Reaction Paper #7: Presenting Information Online

This week we examined ideas from various sources on what makes a good online presentation of archival material for a general audience. This is a topic that is inevitably influenced by the who your target audience is. Depending on the information being presented the audience can be a very specific group such as a museum designed for children or it can be the American public in general which is more the case when we are talking about government records as a whole.

In the “Final Thoughts” chapter of Cohen and Rozenweig's Digital History, they summed up the hope of what digital technology will bring to the field of history. The authors state their wish that “all historians can use the web to make the past more richly documented, more accessible, more diverse, more responsive to future researchers, and above all more democratic.” (Thank you Dr. Cebula for waving citation requirements) http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/finalthoughts/

We also covered the authors appendix where they give some final technical advice on how to best present historical information. Unlike the rest of this week's reading this was purely technical advice relating to scripting languages. It is miscellaneous although I do agree that for the best professional look basic HTML should probably be avoided. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/appendix/2.php

The “Does Your Museum Need Its own Social Network” article is a perfect example of material being presented to a very specific audience, in this case children. The idea of using a social network to attract and encourage an audience to come back to a museum is an interesting one. In the case of this museum privacy is paramount as we are talking about children. Outside social networks cannot be trusted even if they have good security (facebook) and you certainly wouldn't use a network with bad security (myspace). http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2008/01/does-your-museum-need-its-own-social.html

Instead this article suggests the creation of a on site social network within the museums database that better guarantees the privacy of its users while allowing them to interact with other fans of the museum. This network also allows parents to fully monitor their child’s activities and of course the parents have the final say so in whether or not their kid can join this network. Admittedly many elements of this proposed network including its name “Tree of Promise” seem a little corny, but it is important to remember who the target audience is. http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2008/01/does-your-museum-need-its-own-social.html

Tenement Museum Blog Header

 

From the more specific audience of a Children's Museum we turn to State Archives whose audience is simply defined as the general public, although I think it is fair to say most of the audience is going to be adults or at least teenagers. A key question that carries over from paper archives is centralization. Some states have a fairly centralized system where the state government holds all of the records; meanwhile other states are decentralized and individual counties and cities hold most of their own records. This question translates into the digital world over whether there should be a single online database with many different types of government records available for public view or whither each local government should create their own online access. http://www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/issuebriefs/preservation?brief=3

Penitentiary Convicts 1877-1888 (Washington Digital Archives)

Of course when we are talking about the creation of a digital archive it is hard not to talk about the Digital Archives facility we have here in Cheney, the first building custom built for that purpose. The pdf about the creation of the Washington's Digital Archives as well as the cost/benefit analysis shows that having government records online in one database is often the best way of presenting them to the public. http://www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/reports/proi_case_washington/proi_case_washington.pdf

Reaction Paper #6: Digital Dark Age

This week we move on from issues of copyright to reading that is a little less extensive and headache inducing as we start to focus the majority of our class on putting together our digital tours. The main issue of our weeks readings was what in this case is being called the digital dark age. Although this is the first time I have heard this issue being describes as a potential dark age for the digital world.

The issue is that unlike paper the digital medium is rapidly evolving. A great example of this can be found on Washington's Digital Archives website. In the mid-90s the at the time governor of Washington State, Mike Lowry set up a website that (although perhaps not the most high tech when it was set up), originally took up a fair amount of memory on any hard drive. That website is now preserved within a small part of the digital archives database with most of its original functions intact.

As the many examples in our readings have shown this vast storage capacity makes it possible to preserve a record series of an entire state and make it relatively accessible to the general public (I say relatively in reference to the fact that some of these databases could improve their search engine and usability). http://www.digitalarchives.state.pa.us/

The drawback to this rapid evolution is that both the software used to create digital records online and the portable storage mediums (CD, USB drive, etc) are rapidly evolving. In the course of this rapid evolution not a lot has been done to accommodate older technology. Computers manufacturers no longer offer disk drives for ¾ inch or floppy disks and Microsoft does not allow users to open a file in Microsoft Office 2007 that was created with Microsoft Office 2000. Files that were created and/or stored within these older mediums are often irretrievable. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081027174646.htm

Early Tape Drive

However what makes this even more problematic is the fact that companies benefit from the use of exclusive digital mediums. Creating software that is unreadable to a competing program ensures that people will use software packages used by the same company that makes a certain operating system. Also updating a software package every few years while only giving a limited period for files created in an older version of the same software to remain compatible, makes it so consumers have to buy new and increasingly expensive software packages every few years. I suspect that not wanting to be too political the authors of the “Digital Dark Age” and “Digital Preservation” articles do not mention how problematic this potentially is in a society where large companies are given a lot of political power. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081027174646.htm http://www.digitalpreservationeurope.eu/what-is-digital-preservation/

The alternative pushed in this weeks readings is the use of open software to counteract the problem that is referred to as the Digital Dark Age. Open software has become very popular in the home computer market. Not only are programs like OpenOffice and VLC Media Player adaptable to many different media formats, but they are also free. However open software has not made as much head way in the professional world, which I suspect has something to do with the influence of big business in the development of digital archives. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/jobs/08starts.html

Open Office Main Page

 

Computers and Automation Scare of the 1950s

In the 1950s it was a common worry that computers would replace human workers in an office setting.



In actuality the opposite has happened. Although certain positions were phased out the average worker is now expected to do more because they have digital technology to assist them.

Reaction Paper 5: The Maze of Copyright Law

Unlike previous weeks our readings this week were largely focused on a single issue, that of copyright. To those unfamiliar with the complicated nature of copyright laws the issue may seem like a simple one on the surface. Certainly if one is dealing with media that has been created by a major American company within the last five years it is a pretty safe conclusion that the material is probably copyrighted and it will be easy to figure out who owns the copyright. However historians are generally dealing with media that is much older then five years which may or not be subject to current copyright laws.  

