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Collecting History Online by Daniel Cohen

            In his article Cohen begins by stressing the importance of interactivity via the Internet between professional historians, their colleagues, and history audiences. Along with means of personal and group communication (e-mail, messaging services, discussion boards and social media) the author talks about using the internet to reach out and collect artifacts and images hither to yet gathered from around the globe, emphasizing the reach of the internet and incorporating amateur historians and personal recollections and collections. 

            Cohen discusses the ethereal nature of the internet as formats rise and fall, as personal accounts and even news articles are lost in the backlog or due to inactive websites and abandoned platforms. The internet also provides new tools to reach out and collect personal stories, often without the historian having to travel in person to each location. Major museums have developed programmes involving internet access to record various stories, from immigration to wartime memories, to be collected, curated, and later exhibited. A multitude of factors need to be considered when designing an online projects, especially one involving individual participation and interest. “Online collection efforts tied to a real-world event, institution, or social network have a good chance of attracting and sustaining involvement.” Cohen also stresses the importance of tailoring your collection efforts to the community you are attempting to reach. While he suggests that younger people might prefer instant messaging over more “traditional” email, I find this assertion a bit silly, as email is used by both young and old, and instant messaging is far more transitory than email. He also emphasizes that when designing your website that you include both an easily accessible way for patrons to view other contributors’ stories as well as clear and easy links for them to submit their own in order to continue the project. This would mean having a large enough collection to prove interesting when setting up the initial website. 

The Road to Xanadu: Public and Private Pathways on the History of the Web by Roy Rosenzweig

            Rosenzweig begins his article talking about the history of the internet and its early adoption, before transitioning into the popularity of amateur historians creating and curating content online, from Civil War enthusiast and reenactors to family genealogy. He states that the multitude of hands and eyes have helped to transcribe countless census records and upload mountains of images to the internet. He discusses the professional organizations such as the National Endowment of the Humanities and other university and museum collections that have created more professional content, without negating more grassroots or non-profit projects. Privatization of content through monetization is covered, with the most likely being online subscription services. The argument that larger and social and scholarly goals should necessitate that the content collected should be free for all to access is deliberated as well as what other alternative revenue models they might employ to allow them to continue in their work. One of the most popular solution appears to be site advertising, not unlike how newspapers and earlier and other internet revenue systems work. 

From A Shared Authorityto the Digital Kitchen and Back by Michael Frisch

A shared authority, in contrast to sharing authority, as the author Michael Frisch exposes upon, is the difference of an action that the collective we, in this case the historians, do in comparison to something historians and the general public have or something that “is,” such as a collective responsibility. He stresses the importance of public history engagement and the inherent interpretive nature and creation of significance involved with the creation and consideration of oral and public history. He provides an example of this in a radio program that kept separate two groups of people; railroad workers and the academics who were discussing their jobs and race-relations in such. Frisch points out that all of them had valid and interesting points to discuss, but that something was lost by not having the two groups enter into and exchange together. He calls this an “instructive resonance” and the slight difference between “experience” and “expertise”, two words that share a common root. 

Oral history should be received as a primary source of history. Frisch explains that it is his goal to make oral history reachable my numerable people, archivists, researchers, users, public presentations, and civic and community engagements. It should be able to be perceived on all levels and present each listener or viewer with something valuable. He goes on to explain how the advancement of digital technology has improved upon traditional oral history recordings in that digital recordings allows for more freedom for the researcher. Whereas before with audio tapes of different formats made searching recordings tedious, digital recordings allows for digital indexing, annotations, cataloguing, keyword-search functions, and the exportation of excerpts with relative ease.  

Frisch expresses a desire for formats that are more open-ended and creative. He likens this to ‘exploring’ rather than ‘searching’, searching implying a direct, linear, and somewhat foreknowledgable approach.  He discussing the benefits and difficulties of transcription alongside the benefits of digital transcripts that searchable. He ends his article with and example of the widely popular NPR -hosted StoryCorps. He has sharp criticism for StoryCorps as it isn’t designed to be traditional oral history, but rather designed for emotional appeal and soundbites, what StoryCorps designates “driveway moments.”  I would add that products like StoryCorps, while not as valuable perhaps to professional oral and public historians, provide access to oral history to those who might have not otherwise encountered it, and maybe can serve to draw them to further study. 

Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology: Public History Meets the Digital Divide by Andrew Hurley

Public History’s main goal is the animation of enlightened civic activism

Leverage historical knowledge on behalf of social change (since the 1970s), empowering marginalized populations, reconciling group animosities, fostering multicultural tolerance, energizing grassroots politics, 

Uncensored, open-access realm of cyberspace

Hurley discusses the enthusiastic embrace of digital technologies for use in digital histories, in particular those disciplines like oral history that has, since the 1970s, championed historic preservation of marginalized communities, social change, grassroots politics, and promoting globalism and multicultural understanding contrasted with the socioeconomic disparity of those with and without internet and computer access. Low-income populations have a much lower tare of computer usage. This creates a digital divide between those with computer access and literacy and those who do not. “Technology that was supposed to democratize knowledge and bring people together was having the opposite effect.” Concerns about equality were lessened somewhat by the advancements made in easily accessible Wi-Fi and mobile computing devices. A production and participation digital divide persists as refinements on the original divide. 

Hurley then reviews his and others’ work with 3D modeling and digital history engagement of museums in order to create virtual environments of historic aspects St. Louis and other places, later released in beta form in 2010. He explains the difficulty in getting funding and in designing the rights programs, often costly, in order to create three dimensional displays for museums in order to enhance on-site museum visitor experience and digital renderings so that online visitors could enjoy similar experience from their own home consoles.  The digital divide along socioeconomic lines meant that much of their work was viewed not by the marginalized communities but by wealthier and whiter communities. Eventually they turned to more traditional public history methods in order to make their work more accessible to people of color and poorer communities, such as door-to-door flyer distribution for advertising. The author cautions that digital historians should focus less on what is new tech and instead shift their focus on what technology might improve what they are already doing. 

Access for All by Sharon Leon

Leon expands on Hurley’s article on the Digital Divide amongst socioeconomic groups, agreeing that selecting the newest technology for your public history project may not always be the best option, suggesting instead that the historian or designer should research community demographics and access to technology in the earliest stages of development. Amongst low-income and rural groups, more people are accessing the internet solely by mobile telephone computing devices. This presents unique challenges in operating systems, platforms, and content. Leon suggests that public history work should be designed to be “streamlined with optimized images, styles, and media.” Mobile web browsers necessitate that work be rendered in the least resource-heavy way possible and will likely result in making the work more accessible to more people. 

Digital Community Engagement Across the Divides by Lara Kelland

In covering her work with the Parkland Project, the author discusses how lived experience and oral histories have reshaped and redefined how the history of the Parkland neighborhood is remembered. The area is mostly home to low-income and people of color, and in the 1960 suffered from systematic racism, poverty, and public and civic neglect. Despite years of work in digitizing their history, there has been little engagement or positive response to calls for more public engagement. Kelland suggests that the digital divide may be a contributor to the silence, and suggests more face-to-face strategies may prove to more effective in garnering the public engagement she seeks. 

Why Do We Call I t Oral History? Refocusing on the Orality/Aurality in the Digital Age by Sherna Berger Gluck

Gluck’s article is mainly focused on discussing the emergence, development, and progress of oral history websites. In the article she outlines the origins of oral history as recorded on audio cassettes and the trouble with access and distribution. Her work led to women’s oral history as a distinct discipline. 

“Giving Voice to the voiceless” was the mantra touted by social historians of the mid to late 20^thcentury.  Feminists and feminist historians of the era didn’t believe that women had been voiceless, only that their voices had not been properly heard or weighted against nor alongside the traditional male voices of the past. Oral historians sought to preserve their voices, the physical and aural voices, of the women, and not limiting it to just the written word. 

