view Library and Archives Canada’s exhibit showing the 1982 Constitution. Well… people did not seem to flock so much as trickle and to be honest, the exhibition space is about twice the size of my kitchen, so I may have just missed seeing people when they went through because you could read everything in about 15 minutes.

I do not want to be too critical of my former place of employment because it truly was a great place to work and learn and because I know that the people working at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) really do care about making Canada’s documentary heritage more accessible to Canadians. In fact, the time I spent speaking with the Exhibit Manager at LAC reinforced my belief that documents can be presented to the public in an engaging fashion. On the other hand, it does not take an archivist working on the inside to see that accessibility to Canada’s documentary heritage is not a well-known fact. The exhibits at LAC may be small, but they are also well-designed and free to visitors brave enough to enter the doors at 395 Wellington St; unfortunately, little money is spent on advertising these exhibits, and so LAC maintains a low profile.

Should documents of legal, historical, or cultural significance really be shown in the exhibit rooms of LAC, considering the small population of visitors that seem to visit these exhibits? LAC should be an institution that both preserves and makes accessible archival documents. Although digitization and internet searches will increase the public’s ability to access archival documents, it is critical that individuals be aware that such documents and such a repository exist. If the institution is unable or unwilling to advance its own cause, then perhaps other institutions that use archival materials (such as museums or history departments in museums or high schools) need to take up the cause of informing the public as to what archives are all about. Of course, this situation would decrease archivists’ control of the message being sent out regarding archives, but that is the price that archival institutions pay for not putting themselves more in the public eye.

Might more people have lined up to see the 1982 Constitution if it had been exhibited at the Museum of Civilization or the Royal Ontario Museum? Archival institutions need to consider the means and venues that might best show off Canada’s documentary heritiage, and in so doing should take a look at what other institutions of public history are doing to attract the public’s attention.

Atlantic Canada Studies Conference

2007-10-23T21:07:00.000-04:00

While working for Library and Archives Canada this past summer, my research led me to the website for the Atlantic Canada Studies Conference. As I browsed through the itinerary, I was struck by the number of sessions that related to topics that the 2006-2007 Public History class discussed in Public History, Digital History, Archival Studies, Social Memory, and Museology courses. This year the conference ran at the beginning of May, and it might have been a great opportunity for Public History students to consolidate their learning experiences before heading out to begin the internship component of the program. Conferences are a wonderful opportunity to learn, network, and socialize that this year’s Public History students may want to consider!

A New Crew Of Public Historians

2007-09-12T10:26:00.000-04:00

Because I am interested in being at the table when Digital Humanities are discussed, I took a few moments yesterday to check out Bill Turkel's new syllabus for the Digital History course at UWO. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a number of this year's Public History students had already posted to their new blogs. It was fascinating to see how some of this year's first posts were so similar to those published by my classmates last September.

Please browse through the list of Public History students found on the side menu. I know that they will appreciate and respond enthusiastically to having an audience outside of their own class!

Good Luck and Best Wishes to UWO's '07-'08 Public Historians!

The Museum of Useful Things

2007-05-02T20:51:00.000-04:00

Can a store call itself a museum? I thought that was ours!

While visiting Boston this winter, I found myself wandering through a small store called The Museum of Useful Things. This museum/store displays and sells items that are regularly used in everyday life but have been designed to have a pleasing aesthetic as well. Additionally, The Museum of Useful Things has a few small virtual and physical exhibits for interested visitors to gaze upon. By calling itself a museum, this store is imagining itself as more than a retail outlet – it becomes a site of learning.

In a previous post, I suggested that museums might show and sell reproductions of historical artifacts; perhaps this is the first step in that direction. On the other hand, it seems a tad worrisome that a museum-store hybrid is being conceived by a retail outlet first because a business-like orientation of the museum-store could undermine the museum’s mission to collect, preserve, and educate. Museums seem compelled to move to business models for success though, which makes the museum-store a plausible future manifestation.

The Museum of Useful Things does provide two helpful insights to museums though. First of all, the museum-store is small; it is easy to see everything, and the “collection” is easy to curate. Secondly, The Museum of Useful Things has successfully increased its visitors by mixing education with consumerism as a form of entertainment. In fact, because the museum-store focuses on both the aesthetic and the function of a product, The Museum of Useful Things has succeeded in making ideas of design more accessible to the passing shopper. Furthermore, people will return in order to check what new stock/artifacts have come in. Museums might try experiment with brevity and with mixing education and other interests to sustain the interest of their audiences.

Okay… so maybe we can share.

Museums’ Return Visitors

2007-04-08T18:27:00.000-04:00

During a class visit to the University of Western Ontario’s MacIntosh Gallery last month, the gallery’s curator mentioned that she was committed to create programs that served the university’s student population. This statement got me thinking: A museum that serves its audience successfully is probably one that offers an experience that will make the visitor want to return to that museum. (I suppose that an exceptionally successful museum then would make visitors want to visit other museums as well!)

Interaction with a rotating selection of artifacts might be one way to keep visitors coming back for more. Although it might not be possible for every visitor to physically interact with all the artifacts in a collection, there is the option of allowing a museum interpreter to demonstrate an artifacts use. (Alexander, Museums in Motion, Ch. 11) Open-air museums frequently demonstrate how period crafts and trades were carried out, and perhaps there are artifacts in the collections of indoor museums that could still be operated. If a museum were to come up with a rotation of artifacts in use that changed on a weekly basis, visitors might return to see a particular item in action. This would also create an opportunity for the museum interpreter to convey more information not included on the text panels to those visitors.

Of course, the stress of operation and impact on nearby artifacts must be taken into consideration, showing visitors how different artifacts worked might be a great way to keep people coming back to a museum again.

A Funtional Analysis for Oral History

2007-03-25T09:38:00.000-04:00

Although she often claims that her thoughts are a disorganized, unpublished mess, Diana Dicklich actually is rather consistent at coming up with brilliant insights during class. When we were discussing the importance of inclusively when planning and presenting an exhibit, Diana mentioned the idea of creating a functional analysis for collecting oral histories. After learning more about oral history this weekend, Kelly and Molly might inform me on Monday that it is very normal to come up with a broad plan before conducting an interview for historical purposes; nevertheless, because I think this is a neat idea and because by butchering her original idea I might spur Diana into blogging action, I would still like to explore this idea of a functional analysis for oral history.

Archivists, who all seem to be inundated with acquisitions that need to be appraised, arranged, and described, carry out functional analyses to determine what stays in the archive and what goes in the circular file. To be very brief, an archivist performs a functional analysis by understanding what activities are most important to a creator’s job; the archivist then keeps only the documents that are the result of these activities.

The idea of carrying out a functional analysis with oral interviews is an interesting one because it assumes that the interview has specific uses beyond what the interviewer is looking for. When I was interviewing 3M researchers as a part of my contribution to the Invention to Innovation exhibit, I was interested specifically in how particular inventions were conceptualized, constructed, and used; though the interviews do contain a good deal of information about the history of the inventions in which I was interested, the interview might be of little use to an engineer or a chemist interest in the same invention. Likewise, a person interested in the interviewees’ respective roles at 3M might find the interview wanting as well. A functional analysis of either the interviewee or subject of discussion might have been an effective way to shape a more useful primary source of information. Although a system of macro-appraisal for oral history might not answer all the questions future historians might ask, such an approach could provide a greater level of consistency in terms of what sorts of information were preserved.

Monuments We Can Argue Over

2007-03-25T09:34:00.000-04:00

On February 15th, the Globe and Mail Online reported that Estonia’s parliament voted in favour of removing a monument that commemorated soldiers from the former Soviet Union who died during the Second World War. Although the article generated over seventy comments from online readers concerning whether the Soviet Union played a beneficial or detrimental role in Estonia, not one person questioned the idea that a memorial could be torn down.

Amid accusations that this moves represents an assault on fallen soldiers, Estonia’s foreign minister has responded by arguing that since the memorial is not located in a war cemetery, it is a political monument rather than a monument that helps to remember the deaths of soldiers. The decision to remove the monument is also framed as an assertion of Estonian independence from interference in its domestic affairs, but again it is assumed that memorials are not permanent fixtures.

Does this mean that memorials are of our time? Museum exhibits and permanent collections undergo periodic updating, buildings are re-claimed for alternate uses, and even historical plaques, which are written to last generations, have in some cases been re-written in order to more accurately represent marginalized parties. Memorials, exhibits, and plaques all have the power to educate people about the past, and public historians should be vigilant in ensuring that accurate and balanced information is being conveyed to the viewer. It stands to reason then that a monument can be changed to include up-to-date information; however, the Estonian government is removing this monument as a political gesture and in so doing is depriving its citizens of an opportunity to reclaim and commemorate a challenging part of Estonia’s history.

I wonder what will go in the space where this monument stood. Will the government install a plaque commemorating how removing the Soviet monument served to affirm Estonian independence? Though I have little knowledge of Russian-Estonian relations and was unable to imagine an equivalent situation with which I could empathize, I believe it would be better for Estonia to leave the monument where it stands. Instead of removing the memorial, it could be re-dedicated to commemorate the violence that is experienced by both aggressors and victims during war. In this way, Soviet soldiers could continue to be honoured and Estonians could commemorate their occupation by and subsequent independence from the former Soviet Union.
Like all forums where historical discussions occur, memorials represent a space to argue, discuss, shout, coax, appeal, and move towards a consensus about our history.

World's Worst Interview

2007-03-13T17:05:00.000-04:00

Is it possible to be your best by acting your worst?

The Public History students are busy searching out and securing internships in our field for the summer, and this week we are talking about selling ourselves to employers and granting bodies. World’s Worst is a game where players take turns coming up with and acting out the most awful scenarios possible. Since most of us will need to be interviewed before getting hired or our internship, this game is going to help us become the best interviewee by getting out in the open all the things that could go wrong if we did not play this hilarious game.

The object of World’s Worst Interview is two-fold: to continuously have individuals standing up and providing examples of bad things that an interviewee could say or do in an interview, and to brainstorm a list of examples that can be de-briefed afterwards.

Participants start by sitting in a circle. When somebody has an idea, she or he stands up, quickly acts out the scenario (no explanations allowed!), and sits back down so that another person can stand up. The facilitator should try to let the game go on long enough to create a good list of bad examples but keep it short enough so that people still want to play for longer. (This is a critical trick about running any activity: Always leave’em wanting more!) Afterwards, participants can look at the list of examples that would not get a job candidate hired and as a group come up with positive actions that would help a job candidate look his best or her best.

A good round of World’s Worst Interview and the subsequent debriefing will probably take at least 45 minutes, but hopefully this activity will help participants to come away with some effective interview tips and to feel a little less nervous about that first encounter with a future employer.

Yah Hoo!

Historical Cinema that Succeed

2007-03-07T22:26:00.000-05:00

The Last King of Scotland is a compelling film that tells a story of Idi Amin Dada’s regime in Uganda in the 1970s, while also speaking to the political and social conditions still faced by some countries in Africa today. The film has won numerous awards in the past two months, particularly for Forrest Whitaker’s portrayal of Amin, and consequently will likely be seen by millions of viewers. Because I knew nothing about Idi Amin before seeing The Last King of Scotland, when I returned home from watching the film I was eager to learn about the real story of Idi Amin. I expected there to be certain discrepancies and omissions in the film compared to Amin’s real life; however, it was an unexpected surprise to learn that supporting actor James McAvoy plays a character that never existed in real life and was merely based on certain advisors surrounding Amin during his regime.

In spite of my surprise, I have to consider my experience with The Last King of Scotland successful in a historical sense because the film made me want to go home and learn more about Uganda’s past. Although Wikipedia was the first information source I consulted, I discovered that the official movie website also had a (sparse) timeline and (limited) interpretation to expand on (or broadly sketch out?) the story of Amin’s regime; the filmmakers anticipated that movie-goers would be interested to learn more about this man’s time in Uganda! (If only they had more information! Perhaps we can hope the DVD's special features will relate more of the history!)

Historians and theorists continue to debate how the past should be portrayed and interpreted in film, but as a public historian I think that one standard by which films should be judged is their ability to make people curious about the past. If a historical film, be it a documentary or a Hollywood-produced blockbuster, raises no questions and leaves the audience believing that the film is the be-all-and-end-all on that particular subject, then it has, to a certain degree, failed. The five-minute feature or the 12-disc DVD box collection that makes people run to their library or computer thinking “That can’t be right!” or “I wonder what else there is to this story?” is a success because it gets people thinking critically. If somebody films a movie or writes a letter to argue for an alternative interpretation of that history, so much the better!

Anybody who decides to make a living in the field of history probably thinks that History is an important subject for one reason or another. As members of a discipline that teaches critical thinking skills, historians should be as interested in introducing these skills to others as they are in sharing information about the past. A more discerning audience can only compel formal historians to put out more well-argued and well-presented history.

