For Digital History Homework
Reading Response for 22 January 2019
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.
Reading Response for 5 February
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.
Reading Response for 12 February Unearthing Seeds of Fire by Frank Adams
Adams begins his article with a personal recollection from one of his project contributor’s, Edward O’Donnell, in which the story teller’s daughter unknowingly collects the plastic stoppers from crack cocaine vials. He using this a framing device of the types of stories he collected for his City of Memory project, one in which collaborators from all walks of life (in theory) contributed to the project personal memories of New York City. The project involved the use of mapping technology and text input to allow people to submit their own stories and be immediately curated by the project managers, or not, as in the cases with the story wasn’t interesting or inappropriate for the project. I’m immediately reminded of the earlier days of blogging back in 2000 where the blog ‘Overheard in New York’ (and its eventual various clones) became popular and accepted text input from numerous anonymous sources for humorous purposes. City of Memory, which began as part of the Smithsonian’s Folk Life Series is inspired by previous version going back a century of attempts to collect the stories of everyday Americans, and would go on to inspire StoryCorps, the popular NPR series with the same premise (only with the ‘interviewer’ being a friend or family member instead of a professional). City of Memory was designed so that very little editing took place, except for grammar and filtering stories for appropriateness. It is praised as a ‘living archive’ and it helps to map out diverse communities and groups in a way that may not be obvious to other viewers, as content creators identify their parts of the city. City of Memory is a participatory curated project and populist initiative that works to allow anyone with the desire and access to contribute but links together due to close geographical location, forming various versions and layers to a city that all exist simultaneously in one space or place. As the author describes it, it is and “open-ended cultural work” that has the capacity to change and grow, possibly without end.
You Can’t Padlock and Idea by Stephen Schneider
Introduction
The Highlander Folk School, Movement halfway Houses, and Rhetorical Education
Schneider begins his article with the raid on the Highlander Folk School by Tennessee District Attorney Albert Sloan in order to emphasize how the southern establishment viewed the social justice school as a significant threat and home to agitators of the status quo. He then outlines the early history and mission of Highlander, with its goals of educating poor and working-class peoples in order to help elevate them out of poverty and relieve them of oppression. He gives great emphasis to the rhetorical nature of Highlander’s work, and how they helped their students to use rhetorical tools and strategies to pursue social change. Students were able to use tools already available to them to solve their problems and frame their arguments in terms of “social justice and collective action.” This non-traditional education format was effective to a degree in opening new pathways and achieving change.
In the poverty-stricken American Southern States of the 1920’s, the prosperity achieved by other states from the New Deal was hard to find. Labor disputes over low wages and unsafe work practices became violent and lasted for years, forcing industries to close and make the poverty worse. As many workers, having relocated to the industrial centers, lived in company-owned housing, they were summarily evicted. Private security firms like the Pinkertons and even the National Guard were called in to protect assets. It was in this environment that Highlander formed under Myles Horton, in order to provide and education and unity to organizing for the marginalized populace. Horton, inspired by other educator in Chicago, New York, and Denmark, developed a pedogeological model of adult education that was organized around the idea that together people would have a stronger voice for change and make a greater impact. Lessons were organized by using what the students already knew and organizing in such a way that they may make tools of their knowledge. They were taught about contract negotiation, grievances, journalism, and literacy. Folk music and drama was sometimes used to reinforce the lessons as well as teach.
Collective action and identity were key in the development and lessons of Highlander. Highlander actively sought to form collective identities with the students, and engage in a collaborative, democratic process within the school. By educating the students on rhetoric and expanding their capabilities in democratic deliberation. As the school expanded the focus remained first and foremost on the students’ needs and experience. The education of the students was a vehicle not only for the pursuit of social change and the furthering of civil rights in the South, but in the creation of a democratic community as well.
Highlander’s innovative techniques of using drama, folk music, citizenship education, and labor journalism aligned with the student’s own unique heritage, knowledge, and needs proved to be a combination that shaped how civil rights and community organizations in the south were successful, and how similar techniques, tailored to the students who requested and needed them could evolve.
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