Crowd Sourcing and Digital Curating

{grow}. www.businessgrow.com

Museum exhibits offer a lasting impact to historical events. They give physical presence to past times and people, leaving us to contemplate their significance. The internet, however, is changing all of this. After all, as Cohen and Rosenzweig point out (here) that there are now digital "artifacts" that need to be collected and preserved. In fact, in many ways the internet has opened up a whole new option for history curators because now they can more easily communicate with other historians and even the audiences to build better exhibits. However, with these new advances there are also new setbacks that can make collecting and curating history online a difficult task.

Cohen and Rosenzweig write that "its very name - the Internet - underscores how this advanced computer network exists to shuttle information between and among people."Think of all the possibilites this means for historians! Endless research at a click of the mouse! Instantaneous feedback on their ideas! As John Herbert and Karen Estlund write in their article "Creating Citizen Historians"some institutions have begun to unlock the potential of the internet as a tool for historians. The Utah Digital Newspapers program is the leading newspaper archive (as of 2008). Their goal is to provide access to researchers - or anybody really - who wants to view Utah's newspapers from the past. Herbert and Estlund tell us that the newspapers have been used in a wide variety of ways for research. For example, Roy Webb of the Marriott Library used the Utah Digital Newspapers to create a presentation on the history of soccer in Utah. They also say that the newspapers are a treasure trove for genealogists and amateur historians as well.

Since the internet provides a means of communication between viewer and creator, it can also reverse those roles, turning the viewer into the creator. Crowd sourcing is a keyword in this discussion because it means that people who create websites can actually mine content from their audience. The very popular site Flickr operates largely on crowd sourcing. People upload their own photos and then they and other users can tag, make notes and comment on the photos to build the metadata (i.e. content) and meaning to the photos. The Library of Congress has jumped aboard the crowd sourcing concept by opening its very own Flickr account. The great thing about the Library of Congress' Flickr is, as the Spellbound Blog puts it: "More eyes will see the treasures that once were only available to those who could get inside temperature and humidity controlled vaults."

But, there's a huge drawback to the LOC Flickr account. Namely, as Larry Cebula likes to point out "the notes are mostly smart-ass remarks, the comments are empty, the tags are idiosyncratic." In fact, this highlights one of the largest drawbacks of crowd sourcing. How do we filter through all the muck? Cohen and Rosenzweig wisely suggest that such crowd-sourced-content be reviewed by professionals in their "Qualitative Concerns" subheading. I would have to agree with this, after all just because historians want to sit back and let their audience create the meat-and-potatoes of their website, doesn't mean that the historian should become lazy. Certain amounts of skeptical review must be applied to incoming information. In the case of the LOC Flickr account I would suggest a "lock" where comments, tags, etc. must first be reviewed for quality before being viewable to the general public.

What I found more useful than the LOC Flickr account was the myLOC.gov site. This site basically makes the Library of Congress much more personal by allowing you to create your own collection. The collection is a portfolio you put together by adding your favorite Library of Congress documents. And if you like myLOC you should definitely check out Omeka! Like the myLOC site, Omeka allows you to create collections, instead you get to create a collection website. The basic version is free and the possibilities are endless. The internet is a gold-mine of opportunities for historians and wisely using tools like Flickr, myLOC and Omeka will certainly make history more accessible to anyone who is curious about history.

Beauty, Function, and Google

Google has provided us not only with free research riches but also with a helpful direct challenge to our research methods, for which we should be grateful. Is Google good for history? Of course it is.

-          Dan Cohen

When I started thinking about writing this week’s blog post, I didn’t want to focus too much on Google because a lot of what Google has to offer goes without saying. Most of us use Google on a daily basis, it’s almost as ground breaking as the internet itself, and it is an invaluable research tool. Duh. However, after reading a number of excellent articles outlining the pros and cons of Google – as well as a lot of new information on how to get better at using Google as a tool – I can’t help but spend some time on it anyway. Google is by no means perfect, as Geoffrey Nunberg likes to point out (here) and Daniel Cohen (here), but it works well for historians for several important reasons. 

 Google Operating System. googlesystem.blogspot.com

The clean layout of Google Search is both attractive and functional.

 

Daniel Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig deftly identify what makes a good website in “Designingfor the History Web.” They write that websites should marry beauty with utility.  In other words, a site must be both useful and make sense visually. Accomplishing these two goals allows visitors to navigate the site, and encourages them to return. They also believe that good design means that a site looks good, without distracting from content. In this respect, Google is a beautiful website (for the most part). The search engine page is especially concise, simple and easy to use. By not using too much color, contrasting text against its background, and formatting the layout to be straight-forward and clean looking, Google has accomplished what many sites should strive for.  

Learning to use Google is easy for anyone, but learning to use Google as productively as possible takes a little more investigation. Claire Cain Miller’s article “A Class to Teach You How to Use Google” informs us that Google actually offers a free course to anyone who wants to learn how to hone their “Googling” skills. Investigative reporter John Tedesco’s article “How to Solve Impossible Problems: Daniel Russell’s Awesome GoogleSearch Techniques” picks the brain of a Google insider, revealing the hidden powers of the Google search. In short, there are many resources available to scholars seeking to improve their search techniques.

One of the largest undertakings of Google in the past decade has certainly been its venture to digitize millions of books. This is a beautiful thing for anyone who has ever had their research undermined by a limited public or academic library. However, Google Books is not at all as usable as Google Search. Two of the big obstacles presented to researchers who try to use Google Books is that there are gross errors in publication dates and categorization, according to Nunberg. And this is to say nothing of the fact that, according to Cohen, scholars cannot download these books to store for easy access – even public domain texts that have no copyrights caging them in.

So, Google is great, but it isn’t the Alpha and Omega of internet research tools for historians. There is always room for improvement, and it is important for digital historians to realize the strengths and weaknesses of websites they use for research. Learning from these examples, and remembering Cohen and Rosenzweig’s points about web design can help digital historians both seek-out and create functional and attractive websites.

How Good Are Your Critical Thinking Skills? http://www.copyblogger.com/critical-thinking/

Historians must always question and think critically in order to learn.

Speaking of attractive sites, I would like to point out how much I like Josh Catone’s online article “How to Use Google Search More Effectively [INFOGRAPHIC].” While not a website, per se, this article does everything a viewer could ask for. It is a graphic that is created by the content so that the content has visual impact, but still keeps the content easy to understand. Certainly anyone who needs a quick overview of Google research techniques could learn from this article. I think one of the best ways to get a feel for what a well designed site or page is, is to think critically about all the websites that you visit. Eventually, when you are called upon to create something of your own you will know what works, what doesn’t and how to make your content more powerful by design.

Digital Literacy and the Successful Historian

 El Borak's Myopia. elborak.blogspot.com

The idea that anyone can dive into the digital realm and stay afloat without the necessary tools is ludicrous. Just as we learned to make sense of letters, words, and phrases as children, we must now learn to make sense of the infinitely more complex world of technology. It cannot be emphasized enough how imperative becoming digitally literate is to becoming successful in today's world. History scholars especially seem to need an extra push to understand the importance of technology in their work. I'm one of them. Personally, technology scares me - mostly because I am too lazy to learn too much about it, and also because it still seems like something of a fad to me. However, the more I learn about the advances of technology and its implications for history scholarship, the more I realize that technology and digital history are here to stay. In fact, I would venture to guess that any jobs related to my major will require functional knowledge of the digital world.

The burning question on most history students' minds - besides grand theories of historical significance - is the really practical issue of how to become an employed (i.e. successful) historian. Even with the supposedly dismal number of jobs these days, there are tools now available to history students that can greatly improve their chances of finding and getting hired for a job.

First off, read Cohen and Rosenzweig's Digital History. If you have any lingering doubts about the usefulness of technology in history scholarship, that website will certainly put it to rest. This week's readings from the "Getting Started" and "Becoming Digital" sections are excellent resources on the particulars of starting out on a journey of digitization. I especially appreciated the very last part which was "Who Does the Digitizing? Should you Do It Yourself?" because it is something many historians will have to face at some point: should they be programmer/historians or simply hire an outsider to program their materials? Cohen and Rosenzweig basically come to the conclusion that it really depends on the scale of the project and what you, the historian, want to accomplish.

After becoming thoroughly convinced of the importance of technology in your career path by Cohen and Rosenzweig you may progress to Spiro's Digital Scholarship in the Humanities - especially the post "Getting Started in the Digital Humanities." In this post Spiro makes a list of things to do to become a good digital scholar, but I also want to point out that the list makes a great outline of things you can do to advance your career. Here's a shortened (and somewhat interpreted) version of the list:

• Determine what goals or questions motivate you.
• Get acquainted with the digital humanities/history.
• Participate in the digital history community (i.e. blogs, and other scholarly discourse online)
• Stay informed by reading online articles, keeping up with historical news, etc.
• Explore examples for inspiration and models online and in other digital formats.
• Pursue training.
• Learn standards and best practices.
• Find collaborators - don't forget to use online networking!
• Plan a pilot project, and don't be afraid to collaborate online via email, Skype, etc.
• Where possible, adopt/adapt existing digital tools. 

What else needs to be added to the list? To be honest, there are probably countless bullets that could be added, but Spiro offers an excellent starting point. Digital technology is the newest and sharpest tool available to scholars today and should be used actively. Knowing how to utilize technology to your advantage can bolster your already weighty intellect and provide a solid foundation for your successful career as a historian.

Computers and History

When speaking of the digitization of the past it seems appropriate to have a discussion about computers. After all, the advent of personal and user-friendly computers has been the main vehicle used to access digitized history thus far. The video above inspired this post because it brought up several great points about computer technology.

First off, though there are skeptics out there who believe that technology can have a detrimental effect on the preservation and quality of historical data available to the public, technology still relies on human instruction. Though there is a plethora of questionable historical resources on the web, learning to filter through websites - and possibly even glean helpful information from less-than-outstanding sites - is part of becoming computer literate these days. Just as in a conventional library students learn to reach for books with reputable authors, they can (and do) learn to use computers to find reputable sites with legitimate information.

As said in the videos, computers can share "what's good about humanity, and what isn't." Sharing is really the key to the success of computers today - especially for the digital historian. Having the ability to access thousands of sites and mine them for data with a few keystrokes is a dream come true for anyone who has ever spent hours pouring through stacks of books to compile historical information. More than that, computers allow historians to interface with some of these sites directly - changing them, improving them, or merely leaving their personal marks in comments. But, as the quote above suggests, sharing can also has its negative side.

Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web really does an awesome job of explaining the finer details of history on the web. Composed by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rozenweig, the site is an excellent example of historians using computer technology to create a helpful resource for history students and enthusiasts. Like the video, Cohen and Rozenweig recognize both the good and the bad that the "information age" of computers has brought to historical preservation, but they also embrace the medium with open - yet cautious - arms. Understanding the pivotal role technology can play in the modern historian's arsenal of tools will prove to be one the defining aspects of today's students and tomorrow's professional historians.

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