Reaction to reading for 20 November 2013

The four readings that I was charged with reading this week were a PDF file entitled ''What is Digital History?" by Douglas Seefeldt and William G. Thomas III, ''It's All About Stuff'' by Tim Sherratt, ''Grappling With The Concept of Radical Trust'' which is a roundtable discussion and ''Frameworks and Lessons from the Public Participation in Science Research Report'' by Nina Simon.  The first two readings deal with different projects that employed digital history in their making and allowed a minority group to come to terms with their past and learn more about it whereas the last two dealt more with the issue of museums and cultural sites sharing their information with the outside world or not.  These two topics are important in that they emphasise the importance of digital history and the connexion that it has to the rest of the world.

The first reading was Seefeldt and Thomas' ''What is Digital History?'' This document was interesting in that it explained the importance of digital history through the brief description of relevant projects that employed digital history in some way.  Two examples were the Library of Congress' American Memories project that collected photographs, letters and other artifacts that could be digitised and shared with the rest of the world and the National Archives' digitisation efforts.  These are important in that these internationally recognised institutions employed different and groundbreaking methods of digital history to put their collections on the web for others to see.  The importance lies in the fact that they have given other, smaller institutions a model to follow on their own digitising paths.  Another example is the Texas Slavery Project done by the University of North Texas, which helps blacks in the US, not just those in Texas, come to terms with their ancestors' past and to learn more about that past.  The efforts of the university have given a face to all of those blacks who would have been forgotten in the mists of time.

This brings me to the second reading, which is Sherratt's ''It's All About Stuff.'' The focus of the article is on a website called 'Invisible Australia,'' which deals with the fallacy of a completely segregated, ''white'' Australia in the late 19th to early 20th century.  The site has the digitised images of original documents and photographs of all of the non-white residents that came to Australia from Syria, India and Canton China.  One can click on the picture and the document will appear with all of the person's details on it.  This gives all of these non-white immigrants to Australia a face and a presence in the country today.  Another example is "Remember Me?'' which is a site that has photographs of children from the Holocaust years on it and the ability for someone to add information about the child in the photograph.  These are available to anyone to do and this also gives these children a presence in this world.  This is digital history used to give a profile and a personality to a flat image, a thing.  That thing later comes alive as details and information are added to it as it is being shared with the world through the Web.  Harvester and Zotero and mentioned as well as ways to collect and organise sets of data.  Importance comes from the fact that these two websites previously listed could not be possible without these two sites or others like it to organise the data into a comprehensible set of information rather than binary nonsense.  That information is later shared on the sites.

The third reading comes to mind now.  This is the roundtable discussion named ''Grappling With the Concept of Radical Trust.''  Four directors with a basis in digital history are called to answer a question about radical trust and whether historic and cultural sites should trust their information to the outside world and put in the opinions of the masses.  All but Jim Gardner, a senior scholar at the Smithsonian, agreed with the concept of partial to complete radical trust as beneficial to providing information for the people in a way Prometheus provided fire for man.  It is still not widely accepted as many scholars wish not to associate with the uneducated masses as to what to show and not to show and what to study and what not to study and so on, but this is the future.  The people will soon have the power to completely control what it is that they learn rather than go with what they are told by experts or family members.  Sharing of information is vital to advancing man further into the future as they will be able to collaborate to a greater degree and, if man can do this, what is to stop them from averting wars with better diplomacy from greater knowledge of their own past?

Nina Simon's ''Greater Frameworks...'' is a discussion on the different models for institutions to use to usher in participation.  It asks for the readers' input on which would be the most efficient model.  This describes different models, such as contributory and co-creation as potential models to use on museums to put the crowd's opinions and knowledge out where others can see it.  This ties in with the above paragraph on the third reading in its importance.  Information must be shared so that gaps on the lower part of the history ladder can be filled in.