She expresses her concern that uploading digital history to the internet with easy access might lead to manipulation of the material and voices for harmful reasons. But she felt reassured when another historian working with video pointed out that it’s the same inherent risk with the written word or any other format.  She quotes Raphael Samuel, founder of the British-based History Workshop observed that “spoken word can very easily be mutilated when it is taken down in writing and transferred to the printed page.” (Samuel 1972)The Digital Era allows for a wider audience and easier distribution and access of earlier oral histories and history projects. 

The Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive (VOAHA), an online media platform designed specifically for cataloging oral histories, made an effort to fully contextualize each interview or artifact, including the interview process in a way that was immediately accessible by the public. This was unique and groundbreaking and would shape how other platforms evolved in the future. 

As to the nature of the interviews, she points out that multiple factors take place during every interview and that each one is a unique signifier that should be captured and indexed in any platform. She points out, as an example, that an interview is affected by “interviewer’s positionality” as well as the “changing of the political context and historical moment during which an interview is conducted.” (Email to H-ORALHIST@h-net.msu.edu (listserv) 2012). If a person is interviewed multiple times about a topic, factors related to their truthfulness or the fullness of their discussion may change. 

Some people occasionally revoke rights to their oral histories in order that they not be published online. Previous to this the feeling that the oral histories were for an interview that would be restricted to a unique audience is changed so something easily found online by anyone. “The material no longer feels like an archival document with any kind of gatekeeper but rather a trove of personal information available to the masses.” 

            Recommended to anyone conducting an interview to be recorded for historical purposes include the following: 

1. Never ask a question that you are not yourself willing to answer
2. Never ask a question that you don’t want the world to hear via the web

The lack of control over who accesses oral history information, even with sufficient gatekeeping software installed, combined with the possibility of individual discomfort at having personal information revealed has led a reticence in the information age. In placing oral histories onto the Internet, we must be prepared for public exchange this might necessitate. 

As a final recommendation, the author states that linking and storing the information alongside or as part of a larger institution is beneficial because it’s more likely that the material will survive, rather than a single website that might go under or disappear. Digital archival work must outlast all the various platforms and servers that come and go as technooogy and time progresses. 

Listening to the City: Oral History and Place in the Digital Era

Mark Tebeau

            In his article Oral History and Place in the Digital Era, Tebeau discusses how Cleveland Historical seeks to integrate public history, oral history, and digital humanities and put them into practice in an accessible way for public consumption. He outlines how Online Oral Histories consists of multiple layers; images, sound, video, text, maps (geolocating), and more. Furthermore, each individual story (and their layers) connects to other stories. Thus a deeper context is provided, one that includes historiographical, thematic, temporal, geographic, or human element to the story. This expands the understanding of the viewer and gives them both a wider and more intimate view. 

            The author expresses the importance of storytelling in digital history and in engaging multiple senses to bring the history to a place the viewer can better understand and experience history. In one of the examples he provided, someone is recalling what it was like to attend a rock concert at a club in Cleveland. The voice recording is set against the music of the band as background noise to provide depth and an “aural backdrop that provides the most acute interpretive frame for a story.”

            Tebeau discusses how mobile devices can be integrated and enhance a listener’s experience. The listener can be in a location associated to the story while experiencing the oral history, evoking the “sensory and experiential context”. This is most effective if the area or building hasn’t changed much, but one could argue that drastic change can underline the context as well, much as before and after photographs of locations highlight that changes that have taken place and those that haven’t. The author also states that the exact locations may not be appropriate or evocative enough to be a meaningful experience. Something not discussed is the use of mobile devices and augmented reality, but as the article was written in 2013, the technology of such was limited and not widely available. 

Discussion questions for the class:

1. What are your thoughts on manipulation of oral histories and accessibility? 
2. Do you support academic gatekeeping in regards to oral histories in order to make it more difficult to access historic narratives?
3. Do you prefer an exact location or an evocative one when experiencing history?