The Power Flower

2007-03-06T18:49:00.000-05:00

As the Public History class considers the problems associated with discussing the history of different ethnic groups, it might be helpful to think about where we are situated in our society. The purpose of the Power Flower is to help individuals identify whether they are part of the majority of their community or in the minority in order to be sensitive to others with less power in that community.

Each participant needs a Power Flower exercise sheet, which can be found on the Zhaba Facilitator Collective website or from the book Educating for a Change. The group first takes time to fill in each of the small, inner petals of the flower by describing themselves according to each category (ex. Social Class: middle class, working class, etc.; Religion: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc.). Since some information is of a more personal nature, it is important to let participants know that they do not need to share their answers with the rest of the group; this is an activity to help individuals become conscious of their own place in different power hierarchies.

Once everybody has completed their inner petals, the group comes back together and discusses who makes up the majority for each category. The answers go into the outer petals. How many categories can each individual place themselves in the majority?

To bring the activity back to a Public History context, the group might afterwards discuss the influence of power hierarchies on the public history field. How could an individual’s background affect the choice of a an exhibit’s topic or how the information is presented? What could a curator do to ensure that different groups are presented in a fair and inclusive manner?

Although in the Litigious Age, public historians need to ensure that the rights and freedoms of others are not trampled on in museum exhibits, it’s also just a plain shame to hurt somebody else’s feelings because you never considered their point of view. The Power Flower is a useful way to anticipate some potential trouble spots in an exhibit that could anger or offend visitors. Furthermore, this activity should make people more aware of some of the biases that caused the ROM so much trouble in 1990 with the Into the Heart of Africa exhibit.

Enjoy!

Please Touch, Pick Up, Use, Press, and Pass Around

2007-03-04T12:18:00.000-05:00

Three weeks ago I visited Museum London for the official opening of Invention to Innovation, the exhibit this year’s Public History class put together. All of our hard work paid off! As I mentioned in a previous post, the Public History crew needed to be a little more intentional, and in the last week before our contribution to the exhibit was due, we pulled it off! We came to a consensus on our big idea, narrative, and structure, which definitely created a more unified exhibit of which I think we are all pretty proud.

As I walked through the different rooms of the exhibit, I have to admit that I didn’t read all of the text. I was too busy looking at the cool stuff that we were presenting! There are some really great pieces that have a lot of intricate working parts, such as old type-writers, a roller organ, and a massive linotype machine. A plethora of items have buttons to be pressed, cranks to be turned, and levers to be pulled; however, next to most of these artifacts are signs asking the visitor to please not touch. Reluctantly, I demonstrated self-restraint and obeyed the signs.

During the operational life of the artifacts, these items sat in offices, factories, or living rooms where they were touched and used by their operators. In a museum though, the artifacts are cut off from that human interaction, and the visitor loses an opportunity to interact with the past. Did an operator need to be strong to pull a particular lever? How hard was to get clear reception on that radio? The ability to use an item on display would help visitors to relate with individuals in the past who had to use a phonograph or Balopticon slide projector. Perhaps it might be better to have signs saying “Please use with care in order to allow others to learn from our artifacts as well.”

I know… the signs say “Please do not touch” because artifacts are often delicate. If the items are damaged, future visitors will not be able to have the same experience… But what if the items on display could be broken without the consequence of forever losing a piece of our past? Replicas are already a ubiquitous part of many museums: dinosaur fossils, parts of dioramas, the costumes historical actors wear, and even entire open-air museums are replicas that are designed to help visitors interact with and understand the past! If an object looks, feels, and works the same way as an authentic artifact, it can have a much bigger educational impact by being used than the actual artifact that sits protected in a glass case.

In addition to the educational value that using replica items at a museum would have, museum gift stores could also sell replicas as another source of revenue, thus capitalizing on a market interested in items with an antique look.

For now, it is important to obey the “Please do not touch” signs; however, when you come to the Invention to Innovation exhibit, think about how you might learn about the past differently if you could reach out and touch it.

The Six-Word Challenge

2007-02-20T16:45:00.000-05:00

We’re discussing the encounter of history and fiction this week in Public History. The Six-Word Challenge is inspired by Hemingway’s “best work,” but the concept is easily adapted to fit this week’s topic.

The purpose of the Six-Word Challenge is to write a story that is fictional but refers to a historical event, movement, or figure. Obviously, the story must be six words long… although a Seven-, Eight-, or Eleven-Word Challenge might be more appropriate, depending on the group.

The leader should choose a theme for the group to focus on, and then participants have five minutes to write their own definitive work on the subject. Afterwards, participants can share their historical fictions with the rest of the group.

After playing Encore: History last week, Alan MacEachern suggested that we deconstruct the results of the game and types of films that came up in the course of playing. This was not only a swell way to transition from focusing activity to the day’s discussion, it also made us more aware of where historical film was heavy or light. In a similar fashion, Six-Word Challenge participants might try identifying patterns in the stories in order to understand what literary techniques or elements of history are used frequently or should be employed more often.

Hopefully this activity highlights for historians the challenge that authors face when producing a fictional account of a historical narrative. It will likely also help to identify where individuals sit on the spectrum of how much fiction and fact should be included in the novel based on historical events, which should make subsequent discussion exciting!

Enjoy!

History LP

2007-02-18T16:53:00.000-05:00

After reading Molly MacDonald’s assertion that Canada’s English-singing talent wasn’t putting more effort into singing about Canada’s history, I thought, “Ha! I bet I can prove her wrong.”

Although my two-hour search was by no means exhaustive, it appears that it was I who was wrong. There are a lot of quality Canadian artists putting out music that refers to Canadian culture, but few songs deal with our history. Even Stompin’ Tom Connors’ songs were for the most part historical because of their age!

The lone song that I could that I was sure referred to Canadian History was Sam Roberts’ “An American Draft Dodger in Thunder Bay;” however, there were a number of songs by Sarah Harmer, Susan Aglukark, The Tragically Hip, Classified, Moxy Fruvous and The Weakerthans that could refer, in a poetic, abstract sort of way (Gord Downie – you make good music, but I don’t have a clue where you come up with your lyrics!), to Canada’s past.

So Molly, it seems that you’re right; we need to make some intentional music about Canadian History. I’m thinking we listen to The Guess Who, Sarah Harmer, Sloan, The Hip, Sam Roberts, Sarah Slean, and The Trews for our influences and think about what events have defined each decade since Confederation – that will give us about sixteen songs for our first album. That covers Confederation, every conflict Canada has been in, the addition of new provinces and territories, the expansion of women’s rights, aboriginal rights, and minority rights, prohibition, the evolution of the welfare state… and we can always sing about Prime Ministers if we’re a loss!

Invention to Innovation Open!

2007-02-13T10:40:00.000-05:00

This past weekend the Invention to Innovation exhibit at Museum London opened! This year’s Public History class has worked very hard to create an exciting presentation of the history of innovation in London, Ontario. We all hope that you be able to take the time to come visit both the museum exhibit and the virtual exhibit!

Encore: History

2007-02-13T10:08:00.000-05:00

This week in Public History we are continuing to discuss how film can be used to inform an audience about historical events and movements. This week’s game is simply an adaptation of a classic game called “Encore.”

The purpose of Encore: History is to get the class focused on the discussion for the week, which in this case is history and film. The goal of the game is to think of the greatest number of unique movies, actors, or historical subjects.

Each player needs a piece of paper and a pencil. The leader than chooses a topic; for example, films dealing with history (It might be a good idea to specify a time period). Players then have five minutes to create a list of as many films as possible. At the end of the five minutes, players will share the title of one of the films that they brainstormed, starting with the player whose birthday lies closest to the professor’s birthday on the calendar. Once a film has been used, other players must cross it off their list, and it can no longer be used. The person who can go on listing unique movies for the longest wins bragging rights.

This is an effective focusing activity because it challenges individuals to come up with poorly-known films. As a result, more films are brainstormed than might be thought of by one person, and this larger list can be used in the subsequent discussion!

Have fun!

Why Are Special Lecturers Coming During the Day?

2007-02-09T12:42:00.000-05:00

Would it be too much to ask guest lecturers give their presentations in the evening rather than during the work day? Western’s History Department alone hosts almost one special lecture a week, and other departments at Western and other post-secondary institutions are likely doing the same. For the most part, these presentations are attended by a mix of students and professors with the odd listener coming from outside the university. For the many people working at the university who have a family to go home to, it is obviously more convenient for guest lecturers to come during the day; however, this arrangement excludes members of the working public who have an interest in a particular scholarly subject, be it the war in Iraq, the history of chemistry, or aboriginal issues.

As long as I have been a History student I have heard people say, “You know, I never liked History when I was in school, but I’ve really become a lot more interested in it as I’ve gotten older.” Special lectures might be a great way to take advantage of that interest; furthermore, inviting the public to these lectures would add value to a university’s presence in the community.

Although some of the special lectures at Western are publicized on posters, departmental mailings, and in the online event calendar, not all lectures receive the same attention and this information more or less stops at the university’s borders. How much more time might it take to place small ads on local community events websites or in a short weekly ad in the local newspaper?

Our Audience(s)

2007-02-09T12:07:00.000-05:00

In Shrek 2, Pinocchio swings down into a jail cell to free his friends Shrek and Donkey. Unfortunately, he gets tangled up in his own strings on the way down. The Gingerbread Man, who has slid down to held the hapless puppet, needs Pinocchio to tell a lie so he can walk across Pinochio’s nose. Donkey suggests, “Say something crazy, like ‘I’m wearing ladies underwear.’” “Uh, I’m wearing ladies underwear,” Pinochio mumbles; movie viewers and animated characters alike wait for the nose to grow, but nothing happens! When we discover Pinocchio is wearing women’s underwear, younger viewers shriek with delight because a boy is wearing a girl’s underwear and isn’t that a funny thing Daddy? Older viewers laugh because they realize the irony of the situation: Donkey’s “crazy” statement turns out to be true, and Pinocchio’s taboo cross-dressing habits are unexpectedly and unintentionally revealed. (Gosh it’s depressing to deconstruct a joke!)

This moment exemplifies how film companies like Pixar and Dreamworks have successfully made the children’s movie entertaining for a broader age group. Well-known actors and actresses are now frequently the voices behind animated characters, and there are references made to popular culture that are well beyond the experience of the 4- to 12-year old crowd. What’s going on here?

Film producers have realized that parents will be more willing to take their child to the movie theatre or pop in that favourite video for the umpteenth if the movie being watched is entertaining for both child and grown-up. Consequently, it is a lot more interesting to watch Cars (which plays on NASCAR stereotypes), Robots (On putting together a robot baby: “Making the baby is the best part.”), or Antz (which has insect caricatures of all the people supplying the voices for the characters) than it is to watch The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, or The Lion King (which at best reinforce traditional gender roles, and at worst have hidden messages that earned Disney some negative media attention in the 1990s).

Museums are arguably a more constructive place to bring your kids on a Saturday afternoon than the movie theatre but are nevertheless being used as a form of entertainment. The question of whether History should be educational or entertaining is the subject of another post, but when museum curators and educational officers are targeting their audiences, they might be wise to take a page from Pixar’s book: think of children as the principal audience but remember that adults are present too. Activities should be designed to engage kids and get them interested in the subject, but there should be an added level of depth that will draw parents into the fun too!

Shared Expectations and Goal-Setting (2)

2007-02-07T15:25:00.000-05:00

I’m pretty convinced that Alan MacEachern eats Funny for breakfast; that or Wheaties, but either way, his Academic Alphabet has had me snickering in my sleeve. In my never-ending search to write Compelling History, I went to ask Alan how to be a funny writer. As I expected, it would appear that practice continues to make perfect. Subsequently, our conversation shifted to broader program goals. Although I sometimes find the broader aims of the Public History program a little elusive, the program’s flexibility is definitely one of its strengths.

It is therefore left up to me, to a certain degree, to set my own goals and then create some shared expectations with Alan. I think that goal-setting is incredibly important in order to maintain focus, stay motivated, be accountable, and measure success. I was surprised to discover in Museum Administration: An Introduction that goal-setting is important enough to be touched on in multiple chapters, but as I have been doing research for a summer internship, I have certainly come across mission statements that set rather unrealistic goals.

Goal-setting is the intentional act of considering your aspirations and laying out a plan and timeline for achieving those aspirations. Some people might think that the saying is cliché, but I’ve always been a “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars” sort of guy, so I think that if you follow SMART guidelines, you’re setting yourself up for a success. SMART, by the way, is what all goals should be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-wise. Here are my goals for the rest of my Public History year:

1) Brevity in blog posts. Keep each post to one page in a word processor. Why? To practice being concise; to avoid boring the reader; to save time for other assignments!