reaction to reading for 6 November 2013

We had only one reading that we were charged with this week and two websites to explore.  The theme of these sites and the article in question was commemoration, something that is incredibly hallowed in this world of ours.  The reading was an article from a history blog from the city of Chicago, Illinois entitled ''Commemoration and the Public Historian.''  The site's main theme was the portrayal of the historian as a moral pedagogue of sorts.  The historian, according to the blog, has a moral obligation to teach the public a version of history that is the truest and in a moral sense.  The example used was the occurrence of memorial services of Americans, in Chicago, by Czechs and memorial services, by Americans, of the remembrance of the destruction of the Czech city of Lidice.  Commemoration is an important part of history in itself and of the work of any historian, including a public historian.  To allow no one to forget about past wars, atrocities and more positive events allows history to live on in many forms.  The digital form is one of those shapes.  Digital commemorative sites, such as www.stockport1914-1918.co.uk, which is a First World War commemorative site for British soldiers who were killed in the First World War and were from Stockport, England, are numerous and represent many different groups.  The two sites we were charged with exploring were for the Kent State Massacre of 1970 and 9/11.  The first site showed the pictures of the four students killed by Ohio National Guardsmen and showed activities from a junior college commemorating the massacre.  This is one way to digitally commemorate an event; to put it in blog form.  The 9/11 site is another way; through photographs.  As we step into this modern age, photographs are much easier to take now than they were 20 years ago.  Photographs also speak volumes of historical and emotional words.  Historical photographs are valuable resource tools that anyone should have access to and this archive is a splendid way of giving that access to the people.  Digital archives help commemorate events of any historical significance and they help keep those who perished's memories alive.

reaction to reading 24/10/13 for 30 October 2013

The readings that I have been charged with to read this time were ''Public Media Meets Public History,'' an article from CMS Impact's website, a Dell Press Release about Clemson University creating a social media listening centre and a well written project proposal by Professor Burton.  Each of these readings deals with the usage of social media, that faithful yet unpredictable old friend of you and I, in historical studies.  

The first reading deals with different projects that used a form of social media.  The first was the Veterans' History Project, which I looked into, personally, and found it to be a site of storytelling.  The article calls it this and it did not fail to deliver, especially when I read about a Japanese-American soldier from Hawaii who witnessed the Pearl Harbour bombing.  This type of site uses social media to put a certain story or interpretation across, such as the history groups on Facebook which allow you to tell your own story.  I recently posted a couple of old photographs of my great-grandfather in the British Army during the First World War on a First World War Centenary page.  Others had stories to tell, and these sometimes included facts that were previously unknown to me.  The second example was the exceedingly interesting Water Conflict Map.  This was a Google Map which had bubbles that told of different battles and conflicts over water, all around the world and across history.  This is useful in that one could pinpoint a certain conflict in a certain region and could even use this technology to solve border wars or to at least fix them temporarily.  This article gave a beginner's insight into history and social media.

The next reading was an article about the social media listening centre at Clemson University.  The centre is an important event in the university's history in that it is the first of its kind.  The statement from Jason Thatcher, the associate professor in the centre's management department, sums up the main use and importance of the centre:  ''My students are learning to listen to the online conversations around private, non-profit, and public organizations. By learning how to listen and what to listen for, they can understand how to better engage in the civil discourse around different parts of our society.''  This statement from Professor Thatcher directly states the importance of the centre.  This centre shows, as well, that history and social media can be used to help humans understand each other and themselves, both past and present.

The final work was Professor Burton's project proposal.  Professor Burton wishes to use social media to ''further enhance'' history and its studies.  His first example was the causes of the Civil War, a conflict that is, sadly, inaccurately studied by many.  He states that the use of social media, such as Facebook, Flickr, Instagram and others would give us more knowledge on the Civil War by, through my reckoning, taking all of the stories told of this particular war and putting them together under one roof, digitally speaking.  Then one could study these stories and find the variations in them through certain subjects, such as Professor Burton's graph of Civil War Southern gender stereotypes.  This usage would be quite useful when trying to gather resources and ease some tensions between two parties.  This could also be done with the Spanish Civil War, only on a more careful scale as the tension between Nationalists and Republicans seethes and smolders even now.  This usage of social media in this way in history would take history to another level, a level that is more human and more personal than it is now.  The internet is the campfire and the users of this technology are the campers swapping stories.  This is how I see it.  