Rosenweig, p. ix-27, 85-91, 124-151

Roy Rosenzweig used innovative techniques to assist historical scholars with collaboration thorough his work as a contributor and editor of the Radical History Review, a scholarly journal that positions itself “at the point where rigorous historical scholarship and active political engagement converge”^[1]Rosenzweig worked the northeastern US and brought focus to the overlooked working classes. In the Park and the People, he highlighted those neighborhoods that were displaced by Olmstead’s creation and the laborers that created the inner-city forest. Called a Marxist and a Communist, Rosenzweig worked to elevate disenfranchised scholars in the 1960’s and to combat the Old Guard of White Male Scholar gatekeepers and the traditional academy. Rosenzweig also wanted the general public to engage in the scholarship and history, and thus wanted to discover ways in which traditional scholarship could be involved with museums and public displays. He was quick to perceive the possibilities offered by technology and the internet, allowing far away students to access vast amounts of information, or for using a fuller range of audio and visual possibilities alongside scholarship, to create interactive environments to learn. He was fond of “fostering a more democratic history” and have all levels of people, from professional to amateur, have free access to history. 

            In Debra Kaplan’s Note to Readers, she outlines the significant problem is digital data and the deterioration of such. When compared to other, more traditional means, the digital world is far more temporary. Furthermore, the date is easily subject to corruption, deletion, and alteration. If a handwritten letter had been altered from its original, the edit might be easy to spot by anyone. But an email, edited by some middle person before being forwarded, would have little trace of the revisionism, certainly not one readily identifiable to a layman. In the interest of Digital preservation, most digital storage formats have a life span of 10-30 years and parent corporations will only support their formats for less than that, in the case of Microsoft, 5 years. This has been one of the arguments when in 2016, the United Kingdom briefly considered no longer writing down their laws on vellum. The outcry was such that the decision was reversed, and all British laws will continue to be recorded on the long-lasting media. So too, as the media ages and develops, the migration of older media to the newer platforms is less likely and subject to revision. Daniel Cohen’s comment on Chicago Tribune’s great blunder of the election of Truman is a superb example of something easily corrected and forgotten today, as headlines, posts, and articles are regularly updated, often for misinformation. In the same manner, the internet is full of misinformation, from conspiracies to outright lies. Photo manipulation is rampant for a number of reasons. Famously there a photo of the White House War Room under President Obama during the capture of Osama bin Laden. When that picture was published in conservative Muslim journals, papers, and websites, the women in the room were digitally removed. Current technology has been exploited to fake video as well, in which President Obama can be made to say anything the author wants in a near-believable format. Digital manipulation and revisionism make it difficult to trust the words, pictures, and videos laid before our eyes. 

The Differences between Digital Humanities and Digital History

STEPHEN ROBERTSON

“Digital humanists share a commitment to collaboration, openness, and experimentation” Like Roy Rosenzweig envisioned, among others, digital humanists main driving force is that of openness and sharing. They bridge the gap between the Academy and the Public, bringing an accessibility to the ivory tower. Yet, they also engage with traditional scholarship, reshaping traditional methods and techniques. Digital tools, from penetrating radar that allows us to view historic or archeological sites without disturbing them, either by choice or situation (such as lack of funds or ability to dig due to, for example, being beneath a extant building or street, to video-game style modeling that helps to recreate people, places, and things that are long gone, both for study and for public engagement. More and more archeological sites are being left in situ rather than disturbed by harmful excavation as the technology advances. This is particularly true with those archeological sites that involve human remains. 

The Digital Humanities or a Digital Humanism

DAVE PARRY

“Simply using a computer does not make one a digital humanities scholar—typing your manuscript on a word processor does not let you in the club; your work needs to share an affinity with a certain method of approach to humanities scholarship.” Here I think is the place to begin with Parry’s article on Digital Humanities. What constitutes Digital Humanities is that computers and digital media/technology is necessary, but the use of such media doesn’t make one a scholar in that field. Simply using a power point display during a lecture for example. The Digital Humanities field is far larger, reaching outside the classroom as well as inside. The field is further dived by those who use digital media as a tool to further explore or express traditional humanities and scholarship, and those who study the humanities within the digital realm, such as social media. It is assured that President Trump’s tweets will be archived for future historians to study and debate, as well as all of their reactions, comments, and shares caused by such, as something new and unique to the early 21^stcentury. Further division and specializing in the field of Digital Humanities is assured. 

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^[1]“Radical History Review“. Project MUSE. muse.jhu.org.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton