Week 7 Response

This week's readings with Dr. Cohen start quite hilariously, as he points out a true fact in the statement that "But if historians typically have few preconceived notions about server set up or audio sampling rates, many hold firm opinions about web design". So perhaps we historians to a large extent are not very tech savvy in this area, but we still have no problems being back seat drivers and holding opinions about what is the best interface or website template. Fonts, Colors, e.t.c..., each of us is sure to a certain extent, or at least we would be after taking a course on digital history. In fact, our course itself is essentially, is some Buffalo Bill aficionado explaining to us what he feels is the best interpretation of this new medium of digital history, and Dr. Cebula knows I could not resist that jab.

Add on top of this the fact that there's no mysterious board of elder scholars setting standards, and everyone has something different or so it seems, like historychannel.com to name one example. In some ways this is an excellent thing, because you have so many users, whether it be students or scholars coming up with so many ideas about what standards should be, and what websites should look like, that there is a lot of creativity which is very nice; and surely out of all that creativity, a standard set of rules could emerge, although in my view, since the web is so individualistic, and really crafted to the individual, that I think there will always be people in our field of digital history with their views on what a website should be to present information. I can envision Universities competing, each with a group of scholars or students that design and develop websites. It's kind of like now with the whole "I've got a better program, look at these thesis and books our people made recently", and that sort of thing. Beyond that I do feel there will always be competing ideas about web design and how the scholarly community should do it.

I was also reading about graphical elements. By that meaning how they can both help and hinder a site's design and purpose. For example if we look at YouTube.com. I'm building a website about day to day resistance to slavery, and I have mostly documents, maybe some photographs that might illustrate to a certain extent that resistance like pictures of everyday punishments like whip marks. But do I want a YouTube design on this? Do I want to have something, where you can watch videos of flipping through documents and you having to squint to read them! No, but on the other hand, one student's trash is another student's treasure, perhaps someone else is doing Pearl Harbor, and they use an interface like that to have videos of survivors talking about the incident and what it meant, along with perhaps radio announcements, or Roosevelt's speech.

Or take a site like funny-games.biz, full of ads and eye popping color graphics. Is that the hallmark of a scholarly site where students and scholars can go to access information, and not stare at all the colors? I think not. What about having all the text in Old English font because I like that? Or as we discussed last week, making my information of use to Professors but perhaps not to students, or to genealogists and not to anyone else? So there is definitely room for a few standards in my view, and I think it will be the Universities, with students and scholars like ourselves that will be leading the way in this field.

In "Collecting History" the discussion revolves around this and asks various questions, like why collect history, as well as discussing what could be a good subject, bad subject, an what kind of characteristics make a good site. I found the discussion very interesting, I liked reading the varying degrees to which websites attempt to address these questions. The hallmark example given was folklore.org set up by an early Apple engineer, the idea being to collect recollections and experiences from those early days, which was a big hit, as would I think a similar site for Windows or Linux users. That was a good example of a site that has a narrow base, but strong support. Then there was the video store owner/employee site, where people involved in video stores before they went out of business because of Blockbuster and others bankrupted or bought them. There's a unique topic that did indeed strike a chord. I also found the discussion revolving around the level of technology on a site refreshing, in that I had been sort of aware of it's implications but not completely. As it said "Not everybody needs a Library of Congress-grade archival system. One must carefully select what tools to use, do "I" need video software, flash, a search engine if there are a lot of documents, or just a menu?

And lets not forget the minefield that is contributors, both in the sense of monetary contribution, and intellectual contribution. If I am a scholar looking for some material, I don't want to see ads on the site I am visiting, which automatically casts suspicion on the operator amongst a community like ours, that prides itself on reputation; and with intellectual contributions, one has to worry about, do I moderate content, verify contributor credentials. Perhaps you have a serious scholarly site, and you don't want it getting out of hand without good material being written. Do you want there to be a forum on your site for chatting and comments? All important questions I hope to discuss (*wink) and explore in the future.

I liked the Museum 2.0 discussion, 2.o referring to the idea of a social network like face book combined with a Museum. Does it need that, do all Museums need that? I think that it depends on what a Museum wants to do online. If a Museum wants you to be able to see it's exhibits online as well as in person, then I think the website would be designed to capable of handling that level of interaction. If it's a site, where they have a text list of the titles of their paintings, contact info, hours of operation, online gift shop, then perhaps not eh?

I loved this "Online Learners Project" and it's attempts to make Museums digitally available in some sense, particularly to schools meaning teachers, students, e.t.c. I loved the Baroque style exhibit, and the hat exhibit. This I think is a prime example of a Museum site being capable of having, if not already, a 2.0 as mentioned above.

Mapping the Internet

Here is an interesting picture I just found. Imagine actually being given the task of painting, or creating a visual representation of the Internet!? Well here is apparently an attempt to do so on a SMALL scale.