reaction to reading 21/10/13

The works that I was charged to read this week were three chapters from Roy Rosenzweig's book Digital History and from an article Shelia A. Brennan and T. Mills Kelly entitled ''Why Collecting History Online is Web 1.5.''  A third work was assigned, but it could not be found on the website and was left off.  The textbook's three chapters went into detail about how to build an audience for one's history website, tips and steps for collecting history online and posing the question of who owns said history.  Rosenzweig puts forth detailed steps and suggestions for each chapter, such as having a guestbook or contact us link on a website to help build an audience, a very helpful table of published and unpublished works in the United States and when their copyrights take effect and the use of listserv and email to collect data.  The table for copyrights is especially useful in that it has the ability to stop plagiarism before it starts and to stop lawsuits as well.  Even if one asks permission legally, there will always be someone who does not want their work or a timeless piece displayed on the world-wide Web.  Email is still useful because so many people still heavily rely on it and trust it.  The building of an audience is important.  With no one to lecture to, the lecture is quite useless, so building and keeping an audience is important.  The chapters in this book were helpful and detailed; they were detailed enough to prompt readers to look up certain terms that they do not understand.

The second work is about collecting history and building a website and the lessons learned by the author of the article.  The site was an archive containing blogs, stories and media from Hurricane Katrina.  The site did not attract the 10s of 1000s that the creators hoped for, though.  The main problem with the site that was created was that it was not user-friendly.  People had to upload photos one at a time when Flickr was available and one could upload many at once.  Also, bloggers sometimes gave permission to upload their blogs and the site would only allow one blog at a time.  This decreased the amount of people coming on the site.  This is true of any site; it must be user-friendly and use the same technology as the other sharing sites, something that is mentioned in the site's section ''Lessons Learned.''

Both of these works stress the importance of planning when creating a website for history and by doing so, one can avoid the pitfalls that the Katrina Archive faced.

Project blog, 13 october 2013

As was evident at our last class meeting, Jason Barrett and myself have chosen to undertake a new project, one put forth by Professor Shockley.  The reason for this was, as Jason stated, that the university wished to control our access to resources and to certain historical information, such as information on the slave cabins.  This would not do and this also adds a major headache for us since we now have to start completely over.  I have to write a new proposal, which is not easy considering that I have two term papers to write simultaneously and attend work at 6-10pm monday through friday night.  I will get it finished, though, and now Jason and myself have to confer with Professor Shockley about which tasks each of us could do on the project.  It is vexing in a substantial way and is another example of someone trying to whitewash history with a nice, rose-coloured coat.  We both should be able to do something on this project, I will probably be doing some research and writing what needs to be written and Jason will write some of the cards and re-organise the website itself to make it neater.  This is where we are on our project, a crossroads as to what to do on it.

reaction to reading october 10, 2013

This week's readings pertain to oral history.  Oral history is the oldest form of history, dating back to the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons through epic poems and songs.  Oral history is important in that it has to do with primary sources in the form of interviewees.  One cannot get closer to history than with a conversation with someone who took part in it.

The first reading was from the website ''History Controversy in the News'' which comes, ultimately, from Wikipedia.  The site itself was informative, yet the blog was superfluous since the information came from Wikipedia.  It gave examples of oral history, such as oral history in Britain, mentioning the transition from folklore studies to proper oral history.  It offers useful tidbits of information, such as the correct way to ask questions.  The example given is for interviewers to ask open-ended questions so that the interviewees will not answer the way the interviewer wishes them to answer.  This is useful in that you obtain truthful information from the informant.  The site is informative and gives the correct starting point for a good interview.

The second reading was from the website ''History Matters'' and from the article, ''Oral History Online.''  This site is basically a list of oral history websites, some of which I have explored.  Rutgers Oral History of the Second World War is a fairly decent site which is similar to the Texas Tech Archive for the Vietnam War in that it has letters and transcripts from previous interviews.  Archives such as this are useful in that they contain a decent cache of information but some, like the Rutgers Archive, are not very user-friendly and are not interactive.  For oral history in the secondary form to be useful and beneficial, it needs to be able to be used properly by anyone wishing to utilise the data contained within.

The third reading was a document about the changing face of oral history through time entitled ''Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History'' by Alistair Thomson.  The document explains the four changes in oral history and its processes, mainly echoing the first reading and its information.  It details some examples, such as biographical methods and changes in objectivity of the oral history processes.  It also tells of the internationalisation of Oral history, with mentioning of the oral history society in Britain.  Nostalgia, being seen as a distorting factor in oral history, is seen in a negative light in this essay.  This is true in that nostalgia does taint memories and makes things seem more golden then they actually were.

reaction to reading 29 September 2013

This week's readings were about how to put together a web site and the pros and cons of digitising text and other data.  The digitising of data and textual artifacts is an important step in preservation but also has its limitations, which are mainly in cost and skill level.

The first text read were two chapters from Daniel Cohen's  textbook Digital History.  Cohen gives a helpful account of how to digitise manuscripts, documents and other data as well as starting a web site and the pitfalls involved with trying to have it done professionally.  He describes one as having to buy numerous computers and have them connected continuously.  Then, the caretaker of these machines ''wakes from sleep worrying about power failures, hackers and computer failures'' (Cohen).  Cohen makes one think about undertaking these tasks and urges one not to take them on at the advanced level as a novice, no matter how much skill one happens to possess.  To build a website and then to digitise information and place it on said site would be a boon to those who wish to access the information one has accumulated.  An example of this would be the British Library's digital copy of an original Beowulf manuscript from the last days of  Anglo-Saxon England.  Cohen states that the original is too fragile to view in real life, but many can see it on the Library's website, as well as letters in the margins, as if the monk copying the manuscript doodled slightly when on a break from copying the manuscript.  This technology could be used to not only display objects where everyone can see them, but restore their digital copies to their former glory so one could see what it looked like many years before.  This lends some helpful hands to research, especially for those wishing to see intricate details in the image or object that had not existed in many years.  Websites are a useful tool for anyone wishing to communicate information to the rest of the world, and this can lend some validity to a professional wishing to be taken seriously in the academic world through being a jack of all trades.  The writing of books and articles and the writing of websites and blogs increases the number of readers of the professional's work.  Websites, despite their cost are a useful tool.

The second work read was a blog on a website known as ProfHacker by a guest named Miriam Posner.  The subject of this blog was the creation of an online presence for academics.  It is a useful tool for the absolute novice with no knowledge of building a website as Ms. Posner goes through the process slowly, step by step, and gives good examples that everyone has heard of.  Examples of this are when Ms. Posner mentions Google Profile, and how to make one, Twitter and LinkedIn.  She even mentions Academia.edu, a ''social networking site for academics.''  What Ms. Posner does is give a starting point in making an online presence and getting your foot in the door, digitally speaking.  This is a clever idea in that by doing this, one can hope to network when trying to find a new position, a patron for a new work, or just someone to take the professional seriously.  This can lead to one building their own website when the notoriety comes or when the professional wishes to advance their work to the next level.  Ms. Posner's work was free from vexing jargon and was simple to follow.  It contained some surprising facts, such as Twitter being used in the academic world.  She states that it allows one to ''follow'' another's work and receive updates on future work.  A surprisingly helpful article.

The third work read was an article by Jeffrey Zeldman on ''Understanding Web Design.''  This article thoroughly got on my nerves.  Mr. Zeldman wrote this under the impression that his readers already had some knowledge of web design.  Jargon floats around like an evil spirit and the article is rigid and unhelpful until the last part, titled ''She Walks In Beauty.''  This part is helpful to a degree and even then it's only through similes such as ''Great web designs are like great buildings.  All office buildings, however distinctive, have lobbies and bathrooms and staircases.''  The article is pretentious babble.  What I could get from the site is the message of ''Make your design unique.''  This helps when trying to get others to study your work.  When one visits a site, they do not wish to see something that they have seen a thousand times before; they wish to see something new.  This ''something new'' helps to entice people onto the site and into your work.  A unique site is a must for an academic professional.

reaction to reading for 18 September, 2013

The two readings that I  undertook to read were two documents that sought to explain the upside and downside of geographical data.  This was, to me, a bare bones compare and contrast session with HGIS emerging as the victor, but not totally.

The first reading I was charged with was an interesting and entertaining piece called ''How Maps Lie'' by Ms. Leah Fleckenstein.  This passage explained the shortcomings of traditional maps, especially in the United States.  From personal experience, European maps are better and more detailed, but, as Ms. Fleckenstein stated, ''their countries are smaller'' (Fleckenstein 37).  These shortcomings are truly expressed, such as the cartographers tendency to distort maps in favour of their own lands or to show a certain situation, such as the Jewish map of Israel in the Middle East surrounded by black, ''hostile'' Arab nations.  Maps are only as good as you make them and only if you are willing to make them for a purpose, be it exploration or the acquisition of money.  This reading was entertaining and straight-forward in its writing, yet was still informative.