2) Keep it positive. For every criticism, give a suggested solution. Why? To aim for humour; to remember that this is an awesome program and a fascinating field to be in!

3) Be consistent. Put up at least one post a week; keep same lines of argument running throughout posts to send overall message about Public History; work on at least one Python tutorial per month. Why? To maintain a steady flow of ideas for my millions of readers in the blogosphere; to develop useful, transferable skills that will make me an asset in a number of fields but particularly in Public History.

4) Play. Come up with an activity for at least one class each week, particularly Public History, that is good as a focusing activity; post a description of the activity on blog. Why? To encourage fun; to have fun; to practice what I preach.

5) Find an internship that gives me breadth of experience by offering a balance of office administration, education, interpretation, and interaction with visitors and the institution’s collection. Why? To develop as many skills as possible for use in the Public History field.

Shared Expectations and Goal-Setting (1)

2007-02-07T14:54:00.000-05:00

I remember that when I was younger, my dad seemed to give a lot of presentations on the idea of “Shared Expectations.” At the time, I thought that Dear Old Dad was just throwing around some geeky business term; but after working in groups at school, work, and volunteer situations, I have realized that shared expectations help people with a variety of perspectives share and buy into a common set of objectives. For Dad, managers, employees, and customers needed to agree what the outcome of a particular project would be; likewise, we read this week about how a curator contracting out the installation of an exhibit should continually work to ensure that both museum employees and contracted workers are on the same page.

Since there is a possibility that public historians will be the curator’s position at some point in their career, it might be useful for students in this field to seek out experiences in creating shared expectations. In the Public History program, we have been working under a number of shared expectations; these are the ones that come to mind, but perhaps they need to be fleshed out more:

1) We will develop a quality museum exhibit and accompanying virtual exhibit, and in the process of doing so, learn about the steps necessary to creating an innovative and successful exhibit

2) We will learn about the history, theory, and practice of Public History through readings, discussion, and research in Public History, Archives, Digital History, and Museology

3) We will work in a collaborative environment

4) We will be free to focus our research and blogging on topics that interest us, within the limits laid out by the program and courses

5) We will come away with a good sense of many of the challenges and benefits of working the Public History field

Play

2007-02-07T14:44:00.000-05:00

There is a moment in the movie Hook when a square, serious, grown-up Peter Pan finds himself on a basketball court between two Lost Boys. “Play!” smirks one of the boys as he bounces a ball off Peter’s face. As Peter turns around to recover from this assault, he comes face-to-face with the second boy. “Play!” he exclaims as he heaves a ball into Peter’s gut!

Hey public historians!
Whack!
Play!

In my experience, a warm-up game is a tried-and-true way to get a group of people – be they five-year olds, thirty-five year olds, or a mixed group somewhere in between – focused on a particular topic. Play is used across professions too; I’ve seen or heard about games being used to help groups both large and small get focused at conferences, weekly check-ins, workshops, and executive retreats.

Historians, particularly those interacting with publics on a regular basis, might want to remind themselves that they should be striving to relate History to their audience in a compelling way. Developing and playing History games on a regular basis would not only act as a reminder to make History compelling but might also make innovative programming come more easily (practice makes perfect). Meetings are a great place to try out new game ideas. People do their best work when they are motivated and focused, and intentionally-crafted games can help participants recall concepts from previous meetings, get individuals thinking about the day’s topic, and add a little good old-fashioned fun to complement the enjoyment derived from more serious academic discussion.

Some games will be a bust, but those that have promise might be adapted for a larger audience. When we were planning the Invention to Innovation exhibit and website in our Public History classes, we discussed the importance of catching our audience’s attention. We decided to use questions to get visitors thinking; however, activities that touch on the exhibit’s subject might be another way to raise an audience’s excitement about an exhibit.

You know the way you feel after playing a good game of road hockey on a chilly January afternoon? Imagine feeling that way after leaving a museum! Play!

Back in the Saddle

2007-01-24T23:34:00.000-05:00

At this time of year, it seems important to wish my readers a Merry Chr-- What’s that? Oh.

Well, in that case, please allow me to wish you a Happy New-- Come again? Missed that one too, eh?

Good luck in your studies this sem-- Aw, come ON!

… And we’re off. After leaving my blogging and blog reading to fallow for a month, I can honestly say that it is pretty crumby to have to read 170 posts. I’m also sorry to have missed the opportunity to respond to some of my classmates really funny, thoughtful, and well-written posts. On the other hand, I’ve already been surprised to discover that quite a few posts resonate with themes that we are discussing this semester. Maybe I haven’t missed my opportunity after all.

It was really important for me to get back on top of what my classmates and profs had written before making new contributions. Although I’ve been lucky to have fairly consistent traffic coming through this blog (Thank You to John, Bill, and the AHA), I feel that my thoughts are probably of the most importance to my classmates and professors right now, and I wanted to be caught up on the conversations.

Being an absent blogger has definitely affected my studies to a certain degree this semester. I definitely noticed by the end of last semester that I was better able to recall themes and ideas from class discussions if I had written a post about those themes. Furthermore, blogging was a perfect arena for me to practice being funny (Still trying) and find a comfortable writing style. Conclusion: Blogging can serve as another teaching tool, especially if you’re a person who learns through doing and through repetition, like me! So the next time you need to study, try blogging about what you’re being tested on!

As a side note, I need to mention some of the blog sagas that I follow outside of the Public/Digital History sphere which I dearly hope will studied and enjoyed by some historian in the distant or not-to-distant future.
Matt has been experiencing Love, History, and Adventure in Japan.
Jonathan and Theresa’s reports and pictures of Lucy and Ella’s progress has kept me smiling, hoping, and praying.
Paul’s trek across New Zealand is inspiring!
And Emily and Bryony has the scariest Christmas break ever!

Aussi, pour tout les étudients qui ont besoin apprendre le français, le Noël de Joe était aussi fou! Alors, pratiquez votre français et lisez son "blog!"

A Very Digital Christmas

2006-12-18T11:12:00.000-05:00

For our last Digital History class, we talked about histories of the Future. Last night, my dad suggested that I write a post about what the Christmas story might be like in a digital age. Well, since I don’t often use my dad’s history ideas, and because it’s Christmas, and because it’s amusing to finish the semester on a more up-beat note than my last post, I thought, “Why not?” It might not be history or even good scholarly writing, but perhaps the reader will gain a greater appreciation of the digital ubiquity that we are racing towards, which I referred to in my last post. Here then is how the Christmas story might have played out in a digital context; it’s only a small part of the story, but I think that you will get the idea.

Merry Christmas Dad!

After the angel Gabrielle had left, Joseph pulled out his cell phone and called Mary to let her know that he would indeed still marry her. Now at that time, the Roman emperor sent emails and text messages throughout all the land informing everybody that a census was to be taken. All of the people of Judea were to return to their place of birth immediately. Mary was away at market when the email was sent, but Joseph immediately text-messaged her to inform her that they both must travel to Jerusalem. Mary immediately added items necessary for travel onto the shopping list she had on her cell phone, and the built-in GPS generated a shopping route that would enable her to get these items for the best price in the least amount of time. At home, Joseph searched for a dealer in donkeys. The resulting search generated a map that indicated the closest donkey dealers as well as the prices for a rental. Finding a reputable dealer than was equidistant between himself and Mary, Joseph text-messaged the address to Mary’s cell phone, so that her GPS could again re-adjust to meet him at the dealer.

As he walked out the door, Joseph found a podcast to listen to about successfully bartering with donkey dealers. As Mary whisked through the market, she listened to a podcast on feeding and caring for rented donkeys. At the donkey dealership, Joseph could wave his phone by each donkey’s ear and download information regarding the donkey’s history and medical condition as well as reviews by other people who had rented that particular donkey (stars indicated the overall rating, haystacks indicated how much the donkey ate, shoes indicated speed, and flies indicated how smelly the animal was after a day of travel across a desert). While Mary waited for Joseph to finish bartering, she connected to the dealership’s wireless network to download onto her laptop ebooks, vodcasts, and the latest blog posts regarding birthing. Once the donkey was rented and loaded with everything Mary and Joseph would need for their journey to Jerusalem, Joseph emailed inns in Bethlehem to find out where there were vacancies. Joseph’s email program, noticing that Joseph was writing a message with the words “Bethlehem,” “inns,” “vacancy,” and “next week,” automatically opened another window with relevant news feeds. Mary and Joseph discovered that, for the first time in forty years, Bethlehem had no room at any of the inns. A quick search on eBay uncovered a stable that was available though. Joseph put in a bid, and ten minutes later, Mary and Joseph had a place to lay their heads in Bethlehem. As Joseph grumbled about the empire’s poor logistical planning of holding a census, he and Mary began to make their way towards Bethlehem.

May you all experience great peace this Christmas season!

Ubiquitous Computing

2006-12-18T11:04:00.000-05:00

In the last couple weeks of November, our Digital History class discussed the coming of ubiquitous connectivity – the state of continuously being able to access information about anything through your computer or phone while at the same time being constantly accessible by others who are known or unknown to you. The ability to easily access the best, most relevant information seems like an incredible dream; the possibility of always being traceable or at the other end of the line seems, personally, like a terrible nightmare. I am not all that comfortable with the idea of my cell phone being able to tell the people I am connected to on Facebook where I am all the time, but as a historian, it would be incredible to trace the movements of individuals and groups to a very fine level of detail.

I struggle with how to approach a world where even individual items such as razors are traceable since the positive and negative implications both seem almost overwhelming. In this case, I find myself unable to make an argument either for some sort of legislative control or a free-for-all harvesting of individuals’ movements, buying habits, and product use. I cannot even say for myself how I plan to control the amount of information that businesses or other individuals are collecting about me, but it is important that I make an effort to exert some control in this area.

Whew! Big, tricky ideas here!

Hector Helps Don Do History

2006-12-18T10:52:00.000-05:00

Helpin’ History Hector: Well, hi there Triple-D Don! How’s that last essay for the semester going?

Doesn’t Do Digital Don: I despise my computer at this moment. Searching through library databases and lists of journal articles is an odious and unrelenting burden. I still have twenty-four more pages to write; but I suppose you are having comparable difficulties H-Cubed?

Hector: Heck no! The time I’ve been spending learning a little more about computer programming and APIs for the last year has paid off!

Don: Computer programming? Gag! And isn’t API a recording label? How did they aid you in researching and composing a historical essay?

Hector: API stands for “Application Programming Interface.” APIs are programs on the web that people can get the code to. You can modify the code for your own specific purposes. It’s awesome! I used Google APIs to get more specific search results and map them on tem out on an eighteenth-century map of France. I not only got more relevant answers for my search terms but was able to look for visual patterns and relationships on the map that was created.

Don: Ugh! That would take forever to learn how to do! Besides, as long as I can check emails, search for an article, and type an essay, I’m satisfied with how my computer does what it does.

Hector: Yeah, but there’s a way to do all that stuff faster!

Don: Humph! Of course there is: pay for a faster computer. I’m living under constrained financial circumstances here Hector.

Hector: No, no! The way I’m talking about is open-source, so it doesn’t cost you a cent!

Don: Whatever “open-source” means… Tell me more.

Hector: All it takes is a little time to lear-

Don: I knew there was a catch! Hector, how am I supposed to write a 25-page paper in 3 days and learn how to become proficient in the art of “Hacking” or whatever it is you are doing?

Hector: Well, you know, if you’re going to be using the computer to do your research, wouldn’t you rather be able to navigate through pages more efficiently? Don’t you think it would better to get all relevant search results instead of two good results for every ten searches you did? If you became a little more comfortable with some of the more technical aspects of your computer, it might save you some research time in the long run. Also, companies like Google are working hard to make create a search experience that is unique for you. If you’re at all concerned about having a say in how much they know about you, it might be a good idea to ask how your computer does the useful things it does!

Don: Hmm… I am still not convinced. There is certainly something to be said for perusing dusty aisles of knowledge after using a library database. I very frequently stumble upon a book that did not appear in the library search! I also always keep up with what those Public History students at Western are doing, and as far as I can tell, they used no AP-whatevers for the website that they made to complement their museum exhibit.

Hector: Really? I thought they were all so technically-savvy! Wait though - I heard that they were thinking about using a Creative Commons design for their website. That’s not making a new program, but it is using somebody else’s HTML design and modifying it for their own purposes!

Dwelling More on Digital Don: Well, it seems that you make some strong points Hector. I don’t know if I’ll be able to use your fancy new digital techniques for this paper, partially because I really don’t have the time to learn more about my computer, but also because there this topic really isn’t that great for research on the computer at all: nineteenth-century Russian postage! What was I thinking?

Hammered His Message Home Again Hector: That you have an unusual interest in the artistic and economic implications of stamps in the Industrial Era? I suppose you’re right though. There are definitely some areas of research that are more conducive to online research than others. Good luck with the rest of your paper Donny Boy! You’ll lick it yet!