Week 6 Response

In, "Digital Preservation", the discussion focuses on the positive and negative aspects of the digital medium when it comes to preservation. Whereas with something like paper, even with deterioration, the data from that can be retrieved. Even singed 3,000 year old Paryris scrolls can be read using technology that did not exist 15 years ago, which is why it is regretable that some amateur Archaelogists in those days would simply crumble and throw away these documents, thinking them impossible to read. With the digital medium, any kind of deterioration, and that data is potentialy lost for good. In many ways, it's own perfection is it's worst enemy, since precise and accurate machine language is necessary to read and write, and to keep the magnetic etching as it often is, readable, and not just a jumble of energy.

"While acid paper is prone to deterioration in terms of brittleness and yellowness, the deterioration does not become apparent for at least six decades; and when the deterioration begins, it progresses slowly. It is also highly possible to retrieve all information without loss after deterioration is spotted. The recording media for digital data deteriorate at a much more rapid pace, and once the deterioration starts, in most cases there is already data loss."

I enjoyed the good points the article made about deterioration specifically, as many of us aren't readily aware of the details. One major point I liked was on obsolescence. Because we are in many ways barreling our way into this new age of technological communication, maybe as much as 70% of what we have done or written using this new technology (i.e websites, floppy disk information, e.t.c) the past 60 years or so is no longer accessible by today's machines and software.

I was both scared and awed by "Digital Dark Age" in that I completely agree about this problem with information accessibility and it kind of goes back to our Digital Archives tour in that our wonderfully informed guide spoke about preservation, and for me, preserving in many places and in different formats is very important. Even Dr. Cebula was happy that he could preserve the data on his drive, and in the nick of time, which maybe would have been pointless if he had backed it up on one of those 8-inch floppy disks.

The actual definiton of "digital preservation" was good in that I got to read different sources and their view of it. In terms of the actual term, I liked definition number one as it was the most concise, and to me the most all encompassing. "Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and born digital content regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time." (ALA 2007:2) I favored number two in what "long-term" would mean: "a period of time long enough for there to be concern about the impacts of changing technologies, including support for new media and data formats, and of a changing user community, on the information being held in a repository. This period extends into the indefinite future." (CCSDS 2002: 1-11) Here too is a good point about "why bother" in that even if you've got that disk and the software to read it, maybe the new computer doesn't even have the drive for that disk, just as our computers now don't have a drive for an 8-inch floppy disk.

I know that Dr. Cebula must have glowed along with everyone else, when the report on the archives was made, as it said basically this is a unique project, it is nice to see what a little funding will do, and the important work this archive does is wonderful, and so on. Having your work vindicated is a must experience in any scholar's experience and hopefully we all get that experience at some point. I also enjoyed seeing other archives, and what they've attempted to do, Australia in particular was enjoyable to look at and browse a bit, and I wonder if they take advantage of that dry and stable climate they're so famous for in this effort?

Omeka is fascinating and I look forward to working on it even further. I tried to work on it since Dr. Cebula sent us the ok, and think I've made a little progress, and hopefully we can spend long hours in the few classes we have left to tinker with it some more.

As for myself, I sometimes wonder how unrecognizable computers may or may not be when I finally retire (probably 85 the way the government keeps raising the bar). Even now, we can read the latest magazines concerning this technology and marvel at what they seem to come up with a week or month at a time; and for me this only reinforces the points made in this week's readings. Please have a look at this article, and how cutting edge this technology seems to be:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_optical_data_storage

Week 5 Response

Well I found :Owning the Past to be terribly fascinating. I had not been fully aware of how long the copyright battle had been going on, nor that the Constitution originally specifically stipulated how many years a copyright is good for. Since then, many things have been done that was never envisioned outside the Constitution. Everything from Social Security to welfare programs have been done even though the original U.S Constitution doesn't spell that out. So in this case, the authors, and nowadays, the corporations are using that background to push the boundaries. The wikipedia article on this is basically a general "this is what this is" type of article with good information not much different then what Dr. Cohen was expressing.

One of the main questions being asked, is what exactly did the framers have in mind? Did they mean what they put literally and did they foresee any of the current arguments Against it. Personally I think they meant what they said, the founders wanted to make sure good inventions like the Cotton Gin would be free at some point for the benefit of all. Creative Commons is an interesting project, in that you have an attempt to legally stick to the copyright laws, no matter how ridiculous, and help users do that and still provide material. I find it useful, in that I have some experience using it, and useful in seeing and learning what it means to follow these laws. Finally on the matter with Oregon, I found that whole thing utterly ridiculous, I mean going after people using the law, because they published the law? How far I asked myself, does this copyright thing have to go? And perhaps Oregon got a little hasty and got caught up in the Sonny Bono era that they weren't thinking straight.

So overall, I liked Creative Commons and what they are attempting to do, even if it seems a little impossible in certain respects, and I don't think Oregon was or is thinking straight about their case, and could possibly lose it eventually.