The second reading undertaken was Jordi Marti-Henneberg's ''Georaphical Information Systems and the Study of History.  This reading was academic and very informative on how HGIS can be used effectively in the world of historical scholarship.  One of the best examples of this was the mentioned website, Vision of Britain.  This website is quite a useful tool for comparing the older and newer maps of Britain.  I went on and found myself looking at an 1805 map of Britain, showing the ridings of Yorkshire and defunct counties such as Westmoreland, Rutland and Flintshire in Wales.  This kind of HGIS site is better for resource gathering for use in a site of one's own.  The reading goes on to state that the melding of history and geography began with the philosopher Emmanuel Kant and his data separation scheme and how the two disciplines were divided until more recently when computerised maps began to become available.  The passage then goes on to give examples of countries compiling their own HGIS maps of the railways and their effect on the density of the population of different cities.  This is the most useful part of HGIS in that it shows how an area was settled and over so many years without having to go through cumbersome tomes of information on when the railways were first built and then going through censuses.  HGIS data mapping is the way towards telling the history of whole nations as well as the smallest towns through visual representation, something that everyone can grasp.

Reaction to Reading 9/12/2013 apologies for tardiness

The readings I was charged with completing this week were about the usage of maps and mapping technology in the expression of history.  This technology is frightfully useful in the expression of an historical argument or point of view and, combined with historical facts and/or a summary, could explain what a book would take 400 pages to explain.

The first reading was a blog post from Tim Hitchcock.  Apart from the blog being a rather irritating and vexing read due to the changing of context, but that is just from my perspective.  Mr. Hitchcock does a decent job of explaining each tool that could come of use to any historian or amateur, such as Ngram viewer and the ''Locating London's Past'' webpage to name a couple of examples.  The latter is one that I tried and played with for a moment and found it quite useful.  It shows the 1746 map of London and when one enters street view, as on Google Maps, one finds oneself in modern London, and how much the city has changed.  They must have one for the industrial centre of the north, Manchester and how the city exploded in 250 years.  These kinds of tools can be used to locate, with some accuracy, ancient historic sites, such as Iron Age villages or Roman ruins within the boundaries of the city without digging and excavation and the possibility of damaging the ruins with construction.  This technology could not only tell a story in a different light but could also save bits of the past.

The second reading done was Richard White's ''What is Spatial History?'' on the Stanford University website.  Mr. White launches an interesting study of spatial history beginning with William Cronon's map of the US and the travel time zones, first from New York and later from Chicago as the railways grew from Chicago.  I read the book that this map was first printed in and this is a good way of showing the growth of not only the railways in America but also the growth of Chicago's prominence over New York.  This is important but with a drawback: one must have the pertinent information to accompany the map, or the map itself will be seen as completely useless or difficult to understand.  Other technologies that Mr. White writes about in his interesting and easy-to-read article are a flight path map by a Mr. Aaron Koblin, which is quite useful and interesting and the common county land survey map.  These examples, like the interactive maps and programmes elaborated on by Mr. Hitchcock, are also useful for telling a story of how history affected space, quite a pertinent bit of information when studying how each state got their boundaries or even how countries got their boundaries or how much the landscape was altered by farming an westward expansion.  These tools could, soon, have an interactive map of America showing its lands' different stages over time as humans changed it, from the Indians to the modern day man.

The third and final reading of this week was Mr. Todd Presner's article on HyperCities.  The article as a whole sounded as if he were a salesman peddling a type of wonder tonic off the back of a wagon.  It read, simply, as a sales pitch.  Aside from this one fact, the article is detailed on what HyperCities are and how they are used.  HyperCities is a computer programme that allows the user to explore a city or another urban area in ''layers'' or, levels of the city over time.  This is similar to the tool that the Smithsonian has to view modern maps with a glass that allows one to see an older map and to see the difference time produces.  I visited the HyperCities website and read a bit about the programme and this seems as if it would be useful more for finding old sites and ruins than the previous technology mentioned above.  To peel away, or add, layers to a city means to find the city's past and present and to, along with historical fact, paint a picture of how the city formed and decayed over the years.  A useful bit of kit.