The Subtle Museum

2006-12-18T10:42:00.000-05:00

As a visitor to a museum, do you expect to be presented with factual information and an up-to-date interpretation of historical evidence? Do you expect that you will be confronted with Truth? When the curator puts together an exhibit regarding the discovery of the New World, she needs to walk a fine line between a European point of view and an indigenous point of view. Two very different truths can be told though the same exhibit. Is it possible to share both truths at the same time?

In our last Public History discussion for the semester, we asked ourselves whether museums were a space where interpretations of truth were presented to the public or a space where visitors learned critical-thinking skills. Anybody who has had the pleasure of reading a historiography essay knows that historical truth has a very precarious position, easily toppled in the light of new evidence or the re-interpretation of old evidence. Although it is possible to keep the museum-goer up-to-date with the latest interpretation on a historical subject, it would be difficult to present Truth to visitors.

On the other hand, the public should be confident that they will learn when they visit a museum; an exhibit should encourage the viewer to think about the material being presented, to weigh the information being presented rather than simply accepting what has been written as truth. In this case, the mission of museums is not to present Truth or even a truth, but instead to challenge visitors to judge for themselves whether the information being presented has an importance transcending its entertainment value.

In our Invention to Innovation exhibit, you may notice that our text attempts to capture a sense of motion and energy. As we tied the text of our exhibit together, we succeeded in becoming more aware of the narrative and categorizations we are presenting to our visitors. In hindsight though, in a desire to force visitors to think critically about our exhibit, could we not have included blank text panels, incorrect information or dates, or placed inventions in the wrong section? I imagine that, without any hints, people would mistake these actions as errors made by inexperienced, sloppy students.

Conversely, if we were able to make subtle changes to the information, perhaps we would succeed in making some visitors take a second, more critical look at the information we had put together. The Museum of Jurassic Technology has succeeded in capturing such subtly. Check out the website for yourself, and while you’re at it, why not look at some of the exhibits that have been created by our own national institutions. What’s your impression of the museums’ virtual exhibits? Are you reading fact, the curator’s truthful interpretation, or a clever, intentional joke meant to stimulate analysis or evoke a different set of feelings? You may have to look a second time to be sure!

Identify Yourself

2006-11-22T18:19:00.000-05:00

I have a confession: I’ve been thinking about class discussions outside of class. Whereas I once used to occasionally contemplate how to transform my essay title into a brilliant eight-word alliteration (historians love alliterations), I now find myself chewing on ideas brought up in class as I walk home.

My reader is probably thinking that I am transforming into an unbearable, over-achieving dork. Well… that might be true, but listen: I’m a Public History student who is still trying to understand what “public history” is. Today I encountered three people who together helped me to understand what a public historian can and can’t do; if I hadn’t been thinking dorky school thoughts, I might not have put the pieces together!

On my walk to school, I unexpectedly ran into a cousin who also attends Western; we rarely see each other outside of family get-togethers, so it was fantastic to be able to catch up while we made our way to campus. After class, I saw a guy who was a part of the same exchange to Trois-Pistoles that I participated in. I never had the opportunity to speak to him in Quebec though, so it didn’t seem meaningful or necessary to talk to him today. On my way home, I walked past a young man who I had gone to high school with. Although we had both been in band, he was a couple years younger than me and I don’t think we ever shared a conversation. Today, I gave him a half-smile and continued on my way.

I felt a little guilty for not taking a minute to say “Hey – I know you!” On the other hand, the only person of the three that I had shared a significant relationship with was my cousin. At best, I am probably a poor networker for not strengthening the other two relationships; at worst I could be called anti-social. I doubt that I am alone in making that choice to not talk to another person. Few people like walking away from a conversation thinking, “Well, that was awkward!” I think I took the time to talk to my cousin because we are connected by stronger links. We have shared the same experiences, are related to the same people, and see each other on a somewhat regular basis. In short, we identify with one another on a number of levels. I had been thinking about national identity as I was walking home (When you’re hungry, you need to keep your mind occupied), and these encounters seem to put some pieces together for me.

It’s important for us to be able to identify with others, isn’t it? Last week in Public History, we tried to understand why people in one country would choose to identify with one another. What makes a person from St. John associate more strongly with a person from Calgary than a person from Bangor, Maine? As Canadians, we supposedly share a set of values and experiences that give us a sense of pride in our identity and distinguish us from the citizens of other nations. Although there are certain current events that we can identify with, the stories from our collective past also form a significant portion of the experiences we would consider “shared.” If this is the case, historians would appear to be essential in developing a Canadian identity.

A Canadian identity? It would appear that historians should also be asking for a raise because it’s a pretty tall order to come up with one, inclusive, grand narrative that tells the story of all Canadians. Recent readings and class discussion have underscored what a Herculean task it would be to create a national story that everybody – scholars, governments, minority groups, and members of the diverse Canadian public – would be happy with. We are also coming to the realization that exhibits will continually change as historians discover new evidence and that, ultimately, public history is strongly influenced by both economic considerations (It’s hard to put up continually put on controversial exhibits if your sources of funding are uninterested in stirring the pot).

The public historian needs to be a touch more pragmatic when facing these problems, so I would be willing to forfeit my raise if I were allowed to develop identities. I chose not renew the relationship I shared with the two men I encountered today. Canadians will place an emphasis on the elements of their identity that they see as most important. My role as a public historian is to present a number of stories and a number of values. In so doing, I hope to encourage people to think critically: “What do I agree with?” What do I think is rubbish?” “Why do I think this way?” Perhaps this sort of public history will entrench more regional identities; however, I said the public historian need to be a touch more pragmatic. The absurdly optimistic public historian inside of me hopes that this sort of history will not only make people feel better about their individual identity but also drive Canadians towards a consensus on what it means to be Canadian.

The Public History students’ exhibit at Museum London seeks to present one identity of London. It is our hope that visitors will come away with the sense that Londoners both embrace inventions and foster innovation. Will everybody who comes to the museum share this sense that London is a city of inventors? Will you identify with this community? Hopefully you’ll be considering these questions while you’re visiting.
And don’t worry – if you keep thinking about what you learned from the exhibit after you leave, I won’t think you’re a dork!

A Challenge for Public History

2006-11-15T00:41:00.000-05:00

I am concerned.

I am concerned that I have not been using this blog properly or to its full potential. Humility in History is supposed to be a space for publishing my reflections regarding my learning experience as a public historian and a digital historian. I have written a number of posts concerned with the theory of Public History and Digital History, and I like to think that my readers are gaining some insight into what I am learning in the Public History program here at Western. On the other hand, I have written very little about what my class is doing. Yep, it’s true – we Public History students don’t just sit in front of our computers, reading online articles and then blogging about the concepts contained in these articles.

This year, the Public Historians are putting together an exhibit for Museum London, which is located here in London, ON. The exhibit will focus on invention and innovation in London, and we hope to showcase not only many of the items that citizens of London used in the past but also the process of innovation that continues in this city today. We are not alone in this effort either; we’re collaborating with curators and collectors, professors and inventors – not to mention one another. Our responsibilities range from creating a title to typing out the text for each item to be displayed. For the last month we’ve been busy researching exhibit items, conducting interviews with experts, and working together to figure out what idea we want our audience – you – to walk away from our exhibit with. This project is truly a fantastic opportunity to put into practice the theories and ideas that we read and blog about each week!

I am concerned.

I am concerned that we are blowing this opportunity. Twice over.

First of all, we have made lamentably little use of our Number One means of advertising for this exhibit: our blogs! We aren’t publicizing the project that we are creating for the public! Regardless of the fact that many of our readers are probably family, friends, or romantic interests – people who are already likely aware that we are putting together an exhibit for Museum London – we should still be making an effort to share our excitement for this project. It’s fantastic that we have buddies and relatives who are willing to support us; I fully expect friends from camp, friends from Western, friends from McMaster, friends from Ottawa, and extended family from across southern Ontario to make every effort to check this exhibit out in February! Imagine how much cooler it would be if all these people came to see the exhibit not because I was a part of it but because there was actually a hype for the exhibit itself? As the creators of this exhibit, it is our expectation that visitors will react in some way to the information we present; but in order for that reaction to occur, our audience needs to be genuinely interested in the content of this exhibit. The blogs published by this year’s Public History students are a key way to foster a hype that could make people care!

Secondly, and I think more importantly, I believe that we are blowing the opportunity to develop good habits as intentional public historians. Two weeks ago, Public History students read about the importance of process in putting together an exhibit. In our subsequent discussions, we have done a poor job of following the suggested process. I think that this is a result of both a looming deadline (we need to have all of our text submitted by Nov. 29) as well as our efforts to cope with some assumptions made about the direction of the exhibit earlier on in the semester.

I understand and agree that it is important to stick to deadlines, especially when we are collaborating with bodies outside of the university; however, I also place high value on the learning process, the collaborative process within our class, and on turning out high-quality work. At the beginning of the semester, Alan posed the question: When will we cease to be history students and begin being historians? In a similar vein, I would like to ask, “If we did not get ourselves into the habit of putting out quality public history in an intentional, methodical fashion while we are Public History students, when are we going to get into that habit?” This is our time to learn! It is the time when we are allowed to make mistakes! Choose your cliché: You don’t learn to ride a bike without falling a few times; you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs! This is an opportunity to (dare I suggest it?) decide that we will not be meeting our deadline and to instead decide that we will take the time to ensure that we not only proud of our finished product but also the process by which we made that product. I am not suggesting that we have been inconsiderate when planning this exhibit; the Public History students have had numerous discussions concerning the message we want visitors to leave with and the narrative that we desire to tell. On the other hand, we have not yet had a focused discussion to decide how our main theme is supported by both our narrative and the grouping of exhibit items. We have no consensus regarding the tone or the mood of our exhibit. We are most definitely at the point where we have at the very least a basic understanding of our items purpose and history; therefore, I assume that we should be able to come to a solid (though not inflexible) plan as to where precisely we are headed with this exhibit. The readings that we have been assigned give us clear instructions on where our planning energies need to be focused.

I have devoted a great deal of space to some of the challenges that our group is currently facing and which I am as guilty of contributing to as the rest of the class. By no means do I think that I am better than any of my classmates. I am merely putting forward my observations of our group’s progress based on my interpretation of the class readings as well as previous group experiences. In short, it seems that our process of problem-solving, that is to say, our process of answering the question, “What are we trying to say in this exhibit and how are we going to say it?” has been overly-influenced by timelines and a need for success and not influenced enough by intentional goal setting. Conversely, I am confident that we still have time to develop some concrete conceptual guidelines for this exhibit, which will allow us to try out more of the skills that we are learning about in this program. As a plan of action, I suggest:

It is important for us to create a hype for our exhibit by “teasing” the audience in our respective blogs.

It is important for us to examine our plans as they stand on the class wiki and, though discussion and editing, come to a consensus in regards to the focus, narrative, tone, and categorization of items in our exhibit.

It is important for us to re-visit our deadlines to decide whether adjustments need to be made.

It is important for us to keep in mind the journey as well as the goal.

So… reader and future visitor to Museum London’s exhibit on inventions and innovations, you now have a great deal of insight into some of the practical challenges that we Public History students have been facing. What do you think will happen next? Will we be able to produce an exhibit that impresses a central idea on you? What will the reaction be to this post? Will Alan protect me from being lynched by my classmates tomorrow? Will the above words be enough to stir the pot or will we remain complacent and focused on deadlines rather than content? Will you look at our exhibit with a more critical or interested eye now that you have read about some of the challenges that we are struggling with?

Are you concerned?

"I never thought that something like this would happen to me!"

2006-11-13T23:40:00.000-05:00

It was a red-letter day in my academic career. On Friday, November 3, 2006, I took an enormous leap of faith as a digital historian and downloaded Python onto my computer. Yes, I had decided that I was going to learn a programming language.

As soon as I had the program in which to write Python code up and running, I jumped into an introductory tutorial. Boy, I was ready to get my hands dirty and finally try to do some of the whiz-bang computer magic that we have been talking about in class for the last two months!

Unfortunately, this first “beginner” tutorial proved too advanced for me. I didn’t have a clue what the author was talking about. You can picture me looking blankly at these apparently simple instructions. It was pathetic! I needed a PRE-introductory tutorial on Python. I decided not to let this minor setback phase me though and quickly discovered the package of Non-Programmers Tutorials that were included in the Python software I had downloaded. Hello Success! Or rather, “Hello World.” The first lesson in programming is to make the computer print this statement on the screen. Never fear - I made this statement appear! I should have counted, but I’m pretty sure that by the time I had concluded my first foray in to the world of Python I had typed different versions of “Hello World” at least 18 times. Hey – you need to cling to what you’re familiar with.

It turns out that programming is a lot more interesting to actually do than to read about; sort of in the same way that it’s more interesting to do research for a paper than it is to listen to the school librarian give a 50-minute presentation telling you how to research a paper. Okay, so I’m being a little dramatic - I have to admit that what I’ve learned has reinforced some of the concepts that I learned from the computer science tutorials.

As far as progress goes though, I haven’t gone very far. Oh I’ve written my own program – two in fact – but I don’t think that I’m at the point where I can apply much of what I have learned to researching a historical topic. On the other hand, I am seeing a light forming at the end of this serpentine tunnel. (I know… I apologize for the snake reference. It was too awful to resist.) This past week I learned about using “while”: as long as a certain set of circumstances are not fulfilled, a program will continue to perform a certain number of steps. For example, I might write a program that searches through this post looking snake references; as long as it doesn’t come across a group of letters like “snake,” “serpentine,” or “slither,” it will keep looking at each word. Essentially, I could create a primitive search engine. If I look more broadly at my Python learning experience though, I feel confident saying that I am a lot more comfortable reading lines of code and understanding what they mean; furthermore, I’ve been able to take baby steps beyond what has been required in the practice exercises! Step aside Bill Gates!

Good Riddance!

2006-11-13T22:34:00.000-05:00

In an effort to move on to more compelling projects, last week I ploughed through the last of the computer science tutorials and finally completed my rudimentary education on how computers work on the inside. After reading the module on Operating Systems, I came away with the understanding that systems such as Windows XP and Mac OS are the manage what the rest of the computer is doing by saying what program (such as word processors or internet browsers) can run when and how much memory that program can use. I followed up this module by reading about Machine Architecture. Skimming through this information, I realized two things: first, I already had a good general idea about the pieces that make up the guts of a computer; and secondly, to get too deep into these guts is a job best left to hardware engineers and historians interested in the evolution of the computer chip.

As the reader might have guessed, I found it difficult to be really sink my teeth into these online tutorials; however, I do not want to categorize these tutorials as completely useless. As an individual trying to understand what makes a computer do what it does, the take-home message from this body of tutorials was that computers use explicit instructions in order to solve tasks. The more detailed the instructions are, the more complex a process the computer can carry out. As a historian, this message tells me that if I am interested in having a computer fulfil a specific task, I need only give it proper and precise instructions, and it will be able to carry out that task. Of course, that means learning how to speak a computer language…

A second project that I would like to make some concluding remarks about is my use of del.icio.us. I began using deli.cio.us to collect and tag internet sources that I was using for an essay; however, I found that clicking on tags to see what other websites users had tagged infrequently led to more useful information. Although I originally wanted to keep up tagging websites in order to build up a larger database of links relating to aboriginal archives, in the end this process became more of a hurdle in my research. It slowed me down to have to type in the website title, a description, and tags for each. On the other hand, del.icio.us has become a home for those links that I am not willing to commit to in my own Favourites folder. I find that I still do save and tag the odd website that I want to remember for an immediate project; however, these sites are forgotten as soon as the project is finished. I suppose that I am creating a deli.icio.us junkyard – a place of forgotten websites of lost importance.

Who's Searching?

2006-10-31T11:03:00.000-05:00

When writing an essay, few moments are more brilliant than finally coming up with that sublime thesis or finding the ideal sources to build an argument on. In my case, forming the perfect thesis statement is a skill that has developed from years of practice and hours of staring at piles of research notes and scratch sheets. On the other hand, stumbling upon articles and primary documents that form the foundation of a good essay has been just that: a serendipitous find amidst hours of trolling through marginal information.

A search query on the Internet or in library catalogue comes up with a reasonable number of relevant results, but upon reading the abstract, introduction, or index, it is apparent that the book or article in question simply does not have the right information. Sound familiar? Of course! This is a common situation for researchers because computers do not yet have the ability to effectively search full texts and consistently come up with the best results. The critical analysis skills that people possess are still crucial for interpreting and bringing together bodies of text; therefore, it is pivotal that these skills continue to be nurtured by humanists.

Computers can identify themes but not necessarily a thesis; they can pick out text but cannot read subtext… yet. The shortcomings of current text-analysis tools should prompt researchers to add more descriptive mark-up to texts, whereby computers might be able to identify the more subtle elements in bodies of text. Programs that search for patterns within text already exist, and researchers are developing software that can identify sarcasm or humour in a dialogue. There is still a great deal of growth occurring that to make digital technology a more powerful tool for text analysis and scholarly research.

On the other hand, it is important (and perhaps a little reassuring) to realize that digital technology only aids critical analysis rather than replacing this process. For the past two weeks, we have been discussing technology that facilitates research. Pattern matching and visualization as well as using spiders to search through ever-growing databases offer sophisticated means for individuals to get answers to questions. The fact is though, that the bleary-eyed student, the amateur historian, the established academic, and the casual enthusiast all want quality results quickly. Is each person going through the same critical process, and if not, are the tools that are being created for all of them?

The digital tools that are being developed to facilitate research are for people who want an answer to a question. Experienced researchers want tools that can search through massive databases and aggregate and organize large bodies of information, and it seems that technological advances favour their work. If digital humanists ignore the other individuals needing quality tools to perform digital research though, they might be discouraging these budding researchers from practicing analytic skills. By making research tools available to researchers other than academics and making these tools accessible by explaining how these tools aid in doing research, digital humanists are not only democratizing the resources used for research but also encouraging the process of critical thinking itself.

As computers learn to how to do a better job of searching for and collecting data, individuals outside of academia will want to take advantage of improved access to information. Although (Or perhaps because) not everybody will go beyond the single-box search, digital humanists should be intentional in their efforts to promote critical analysis among members of the computer-using public. The availability of sophisticated digital research aids encourages critical thinking by making people aware that the single-box search is not the be-all-and-end-all of digital research. By using more specific search techniques, discovering that ideal source might feel less like rummaging and more like the result of practice and skill. Brilliant!

Supertags

2006-10-29T22:17:00.000-05:00

When thinking one day about how I have yet to add tags to my posts, I began to consider a limit of tagging anything on the Internet. In most cases, tags only link a post or photo to other posts or pictures in the same context. For example, when looking at pictures in Flickr, clicking on the tag “Quebec” takes the user to Flickr pictures tagged with “Quebec.”

As long as the user is interested in finding similar results, this sort of tagging is effective and appropriate. My thought, on the other hand, is that it should be possible for tags to lead to a number of contexts, as defined by either the user or the author. Let’s define a tag that can link to multiple search engines (ie. Google, the Library and Archives of Canada, Flickr, and del.icio.us) as a supertag.

An author using supertags should be able to choose what search engines the tag is run through. Perhaps the top three results from each search engine would appear in a separate window. In using supertags, the author would be able to direct users towards other relevant resources. Likewise, a user-controlled application might run a tag the user clicks on through previously specified search engines simultaneously, again bringing up the most relevant results in a separate window. A user-controlled application would enable individuals to always run tags through the engines that they most trusted.

Tagging is a subjective way of classifying and connecting information on the Internet, but supertagging might be one means to improving relevancy for users.

Let's Keep Libraries and Research Simple

2006-10-29T21:56:00.000-05:00

I’ve always been told, “Don’t knock it before you try it.” I don’t have the time right now to perform a thorough investigation of Second Life, but I can’t help but make one criticism regarding access to the libraries that are being established on Second Life.

Since I began taking the Digital History class in the fall, I have been learning on a weekly basis about how much I don’t know about the Internet. One thing that I have learned though is that it is important to me that information be shared on the Internet rather being locked away under a password.

Although anybody can create a character on Second Life, this virtual world is still password protected. A couple weeks ago, our class read that libraries and teaching institutions were setting up virtual equivalents in Second Life. My criticism is this: are we not making things more complicated for ourselves by creating a virtual world within the World Wide Web? Entering Second Life to access library materials seems like an unnecessary hurdle considering that a number of these resources are likely available online elsewhere. Hopefully institutions putting resources and services on Second Life are already established on the parts of the web that are searchable!

Maybe when I get a chance, I’ll search around on Second Life a bit to see if my mind can be changed, but for now, Second Life does not seem to be a very effective research tool!

Layers of History

2006-10-29T21:49:00.000-05:00

When considering how to make a digital resource with a democratic quality, it seems that many web designers have chosen to layer their information. In doing so, they have attempted to give the history being presented a broad appeal while at the same time making the information valuable for more advanced researchers. Nevertheless, there still appears to be disparity between the site for visitors and the site for researchers.

Museums are concerned with attracting people to their website and institution, so the information that is presented should be easy to access and have a visual appeal. HistoryWired is an example of a compelling website that shows the user what items in the online exhibit are the most popular (indicated by the size of the box for that item) while also providing access to layers of more detailed information. The site is equipped with buttons that can highlight certain themes or time periods, which allow the user to search for patterns within the items being presented. HistoryWired thus democratizes history by making information easily-accessible while also providing some value to researchers as well.

On the other hand, the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History online exhibit renders the historical process more transparent by putting all the primary documents at the disposal of the blooming researcher. By contextualizing the documents for mysteries that haven’t been solved, the site allows anybody to be a researcher and come to their own conclusions based on the evidence that they choose to use.

Is it possible to focus these resources more towards sophisticated research though? The Text Encoding Initiative is an effort to standardize mark-up that would allow computers to more effectively “read” a text. Mark-up involves bolding text or creating headers and footnotes, but it can also be adding definitions to words, indicating St. John as a person rather than a city in one case or that Animal refers to a Muppet rather than a creature found in nature.

We can imagine the results if research institutions using TEI collaborated with museums creating publicly-accessed and publicized digital exhibits. Institutions would be able to connect their research to a popular institution and reinforce the idea that research should have a public value. At the same time, museums could demonstrate the research value that they have in their institutions.

By creating layered websites, we are succeeding as public historians in creating history that is accessible to people outside of the profession, without cheapening the selling short this information.

Museum Remix

2006-10-28T19:11:00.000-04:00

In this week's readings for Public History, Tony Bennett argues that museums developed in the 19th century from a middle-class and elite desire to give the working class an education in proper social behaviour; from a tradition of public spectacles, fairs, executions, and exhibitions; and from a need on the part of the nation to demonstrate its power. The individual reading this post may not see any traces of such roots in modern museums but have you ever asked yourself why you speak in a lower voice in a museum or don’t touch the items being exhibited? These expectations are some of the vestiges of those founding intentions.

Alan MacEachern posed the question in class that if the museum is not a natural institution (having been created for a specific purpose and out of a particular tradition), would it be possible to conceptualize the museum in a way more in line with the goals of today’s historians and curators? Should conscientious, intentional public historians continue this history of museums or take museums in a radically new direction?

Class discussion has frequently turned upon the idea that museums should be places where visitors can enter into some sort of dialogue with the items being presented, regardless of any formal or informal training that these individuals might have in history. Since such a dialogue is voluntary, it is important to be able to draw people into such a discussion. What follows is a list of ways in which “museum” could be re-conceptualized that try to keep in mind the desire for this dialogue to occur.

The History Dealer / The History Agent
A knowledgeable agent guides a small group of visitors to the items in the museum that the group is interested in seeing, contextualizing each item and drawing relationships between the different items. The group determines the speed at which it moves and is able to direct the conversation. The experience is similar to looking for and buying a house or car.

The Lecture / The Documentary
Visitors watch a presentation that guides them through a set group of items in an exhibit, clearly presenting the items within different historical narratives and guiding the visitors towards a straightforward take-home message.

The Museum Party
Lots of activity is going on across the large hall in which items of the exhibit are placed. Visitors can move from exhibit to exhibit and from group to group, sharing ideas and opinions with the people they meet. There is period music playing and activities going on in different corners of the room that help to reinforce some of the ideas being conveyed in the exhibits. Museum employees are the life of the party, engaging individuals and stirring up excitement about history. The mood and atmosphere should be similar to a house party.

Museum Camp
Visitors come to the museum for an extended period of time. History counsellors take visitors through a program of discussions and activities meant to develop trust between individuals, whereby visitors feel more comfortable to share their opinions of the items and historical events being discussed. Visitors leave the museum with an understanding of a variety of historical perspectives on the exhibit in question.

Museum Ikea
Visitors move through the showroom, which consists of a number of exhibits created by the museum curator. By looking at the items contained in these exhibits, visitors can learn about different events or movements in history. Simultaneously, visitors pick up tickets representing the items they are most interested in (similar to getting a ticket at Ikea that tells you where to find a particular item in the warehouse). These can then be taken to the History Cashier at the end of the showroom, who compares and contrasts the items the visitor has shown interest in. Visitors thus are able to identify their interests and have somebody else help them to tie these interests together.

The Laboratory
Historical research becomes a more transparent process as visitors are allowed behind the scenes to watch researchers in action. Visitors wander among museum researchers’ benches and cabinets of curiosity; while the researchers themselves work away on whatever item they are currently assigned to. These historians are more than willing to explain their current project or discuss any of the items in their cabinet, and they sketch out broader historical narratives or themes by drawing visitors’ attention to related items. This concept is based on the idea of telling a person, “Hey – this is really cool! You can try it too, and I’ll help you along the way!” and is a mix of Bill Nye the Science Guy and comments that Bill Turkel made regarding teaching people how to do new things using computers.

The Ultimate Interactive History Experience
In this museum, visitors travel along a moving sidewalk that moves through different historical events acted out by automated characters (similar to being on the ride “Pirates of the Caribbean” at Walt Disney World). Visitors interested in learning more about a particular exhibit can hop off the sidewalk and walk past the automated figures to a backroom set. The set is a larger version of the automated scene, and museum employees take the interested visitors through a series of interactive activities. The employees, highlighting the different perspectives that particular groups held regarding the event in question, first sketch the movement or event out. Next, visitors get to be a part of a re-enactment of the event. Each visitor chooses a character to be, is dressed up as necessary, and is given a few key lines. Museum employees play the critical figures and include the visitors in acting out the event, which is recorded by other employees. Visitors leave with a DVD containing the recorded historical event (including any flubbed takes) as well as supplementary material regarding the exhibit. In a sense, the visitor takes the exhibit with him or her. This experience is a mix between the Indiana Jones interactive presentation at MGM Studios and the idea of having your picture taken while riding a roller coaster.

Responding to Oral History

2006-10-28T19:05:00.000-04:00

When I was younger, I once had the opportunity to be toured around a southwestern-Ontario courthouse by a judge who frequently held court there. Upon entering the empty library, which held the volumes documenting court proceedings in Ontario and Canada stretching deep in to the past, the judge had motioned for us to be silent.

“If you listen carefully,” he said in a low, mysterious voice, “you can almost hear the voices of past lawyers and judges speaking…”

Imagine being able to hear and to communicate with voices from the past! To interrogate and cross-examine historical voices speaking from within the context of the event or movement being studied would enable a vastly more complete and nuanced historical record! Since this is not the case though, historians are left with the option of examining different source documents or perhaps listening to recordings or interviews from the period being studied in order to discern what the voices from the past were saying; however, oral tradition offers the researcher a means of interacting, to a certain degree, with the past.

Oral history gives more information than a document because the researcher can hear emphasis, hesitation, and intonation in the speaker’s voice. Speakers tell their stories with a bias that comes out of their life experience. (Portelli, The Peculiarities of Oral History) The researcher or listener can agree or disagree with what is said, but in either case, a reaction makes that history more tangible.

What is it that makes history less dusty? A feeling of nostalgia might give greater significance to a part of history; intrigue, tangibility, or relevance can bring history to life though. As a visitor to museums, I learn the most from and get the most excited about exhibits that I can interact with and probe. These are the elements that make me ask questions to better understand the historical narrative. Oral history is one of these hooks that draw me in.

But does oral history always tell the correct or accepted narrative? Of course not, but it then becomes the responsibility of the historian or curator to put these stories into their context. The person hearing or reading an oral history should understand both the historical context of the events being described as well as the point of view and bias that the speaker is coming from. By contextualizing an oral history in both the past and present, the historian is creating an opportunity for the reader or listener to draw connections between the present and the past.

Public historians should also be aware of conclusions they want a reader or visitor walk away with. The tangible, such as an oral history, might be the highlight that allows somebody to recall the message that the historian was trying to create. In researching for a paper I was working on recently, I read an article (which I cannot reference – I didn’t write down the quote because it didn’t relate to my immediate research) in which the author stated: “what is kept in the mind is kept in mind.” The lessons that public historians convey lose their relevance if an exhibit has no tangible or remarkable element that will help the reader or visitor remember those lessons.

Creating New Connections

2006-10-21T14:58:00.000-04:00

One of the most diverting assignments that I have continually returned to over the past couple weeks has been looking at different network interfaces. A network interface is basically a visual way to organize and connect a lot of information, and there are definitely applications for these interfaces in the context of historical research.

The McCord Museum’s virtual exhibit offers a network interface that allows users to see the connections between different artifacts held by the museum. Clicking on different topics or items brings up more information on specific artifacts, creating a really neat way to explore the museum’s holdings. Unfortunately, the actual interface is constantly moving around, it doesn’t show the entire web of connections very well, and it isn’t very aesthetically-pleasing, especially when compared to other network interfaces.

Visual Complexity is an online database for network interfaces. Although many of the applications in this database are oriented towards the sciences, there are a couple interesting examples that could imitate what the McCord is doing.

Tracking the Threat is an interface that connects suspected terrorists to countries, terrorist activities, and organizations. The icons that represent these different entities can be moved around, and more information can be brought up by double-clicking on an icon. The maps that are created can also be focused by removing entities that the user is uninterested in. If this site was applied in a historical context and had its name changed to “Finding the Figure,” the interface could be used to connect historical figures to events, places, movements, organizations, or other individuals. Alternatively, one might call the site “Search for Scholarship” and create a network of information regarding historians. Scholars could be connected to institutions, topics of study, and publications. Such a tool might be useful for discovering potential research partners, employers or scholarly works on a desired subject.

LivePlasma is a site that uses information regarding music purchases from Amazon.com to create a network indicating what artists are the most popular and what other artist consumers bought albums from at the same time. The site also allows the networks that are generated to be saved or emailed. Such an interface might be used to track what pages were most popular in a website or what resources students were most interested in when doing library research for a history paper.

As a general application for historians, network interfaces have the potential to allow historians to organize and see information in novel ways. Names of people or places might be layered with historical information that can be accessed with a click of the mouse. References to journal articles or books might also be included in this layer of information. Alternatively, it might be possible to periodize history in different ways by starting from a generated network.

A general problem with many network interfaces seems to be that there can be so much information that it becomes difficult to see the forest for the trees, but this problem could easily be rectified by creating a zooming tool that eliminated broader connections or by creating a number of smaller networks that focused on more specific topics.

Network interfaces offer a very tangible way to manipulate data, which makes these interfaces useful for looking at historical information in a creative way.

Aggregating History

2006-10-21T12:41:00.000-04:00

One of the assignments for Digital History from two weeks ago was to learn about and make use of an RSS aggregator. An aggregator is essentially a program that informs the user when a specific website has been updated. Who cares when websites are updated? Well, when you’re a Public History student with the blogs of sixteen peers and instructors to keep up with, you do! As soon as I got Feedreader up and running, I immediately realized the benefit of an aggregator. Every time a blog is updated, I am immediately notified with a Messenger-type box. When I open Feedreader to see who has posted, I need only click on the title of the new post to have the text pop up in another section of the program, without having to connect to the blog itself. As a result, keeping track of who has been blogging has transformed into a much more efficient task.

It seems that historians could use aggregators in a number of different ways. It might be easier to stay up-to-date with colleagues’ research if an aggregator was collecting the RSS feed (the data that a website generates when it is updated) from those individuals’ blogs or websites. For example, I might add the RSS feeds of digital historians’ blogs in order to keep abreast of new developments in this field.

Aggregating information from e-journals or newspapers’ websites might be important for some historians, but this might lead to an information overload. (Carling experienced such a problem when she began using an aggregator) It would be useful to hack an aggregator so that it could search larger sources for key terms or authors to reduce such an overload from occurring.

In terms of tracking traffic on a website, it seems that aggregators might give a false impression that sites are not very popular. If a blog was scanned solely by aggregating programs, then traffic-observing software would note only a brief visit to the site, even though the human reader might thoroughly read each post. Nevertheless, RSS aggregators aresimple yet useful tools for gathering information from a variety of sources.

The Public Historian in the Intellectual Commons

2006-10-05T09:10:00.000-04:00

The Intellectual Commons: a place where knowledge can be shared by all. Individuals who come to the intellectual commons are free to deposit new information or make use of what is already available. Some will be great contributors; others will make use of the commons without ever contributing. Where are these commons? All around us: in classrooms and conferences, in books and blogs, in museums and movies, in editorials and educational television (perhaps even in some un-educational television).

The unifying quality of the intellectual commons that remains constant regardless of the medium is that the intellectual commons is always sought by people who wish to engage in an exchange of knowledge. How can the budding public historian employ this knowledge as he or she engages in a pursuit to share good history with others?

In this week’s readings for Public History, one author argued that Canadians were in need of a dominant historical narrative in order to develop a unified Canadian identity, while two other authors outlined research indicating that Americans put a different personal emphasis on the dominant American historical narrative, thus making their own. Aren’t these two authors commenting on the same phenomena? People are taking an interest in the elements of history that they are able to identify with. As people identify more strongly with particular elements of history, they take on a greater sense of ownership for those elements. Historians are the perfect example of this idea: they have taken such an interest in the subject of history that they have built a profession around the study of history and carved out niches of expertise, jealously protecting or arguing for what they accept as the proper narrative or theory. Conversely, the genealogist researching her roots at the time of First Contact will have little regard for how many soldiers and artillery pieces the North and the South brought to the Battle of Gettysburg.

“So what?” The communication of factual information, current research, and ideas supplementing what is already known should be a responsibility of those who choose to study history. Interestingly, the ownership that that non-historians have shown towards elements of the past has created intellectual commons outside of academia. Wikipedia is an example of such a common, and its design and content do not keep to accepted scholarly forms.

The public historian needs to be aware of these competing (or at least, co-existing) commons and create a space (be it exhibit, virtual exhibit, blog, database) that encompasses the needs of everybody who has ownership of and wishes to exchange knowledge regarding the past. Exhibits, for example, should be accessible, compelling to a variety of audiences, and open to interpretation at the same time that they are factual and indicative of the best-argued-for narratives. Content does not need to be cheapened (nor should it) for a public audience, but it may need to be presented in a different way.

Creating an exhibit that meets all of these specifications is challenging in and of itself, but it seems that it would be particularly difficult to hint at historical narratives without pigeon-holing that exhibit. Here are two suggestions: Could the text next to exhibit pieces and pictures ask questions instead of merely giving facts? Could a space be created at the end of the exhibit where the guest could become the creator and add a comment or an idea or a theme for subsequent guests to read and evaluate? It is vital to recognize that individuals coming to the intellectual commons can and do have a significant part to play in telling history; therefore, it is the public historian’s job to encourage dialogue from all parties within the commons.

From the Digital History Trenches

2006-10-02T22:14:00.000-04:00

At the beginning of September, I never would have imagined that in a month’s time I would be explaining the basic uses of data structures. Is “data structure” even a term that should be part of a historian’s vocabulary?

In my effort to empathize with and understand where computer scientists are coming from, I went through the tutorial explaining the use of data structures. Data structures are basically the different ways that packages of information can be stored inside a computer. Let me give outline the quick-and-dirty explanation of data structures: When a computer is searching for a particular piece of information, it is performing the same process that a person running their finger down a book index looking for a particular heading would do. Using different data structures in a computer though, information can be ordered and accessed in a number of different ways, and shortcuts between information packets can also be created to accelerate this process. As far as how this information affects historians, I think that it is important to understand that data structures can take different forms, so it is possible to make information access more efficient.

The development and troubleshooting of data structures seemed a technical Everest to me though, and so I was glad to complete my basic training in data structures and move on to experimenting with different tagging websites.

An on-going project is my effort to tag links that have been useful in my research regarding the archives of Canadian aboriginals. Using del.icio.us to collect and tag these websites feels like a repetitive and unnecessary step, especially considering that searching the sites tagged by other del.icio.us users has not yielded any particularly useful results. Nevertheless, the absence of useful links is one of the reasons that I want to continue this effort. Now that I am aware of this deficiency in del.icio.us, I feel like I have a certain responsibility as a discriminating researcher to bring useful links to the table. There is no system to how I tag websites though, which might decrease the usefulness of my efforts. My method for tagging sites is simply to put down whatever relevant words pop into my head. I will continue to tag resources for this essay as I come across them but will likely not make use of del.icio.us much after this assignment is over. It is not an effective research tool because tags are not assigned systematically (as I myself have demonstrated!).

My other experiment with tagging was a comparison of the results that del.icio.us, Flickr, and Technorati came up with using the same search terms. I will outline my observations and conclusions briefly. del.icio.us consistently came up with the least relevant results. The websites that were tagged were frequently trivial or completely off the desired topic. Flickr showed the most varied results; however, the tags were frequently appropriate for the pictures displayed. Technorati’s results were often the most informative, although tailoring the search results to show only the most authoritative blogs is what really improved these search results dramatically.

For the time being, none of these websites are particularly effective as researching tools. More relevant and authoritative results can more frequently be found by performing a Google search. On the other hand, I should note that there might be other applications for these sites. T. Mills Kelly and Joseph Ugoretz have both proposed ways in which students’ learning experience might be enhanced using sites such as Flickr. Dare we learn through what communities on the Internet share?

Emphasis on the History

2006-10-02T22:12:00.000-04:00

Last week, the name of this blog changed from “Exercises in Humility” to “Humility in History.” The change was a result of reading Cohen and Rosenzweig’s chapter on building a virtual audience for a history website. The inclusion of the word history in the title will move me (marginally) higher in Google’s search results, which in turn could attract more readers to this blog. “Humility in History” also gives readers a better idea of the topics that this blog reflects upon. As public historians, it is important to be intentional even in how we advertise ourselves and the information that we are presenting to the public.

Compelling History

2006-10-02T12:22:00.000-04:00

One of the pivotal skills that a public historian should possess is the ability to present history in a compelling and interesting way to an audience. Although blogging is a means by which to reflect on learning how to be a public historian, it seems that the blog also provides an excellent opportunity to practice be compelling and interesting.

Re-read the above paragraph. Does it fulfil the objective that it sets out? Is it an interesting or compelling passage to read? Maybe for instructors, classmates, family, or close friends, but that is only because all of those people have to read this blog. What would make this entry fascinating to the casual blog reader? Blogging brilliance is elusive, but as I got caught up on what my peers had been blogging about, I caught a few notable instances of inspiration.

Bryan has been struggling with two ideas that I have interpreted into these two questions: “Does Public History have a place in the Canadian context?” and “How do I create a significant place for myself within the sphere of Public History while remaining outside of the academy?” Bryan’s blogging caught my attention because the questions were very relevant to me. Relevance – this is a teachable moment.

Kris started off a post that considered what it meant to be involved in public history by relating how she answered the oft-heard question, “So what are you going to do with that degree?”

"Although I started the summer by telling people that I wanted to do "Museum work" (specific enough to stop the questions, vague enough to leave the possibilities open), I later adopted a comedic routine for my questioners. I told them I was going to open a history store, sell history and be wildly rich."

Inspired. I had a mental image of a store selling History-in-a-Box and Scoops of Historiography, with Kris throwing hundred-dollar bills into the air in the middle of the store. A wildly-rich historian? Does such a creature exist? Humour – another teachable moment.

On Alan MacEachern’s blog, my eyes were drawn to a link entitled “Old is the New New.” Rob McDougall, an assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario, has manages a far-reaching blog that not only touches on research interests but also highlights some of the quirkier sites related to history that can be found on the web. The entire site has been put together in a thoughtful, professional-looking manner while at the same time crying out, “Let’s not take ourselves too seriously here folks.” An inviting, professional, and fun feel – a third teachable moment.

As a public historian and a blogger, I have a lot of areas for improvement as I work towards presenting compelling and interesting history. By being relevant to my audience, employing humour, conveying professionalism, and creating an inviting forum in which to share history, I should be able to be a successful public historian.

Of course, these goals do not follow SMART guidelines (Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time-wise), which means these are ideas that need more thought. For the sake of my reader though, I leave goal-setting to another post and simply ask that you hold me to these vague and lofty goals for now.

What's In A Name?

2006-09-29T12:03:00.000-04:00

Flickr, del.icio.us, and Technorati are three examples of websites that allow “tagging” – the practice of user-defined subject classification. What words come to mind when you look at the picture of a baby? Cute, baby, eyes, youth, diapers, responsibility, hope? All of those would be suitable tags that a Flickr user could assign to the picture.

Tags not only allow a creator to assign his or her own subject headings to Internet content but also connect this content to other text, music, and pictures that have similar tags. A search on Flickr for pictures with the tag “relief” brings up albums related to Hurricane Katrina, to art from across the globe, to relief services in Lebanon and Pakistan, to baseball pitchers, and even to men relieving themselves on the side of the road. The way in which such different ideas, subjects, and contexts are tied together is one of the fascinating qualities of tagging.

As a research tool however, tagging’s usefulness diminishes. While using tags works well for finding general and popular information, there is a noticeable scarcity when specific information is sought out. Furthermore, resources that are tagged are not necessarily the most reliable. Searches performed using del.icio.us (where websites are tagged) for “American Indian,” “polymers,” and “John A. Macdonald” almost never showed authoritative websites in the search results, which might indicate that the people who are tagging the most popular sites are not necessarily being as discriminating a researcher as a student or scholar might be.

Does tagging have a utility for historians if, in its current manifestations, it is more of a hindrance than a help in researching? Certainly there are proponents of tagging. The creators of Steve.museum hope to build a larger community of individuals attending art museums by allowing patrons to tag pieces of art that are posted in Steve.museum’s online gallery. By allowing patrons to tag museum holdings, curators are hoping to make art more accessible to a greater number of people.

Such a tactic seems like more of a gimmick to get individuals onto a website or into a gallery, but his does not mean that tagging is entirely bereft of benefits. Patron-tagging is another way that museum-goers and scholars can have a dialogue. Curators might use popular tags as keywords when describing a new exhibit in advertising. Tagging is also useful in identifying what is popular among patrons or what patrons find controversial. Educators might also make use of student tagging. If students, whether at the secondary or post-secondary level, were able to tag research resources and course readings, instructors might gain a better sense of how students are conducting research and where students’ interests lie. Instructors might tag resources themselves as a different way to give students a start on where to look for research or supplementary material.

On the other hand, when considering the usefulness of tags for researching, it seems best to leave classification up to experts. While it is important to ensure that jargon is minimized to make information accessible to the public, systematic naming facilitates more efficient searching and should ideally lead to answers faster.

Objects That Speak

2006-09-27T21:24:00.000-04:00

In his article “The History of Technology and the Study of Material Culture,” Carroll W. Pursell Jr. asks whether material culture tells its own story or whether material culture is used to tell a different story.(1) My immediate response upon reading this question was that material culture passed down to historians should tell solely its own story. Just as a historian should not force printed evidence into his or her argument in an essay, neither should a museum curator place a particular item into an exhibit simply because the object fits the context of the larger exhibit. For example, in an essay describing Newfoundland’s entrance into Confederation, an author would not discuss Joseph Smallwood’s eating habits unless this information contributed to the argument. Likewise, a curator of an exhibit on the weapons used in the Vietnam War would not place any gun or missile from the period into the exhibit unless it had a specific connection to the events that took place in Vietnam.

Upon further consideration of this question though, I revised my opinion. Material culture should tell its own story; however, such artifacts can contribute to a larger narrative if the context of each artifact’s story is understood. One of the interesting parts of going to a museum is seeing leftover objects from past events, and it is fascinating to discover where such artifacts came from, how they were used, and how they made their way into a museum. Nevertheless, the stories of individual artifacts can be woven together to develop an overarching account of a particular period or theme.

Pursell’s question seems particularly pertinent since our class went to Museum London today to learn more about the “Innovations and Inventions” exhibit that we will be creating this winter. From our conversation with the historical curator, we discovered that we will be responsible for the bulk of the factual content and creative effort that goes into creating an exhibit. Might it be possible to include the provenance and story of the items we are putting on display? Perhaps it would be interesting to discuss particular inventions’ success (or failure), utility, or the company (or individual) that created or produced a particular invention.

If every artifact has its own story, how does one let that story be told, while also presenting a grander narrative, while also presenting this information in a way that challenges patrons to draw their own conclusions about the historical information they are receiving? That will be one of the major questions that I will be trying to answer through this process.

1 – Carroll W. Pursell Jr., “The History of Technology and the Study of Material Culture,” in Material Culture: A Research Guide (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), p.118.

At the Algorithm Crossroads

2006-09-25T23:31:00.000-04:00

This week I made an effort to dive into the mysterious world of computer science and programming by doing an online tutorial on algorithms and some reading on artificial intelligence. It was a disaster.

That’s an over-statement. Algorithms turned out to be a lot less complicated than I presumed. Any set of explicit instructions is considered an algorithm, and it is useful to have computers carry out algorithms because of the high processing power that computers possess. Algorithms would clearly be useful in sorting out and ranking quantitative information for a historian to analyze. Complicated algorithms could likely be developed to analyze text or images to find pertinent information for a historian. Algorithms are at the center of the Google search engine. The ability to manipulate algorithms will likely be of great value to historians as more and more historical data and scholarship becomes available on the Internet.

The “disaster” of this learning experience was how incredibly uninteresting I found the entire lesson. In a program where everything I have read has been compelling and new, these exercises were decidedly dull. This surprised me because I thought that the Digital History class would be a good opportunity to learn a little more about the nuts and bolts of computers than your average historian. When I realized how quickly I was glazing over as I read about the basics of artificial intelligence, I was a little disappointed in myself.

I find myself re-assessing my goals at this point; I am no longer sure that I can go through with learning all of the ins-and-outs of computer programming, but I am not willing to give up completely. As a public historian-in-training, it seems important that I be able to take advantage of different types of media in order to reach people in a number of different ways. On the other hand, as somebody who hopes to be an educator, it seems important that I have a good grounding in the resources and tools that are available through digital technology. Furthermore, I do not think that it is my instructor’s intention that I choose exercises that will bore me to tears.

This then is my compromise: I am going to leave artificial intelligence alone but continue on with the online computer science tutorials. I believe that, as a public historian and an individual with a liberal arts education, I should “be at the table” during discussions regarding the digitization of the historical record. If I cannot be on the same page as computer scientists when they are talking about the challenges of programming a new database, at the very least I can appreciate where they are coming from and empathize with the specialized work that they get to do. And who knows… maybe by the end of the semester I will be able to mash a little bit of code together.

Humble historians of the world unite!

It's About Museums and Heritage Moments

2006-09-25T22:23:00.000-04:00

The question that people most-frequently ask a student who is working towards an MA in Public History seems to be “So what exactly is ‘Public History?’” After two full weeks of class, a little reading, and some discussion with other students in this program, the picture of what Public History is has begun to come together.

Phyllis Leffer and Joseph Brent have argued in “History and Its Audiences” that historians’ responsibility grew in the late-twentieth century to not just researching and writing about moments in history but also presenting this information to the public in a manner that makes the research significant. Rebecca Conrad and Noel Stowe have both proposed that public historians must be intentional in the way that they present historical information to the public. Public historians must continuously be reflecting about what they are presenting, why they are presenting this particular body of information, and how they are presenting it.

Public History is valuable as a distinct field of historical study because it focuses on the theory and practice of communicating ideas and evidence about the past to an audience and doing so in a compelling manner. Public History conveys the research of historians, which has been financed through tuitions, donations, and public funding, to the general public. Good Public History should create a bridge between the public and academics, whereby both groups can benefit from and enjoy the results of scholarly efforts. As such, Public History teaches revealing the inquiry process to individuals, and it challenges people to think about the information in front of them and to create their own interpretation of past events.

As I discussed in my previous post, there is a value in sharing History with others. The prospect of being trained as a public historian is exciting because conveying information about history to others is what this program is all about. This program teaches historians how to be accountable to their audience. There is an element of continuing to learn how to ask questions and conduct research in order to construct an argument; however, arguments are formed outside of the academic journal. There seems to be a focus on relating to an audience and finding opportunities to present historical material to this group. In presenting historical information, public history students are expected to begin to consider the impact of the information being offered and the reasons they have for creating a certain exhibit or program. This program teaches students to re-consider with each new situation how to best present historical information.

As a Public History student, it seems that I have a pretty big job as well. This is a solid opportunity for me to hone my team-working skills in a professional environment. If I choose to pursue further endeavours in Public History, I will be working with numerous groups; therefore, this program gives me the opportunity to be an intentional group member. It also seems important to expose myself to as many forms of public history as possible while I am a student in order to increase the number of ideas I have to draw on as a professional. Being a conscientious practitioner of Public History by interrogating the process and product of my efforts is probably the final element that I need to intentionally work towards. This means making myself aware of ethical and awareness issues related to the work that I do.

In writing this post, I was hoping to lay down some fundamental ideas regarding Public History that I could refer to throughout the year. I do not believe that I have succeeded in doing so today, but I think that this post does reflect my growing, if imperfect, knowledge of Public History. I will therefore leave the matter at that for now and hope for further illumination.

Regarding the Study of the Past and Writing Histories

2006-09-22T09:52:00.000-04:00

The post-modernist position regarding history, as I understand it from Keith Jenkins’ introduction to Rethinking History, argues that individuals do not have the ability to write about the past. Post-modernists argue that there is not enough evidence from the past to re-create even a small moment in the historical narrative. Whatever evidence is available to the writer may be interpreted out of context because each writer brings his or her own biases to the table when writing history. Finally, even if an author’s interpretation history does in some way reflect the past, readers will also understand this interpretation in a different context because of the biases, beliefs, and pressures that the readers are experiencing.

Is there a point to studying history if all histories are merely individual historians’ interpretations of the past and not reflections of events that occurred in the past?