Reaction to Reading 7 September-Digital History

The exciting, new world of data and text data mining was the subject of the three works I was charged with reading this time.  Another topic was a visual representation of history, an important aspect in any sort of pedagogical tool, but more on that later.

The first text read was the venerable Daniel Cohen's article ''From Babel to Knowledge.''  The article begins with an allusion to a Borges short story about being stuck in a colossal, confusing library.  Cohen gives well detailed examples, some of which I searched on my own computer to find that they either were shut down or that I hadn't the knowledge to work them.  This brings me to the main gripe about Cohen's article; it is not user-friendly.  The tools that he advertises, I suppose, are user-friendly yet the article selling them is not.  Syllabus Finder seems to be an invaluable tool, according to Cohen, in that it sorts through the Web for relevant topics for syllabi.  This tool could also come in handy when performing research on a certain, narrowed topic in that the search engine is really just doing the tedious library work for you.  H-Bot was another mentioned and I actually tried this one and it gave me no results.  In theory, it is supposed to be labour-saving, yet I am sceptical of this particular tool.  Cohen overvalues the importance of H-Bot, I feel, especially when speaking of the version not available to the public that answers multiple choice questions.  The rest of the article is a call for action on digital history being available in a smoother, sleeker form.  His two most relevant points are that the information needs to be quality and that information that is free, even though not perfect, is still golden.  When explaining his tools, Cohen uses jargon and 'techno-babble' and does not take into consideration those who are not technically savvy.

The second text read was a blog by Ted Underwood entitled ''Where to Start for Text Mining.''  The blog was set up in a simply put, outline of frequently asked questions and the author's personal experience and what he did in certain situations.  It was also simply written so that most folk could understand it; compared to Cohen's article, it was a breath of fresh air.  Underwood give many examples of tools to institute text mining such as Python and Ngram Viewer by Google. Ngram Viewer is also mentioned in the third work and that is when I gave it a trial run and found it to be immensely helpful.  An example I used was 'George Washington.'  I saw, that most writing about George Washington almost kept a constant high, but Thomas Jefferson spiked in the 1840s and then went down.   He also begins at the beginning by stating the question ''How difficult is it to get started?''  Underwood gives an easy-to-understand walkthrough and even has links to the tools mentioned, such as the Data for Research API.  He also describes what to do with the quantitative elements, which is useful for any novice.  These methods could, as he stated, determine much more than ploughing through mounds of books for weeks on end and it is in a format that others can understand easily.

The third text read was John Theibault's article ''Visualizations and Historical Arguments.''  This article was where I first used Ngram Viewer ( a very reliable piece of software) and where I was introduced to other tools for visual data presentation, such as Mashimoto's Nuclear Test Map from 1945-2008.  Theibault explains, in poor organisation and structure of the article, the importance of visual representations in history, beginning with heraldry and royal lineage charts and ending at histograms and box plots.  The box plots are most easily understood, and the most basic form of visualisaton I would use in that it represents the illusion of time as humans understand it.  The Cartogram and Choropleth are things to avoid and even Theibault himself speaks warily of them due to their tendency to distort data.  Gapminder, the Swedish programme, is another I experimented with and found the per capita GDP, life expectancy and population all in one chart and found the other tab functions to be helpful as well.  Theibault's faith is not misplaced in his tools.

reaction to reading 31 August 2013

The four works that I have previously read all spoke of digital history in terms of expansion.  Digital history is in needs of expansion in that it is, as stated in Kenneth M. Price's "What's In a Name?" ''on the periphery...of literary scholarship.''  The first work I found rather helpful and usable, probably the most usable of the four works being discussed here today.  The second work, on Roger Launius's blog, mentions points already covered in the other, more extensive works and so makes itself slightly superfluous, yet informative all the same in that Mr. Launius condenses a 40 page document into 10 points.  The third and fourth works serve as a manual for how to work together with digital history and how to make digital history work.  They were both helpful, sans the techno-babble and inane jargon that sometimes plagues other digital history websites.  Overall, the four readings were helpful and user-friendly.

The first work, ''Taking a Byte Out of the Archives,'' puts forth the list of equipment that needs to be amassed by any self-respecting digital historian and how to use it properly.  Steps are shown on how to duplicate images and store them using the two main kinds of equipment: the digital camera and the hand-held scanner.  The article is descriptive, but not over-the-head of the novice user; more, it functions as a Digital History for Dummies guide that even includes a link to another, sister site that introduces a list of products selected for best use in this particular field and even more procedures on how to perform image copying.  A first rate, informative article all round.

The second work, on a blog by Roger Launius, seems to me to be superfluous after reading the other two works.  Mr. Launius is still helpful, though, by providing the original PDF text for use or simply for curious reading, and then summarising and condensing the work into the 10 most relevant points.  These points are well chosen in that each point tells of how digital historical practices have changed how historians spin their craft.  For example, one point states that ''The full text search capabilities that Google Books presents historians seems to have had a profound effect on their research practice'' (Launius, Rutner and Schonfeld).  So, even though this work seems superfluous now, it still is useful in that it has the original document to back up the 10 points.

The third work, Kenneth M. Price's ''What's In a Name?'' explains the differences in terms in the digital history world, using the Walt Whitman Archive as an example.  I found this to be quite informative and interesting in that I knew little on how each term was used and what each actually stood for in digital history.  Mr. Price makes very good use of the Archive as an example of how it is an edition, yet not in that it comprises all of Whitman's works, even business cards (Price).  Then, the article explains the fluidity and flux of the term in itself and how it changed with the digital age and continues to change.  The other terms, Project, Database, Archive and Thematic Research Collection (Termed ''Arsenal'' by Mr. Price) are treated and explained in the same way.  I found this article to be especially useful in seeing that digital history as a whole needs to be expanded and put into its own set of terms.

The fourth work was Sam Ford's article on big data, or, the ''global nervous system'' (Smolan and Ford).  The article, which I found to be drab with some useful tidbits in the swill, explains that ''big data'' cannot be used or interpreted properly without human beings putting some meaning behind the numbers.  Mr. Ford's title completely sums his article up: ''Without Human Insight, Big Data is Just a Bunch of Numbers.''  This is true and even though Mr. Ford uses no examples, he makes an interesting metaphor.  Humans need to work with technology in this field as ''cyborgs'' (Ford).

Reaction to reading 26 aug, 2013

The three works which I read on the Saturday have left an impression upon me that digital history seeks to become a tool of the historian and not a replacement for the historian him/herself.  The textbook, Digital History by Cohen and Rosenzweig, gave quite a decent background of digital history in terms of the relationship between history and technology.  The introduction deals with dispelling rumours of past doomsayers and optimists and lists the 7 qualities of using this technology with history.  The introduction also lists 5 shortcomings of this new medium.  The first chapter works as part self-help book and part history of technology in history.  Different mediums are described as well as past points in the digital history timeline.  The book is well written and I felt as if the common reader could understand the message put forth, sans the jargon.  The self-help part comes from the advice given by Cohen and Rosenzweig on how to build an historical site one's own.  Again, the book is well written but descends into doom-saying at times as if enough space to incorporate the world's information was a major life threatening problem.  A pinch of drama seems to have been added, but I still find myself able to take the book seriously.

The discussion work from the September 2008 issue of Journal of American History is rather long and tedious, but filled with a cache of information on the burgeoning digital history trend and how new ideas can resolve some problems.  The article functions as a think-tank with 8 well respected historians sitting down with a Journal representative to answer and discuss questions about the path and future of digital history and its uses.  Each person uses, or, attempts to use examples from their own teaching careers and everyday lives as well as the lives of others.  The article is well structured and actually, this particular article made me a firm believer in digital history as an important part of the history profession.

Professor Vernon Burton's work, published in Social Science Computer Review in summer of 2005 lists some of the points made about digital history re-listed in the discussion article only with Professor Burton's own personal examples used.  Passion is present and palpable in this article and it proves that Professor Burton has got to be one of digital history's leading proponents.  Examples of sites are used so that the reader can have an example and this is something that I found helpful not just in this article, but in the others as well.  Just as with the discussion article, this article of Professor Burton's has made me a convert to the world of digital history as an important aspect of the history profession.