I am neither able nor do I wish to respond directly to the post-modernist argument regarding the study of the past and the writing of history. On the other hand, the ideas raised and questions posed by the post-modernist argument create an opportunity to examine my own reasons for studying history.

The study of history is essential in helping me to build an identity and to identify elements in the world around me.
As a historian, I am very curious to understand how we (whether as individuals, as a society, or as a global community) have gotten to here. What events occurred between Then and Now to make us who we are and our world what it is? If we build histories based on our own biases, as the post-modernists would have us believe, are there defining moments that we can logically agree have led to certain circumstances in the present? History then is important because knowing where I come from gives me a better sense of who I am.

There is a sense of fulfillment to be had from studying history.
As a researcher, it is exciting to come across a document or piece of evidence giving insight into the past. It is satisfying to be able to put together a logical narrative from the evidence used. As a student, it is rewarding to finally comprehend another author’s argument and point of view. History then can be an enjoyable pastime.

It is a joy and a privilege to be able to share histories with others.
Whether conveying my own interpretation of the past or helping individuals to come up with their own interpretation, it is a powerful experience to be able to share ideas and thereby share in and contribute to the creation of identity and fulfillment of study.

There is a value in the honing interpretive and argumentative skills that are critical to the study of the past.
Perhaps there is no way to determine an absolute truth about the past, but what are the most logical truths? How can historians creatively interpret evidence to create a historical narrative? How must evidence be presented in order to be relayed to the reader the way that the author intended the evidence to be read? The ability to interrogate sources of information and convey ideas in a clear, reasonable way are not just important scholarly skills, but important life skills for individuals as friends, workers, and citizens. To study history is a way to improve one’s self as a person.

Others will likely have other reasons for studying history, and those reasons will be as valuable as my own. May our collective reasons for studying history continue to be the foundation upon which we work to understand ourselves and the world around us.

Single Box Searching

2006-09-21T09:15:00.000-04:00

After reading Google’s manuals on The Essentials of Google Search, Advanced Search Made Easy, and Advanced operators and then putting these instructions into practice, it is clear that a multiple-box search is the most practical solution when searching for specific information on the Internet. Why then does Google’s homepage have only a single search box? Presumably the results that Google’s search engine turn up are relevant enough that an appropriate link will appear on the first page. Many people might not want to spend time filling out multiple boxes. There is also a visual appeal to having a single box prompting you for information. Nevertheless, it appears that an advanced search is more effective for sustained, specific research questions needing more reliable sources than Wikipedia.

An advanced search, whether using the advanced operators in a single-box search or simply using the multiple-box search option, has the advantage of clarifying the searcher’s intentions, which is something that no search engine can do unless it gets inside your head. The initial attempt to use Google’s advanced operators successfully improved the quality of the results that were returned, which was expected after using search engines for gated scholarly databases. (A more quantitative indicator of the search’s improved success was the fact that the results numbered in the hundred thousands rather than the ten millions, but who ever goes through more than the first hundred links, or even the first page of results, anyways?) Without consistently using the operators in the single-box search though, these terms could be easily forgotten (which was my own case). Thankfully, the advanced search page offers the exact same options, using multiple boxes to prompt the user for specific information about the subject being searched. In either case though, search results dramatically improved with the addition of more qualifiers for Google to use.

Google services such as Froogle and Google Scholar were effective for further improving search results, with the number of results decreasing to the thousands or even hundreds using a detailed advanced search. Searching for items on Froogle worked better than finding articles on Google Scholar. Perhaps this reflects the gated nature of a great deal of academic research. The use of Find Forward’s search grid made viewing a larger number of search results easier; however, the findings did not appear any more relevant, and the use of operators did not seem to work particularly well despite the fact that Find Forward makes use of Google search results.

From a researcher’s point of view, this exercise indicates that not only is it useful to employ an advanced-search option when looking for information on the Internet, but also that it is critical to know as detailed an idea as possible about the thing or subject being studied in advance of using the Internet. Such information can dramatically improve the relevance of the results that Google comes up with. It is instructive to know that certain gated databases, such as Historical Abstracts, only have a multiple-box search engine. Furthermore, it is necessary to use a number of search engines (to cover both public and gated websites) in order to comprehensively discover and evaluate all of the resources available on the Internet. Single-box searches are simply not the most effective way to uncover information on the Internet.

With the limitations of a single-box search in mind, a public historian should be mindful of the fact that many people will only use the single box to look for historical information. It is therefore important that research, exhibits, and databases made available for public use are presented in a clear, user-friendly manner. Additionally, information on a homepage should clearly convey the website’s purpose in order to be show up as more relevant on other search engines.

The fact is that the single box has a lot of appeal for people looking for information. Why? We’re in a rush.

Free Beer vs. Free Speech

2006-09-19T12:29:00.000-04:00

This week's set of readings for Digital History (02. Open Source) examined the topic of open-source information and used the example of Wikipedia to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of taking an open-source approach to sharing historical information and research. A number of observers have noted that collaborative projects such as Wikipedia and Flickr are picking up a great deal of momentum; however, despite their popularity, there is still room for individuals (both casual users and historians) to help define the overriding structure of such projects. (1) Historians have the opportunity to use a number of novel and traditional tools to create a large quantity high-grade historical information available for public use. It is advisable that historians make use of these tools in order to address observed deficiencies while at the same time encouraging an environment where ideas can be shared, revised, and expanded upon. Open-source software and information provide the foundation upon which historians can develop such a project. The delayed digital release of journal articles upholds traditional practices of academic scholarship while making information essentially free. Although students will continue to face sources of bad history, instruction in evaluating sources will also continue to serve students in using appropriate Web resources.

An open-source solution to creating a quality database of historical information does not mean that historians need to re-invent the wheel; rather, software and information that are freely available for the public to use have already provided historians with a headstart to creating such a database. Open source means that the material in question can be reused, reproduced, and modified without the creator's permission. (2) Wikipedia and Google are two sites who's managers allow others to make use of the sites' resources. Wikipedia's information is all open source, and although Google does not share all of its software, it does allow other users to make use of its substantial search power. A search of Wikipedia using Google could possibly be an effective way of retrieving history articles that have already been published by Wikipedia users. Historians might then create a separate wiki requiring a password to edit, re-publish the Wikipedia entries, and allow scholars to edit these entries at their leisure. Such a solution would enable experts (without having to compete with other contributors) to raise the quality of historical information provided by Wikipedia while maintaining the creative energy derived from allowing anybody to develop an entry for the online encyclopedia.

Roy Rosenzweig suggests multiple ways that scholarship could be made free for public use; however, there are consequences for scholarly publications were made free and public. The most notable challenge needing to be addressed is that the responsibility to pay for and review such scholarship falls because more onerous if no revenue is being created through journal sales. (3) Companies that provide gated access to scholarly journals likewise would lose enormous amounts of revenue. The best option that Rosenzweig proposes seems to be one that continues to support journals' existence in paper-form while also allowing academic research to be made public in a reasonable amount of time. Delaying the digital release of journals would encourage many libraries to continue to subscribe to the print versions in order to remain up-to-date, but the eventual public release of these articles (which are often written with the support of public funding) would enable the general public to easily benefit from this information as well. Much research that is hidden in the deep web would also be uncovered, again improving the quality of historical information available on the web. It is important, and I believe more realistic, to continue to allow journals and the "middle companies" providing e-journals to libraries to conduct business in such a way that allows them to adjust to an open source model of sharing information; however, I would agree with other writers that users, be they academics, libraries, or enthusiasts, should receive the greatest benefit from the research that scholars publish.

The greatest challenge of an expansion of open-source material will be teaching students how to judge sources. Although with open-source information, it is hoped that there would be a relatively greater amount of scholarly work available to students, it is likely that hobbyists would also make use of this information to augment their own sites. The implication of open source history for students is that search skills will also have to be honed in order to effectively navigate the information available while judgment skills will also be necessary in order to interrogate digital sources for their worthiness. This will require more intentional instruction not at the college or university level, but at the secondary level, where students are learning the fundamentals of researching and argumentative writing. Both teachers and students will have to adjust strategies in order to make use of an open-source database, but in the end, the principle of open source should be achieved in a historical context: to build on previous ideas to make something new, different, and hopefully, historically compelling.

1 - Daniel J. Cohen, ÂRaw Archives and Hurricane Katrina,Â dancohen.org (28 Aug 2006) and Jim Giles, ÂInternet Encyclopedias Go Head to Head,Â Nature (14 Dec 2005) both comment on the growth of collaborative projects. Sanger, Larry. ÂThe New Politics of Knowledge,Â Constructing the Digital Universe (31 Jul 2006) describes how online governance is still being decided upon.

2 - Please refer to Google definitions

3 - Rosenzweig, Roy. ÂShould Historical Scholarship Be Free?Â AHA Perspectives (Apr 2005). Cohen, Daniel J. and Roy Rosenzweig. ÂOwning the Past,Â Digital History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2005.

The Big Picture

2006-09-11T20:55:00.000-04:00

After working through the first set of readings for my Digital History course and wondering how I'm going to keep them all straight in my head for class tomorrow, I thought it might be useful to write down a few observations... and since this blog is for commenting on my learning experience, I might as well post my thoughts!

The big themes in the readings this week seem to be as follows...
... there is a heck of a lot of digital information out there and it is only going to get bigger in the coming years
... all this information could be of potential use to historians since we could have, for the first time, a complete historical record of human activity; additionally, digitized information means that anybody with a computer and Internet access could tap into humankind's collective knowledge (which would be good)
.... information in a digital format also allows both scholars and amateurs to cross examine information in new and dynamic ways
... unfortunetly, digital information is also incredibly fragile and we're not doing a very good job of making sure it is all preserved; nor are we doing a good job of making sure copyright laws allow for an optimal exchange of scholarly ideas; nor have we figured out a way to rapidly digitize all of the information that is on paper/film/etc. and keep it in a format that people will be able to use in 50 or even 20 years (all of which are problems)

I was definitely caught up in the articles as I read them. It was a powerful thought to learn that Google was not only a powerful search tool for historical research, but was itself a piece of historical evidence. The idea that all of humankind's collective knowledge could potentially be available to anybody is also pretty exciting: it is the ultimate practical example of two heads being better than one! I was likewise frustrated that copyright laws and business interests seem to be detracting from the goal of digitizing the whole of human knowledge. I felt inspired to do my bit to ensure that I and future generations of historians might be able to effectively look at an authentic, significant, and whole historical record.

When considering these issues and readings afterwards though, a number of questions popped up. Who in the foreseeable future would benefit the most from "the greatest archive since the Library of Alexandria"? How much money is going towards preserving digital information and could that money be better spent on people who are in need? How much energy is used to create digital archives? Hopefully at some point we will be saving trees by digitizing information and using electric forms, but are we saving the planet as we make these archives?? A part of me screamed, "In the big picture, this is just a small detail!!"

After thinking and re-writing though, the big picture that I see is this: the fact is that we use computers for communicating, researching, and presenting. Computers, whether we love'em or hate'em, have become an integral part of how we help others, come up for cures, and even include people. The information and the process of developing those ideas need to be kept in order for us to correct mistakes and do better the next time. Furthermore, one of the functions of history is to learn from mistakes and to repeat and commemorate successes.

It doesn't seem like archivists, historians, businesses, or governments are going to be able to secure a complete digital record of human activity anytime soon, but I would have to agree that it is important for historians and for humans to preserve as much knowledge as possible in whatever format we're creating it in in the moment (for now, digital). It's a pretty awesome opportunity to give so much knowledge to whoever is interested in learning more, so if we can all work towards that in our own way (and I think that it is going to be universities and private interests that lead the way), then it is a solid cause to hang a hat on.

Welcome Welcome!!

2006-09-10T14:27:00.000-04:00

Hi There!

Welcome to the space where, for the next few months, I will be recording and reflecting on my ventures into the exciting world of Public History. This blog is a required part of course and program requirements for my MA in Public History, but I really hope that it will be exciting (or at the very least interesting) to write and to read.

I suppose that I should explain the title of my blog briefly. Instead of simply naming the blog after myself, I decided to choose a title that reflected both my willingness to try new things as well as my expectation that I'm going to screw-up along the way. Hopefully, I can learn from those screw-ups with a smile on my face... well, maybe I'll look back on those screw-ups and smile... ;-p

The links that you will find on the side connect you to both more information about my program as well as to some social justice issues that I'm interested in. If I'm going to put myself out on the Web, I might as well use this opportunity to raise awareness as well!

To friends and family who take the time to read these posts: Hopefully this blog will give you a better idea of what I'm doing at school. And no, I haven't transformed into a computer geek. Yet.

To my profs: So far, so good. I hope this is a decent intro!!

And if you're still reading and intend to read subsequent posts, whoever you are, thanks so much for your interest and support.