Statue of Anne 1710

According to our readings, copyright laws have their origin not in a campaign to protect the ownership rights of individuals or private companies, but in government efforts in the 15^th and 16^th century to control what readings people had access to in 15^th and 16^th century Europe. Europe at the time was not a democracy and governments were concerned that the rapid advances in printing technology would give people easy access to texts that the government and/or the church deemed heretical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

The first law designed to protect individual publishers was the Statue of Anne which was passed by the parliament of Great Britain and came in to effect in 1710. What is important to note about this early copyright law was its limited definition of copyright compared to US copyright law today. The Statue of Anne granted copyright protection for 14 years for any new book and 21 years for any book already in print. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

The Statue of Anne set the blueprint for Anglo-American copyright legislation. Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S Constitution gives Congress the power to give authors and inventors the exclusive right to their writings and discoveries. By this time the first copyright law had already been passed by in Connecticut by the State Legislature. The first federal copyright law was passed in 1790 and like the Statue of Anne it provided a very limited definition of copyright that extended for 14 years from the date of publication and only covered print media. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.copyright.gov/history/1790act.pdf&embedded=true&chrome=true

The change between the limited copyright laws of a few centuries ago and the much more extensive laws of today occurred because publishers and individual authors wanted to more fully control and benefit financially from the work that they had created and/or published. Throughout the course of the 19^th century new laws were passed that extended copyright to include more forms of media (ie illustrations). Authors also won the right to renew the copyright on their works after the initial period was up (on top of the they won the right for their children and other family members to extend the copyright). http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/copyright/1.php

On top of the increased period ownership, authors/publishers also won the right to extend their copyright claim over dramatic adaptions of their works as well as foreign copies/translations through copyright treaties with other countries. According to the authors one of the most influence people in the fight for extensive copyright protection was none other than Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). He lobbied Congress (1909) for a law that would give an automatic copyright period for the life of the author plus fifty years. Although unsuccessful in his life a law that matched his specifications was passed in 1976. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/copyright/1.php

This new extended period became the new precedent and in the last few decades additional laws have been passed that gave an additional twenty years of protection pass the expiration date on many copyrighted works. The authors show that although none of these copyright laws are permanent, thus not violating the constitutional precedent against perpetual copyright the interests of large companies (ie Disney) have repeatedly lobbied for extending copyright every time profitable works are about to enter the public domain. This pattern could keep a lot of media out of the public domain indefinitely. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/copyright/6.php

On top of this repeated changes to copyright at the federal level combined with copyright laws that have been passed by states make it very difficult for public historians to determine the copyright status of more obscure media. The collection of audio recordings from William Savory is a prime example of how this can be a major issue for public historians. Thousands of recordings made by an innovative radio technician (William Savory) were recently given to the Smithsonian by his son. These recordings include many well known jazz musicians of the 1930s. The drawback is that these recordings have nothing to indicate the date and place where they were made. Adding to this complication is the fact that audio recordings were not covered by federal copyright law until 1971 leaving copyright to the state where these recordings were made; but it is not clear where these recordings were made. This has unfortunately created a seemingly insurmountable copyright dilemma that has prevented these recordings from being widely accessible to the general public. http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/a_trove_of_historic_jazz_recordings_has_found_a_home_in_harlem_but_you_cant/

Creative Commons Logo

 

The other focus of our readings was the website Creative Commons. The Internet has become a unique way for publishers and individual authors to promote their work. As such many individuals and organizations do have an interest in making their work at least viewable online. The drawback is that these same entities are understandably afraid that making their works viewable online could also make them vulnerable to unauthorized use. http://www.indicare.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=118

Creative Commons addresses these concerns by offering six different licenses for authors and creating agencies to use. These licenses give Creative Commons users permission to view media but sharply restrict or disallow other uses of the same material. If someone violates the rules set forth in the Creative Commons license the author or creating agency can pursue legal action based on the terms of the license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

The drawback with Creative Commons is that its licenses add more factors into the already complicated matters of copyright law. However, this is arguable made up for by the fact that Creative Commons provides a secure place for authors and creating agencies to attract new audiences for their work. Creative Commons has been successful enough to attract some notable customers to its database. https://docs.google.com/viewer

 

 

Reaction Paper #4: Storing and Disseminating Information

This weeks readings expanded on the numerous ways in which to store digital information as well as ways to bring that information to an audience, although for this week the readings were addressing specific methods used for bringing information to an online audience.
It is now pretty clear that the authors of Digital History are with the Center for History and New Media one of two groups who collaborated to create the 9/11 digital archive. As such material from this archive is frequently used to back up the claims of the authors. I would have to say that even though the authors might be blowing their own trumpet, the 9/11 is an excellent example of an archive whose content makes a strong case for its collection and preservation.

A lot of the new digital databases are dependent on voluntary submissions from people or organizations in order to keep expanding their collections and maintain interest (which usually means funding as well). For this component of the site you need to learn who the potential audience (and possible participants in a site) might be and how to best reach out to them. The authors give the example of doing an archive on the Iraq War vs. World War II. Iraqi War veterans being relatively young might be alright with submitting their stories or any other material they have through texting or a submission system on the database's website, however the older veterans from World War II might prefer an email correspondence or even a mail correspondence (the authors don't mention the second possibility). An additional observation I can add is that is you are trying to persuade an organization to donate material rather then an individual they might also prefer to communicate through email, mail, or even fax (in certain scenarios). It is therefore highly important to tailor the outreach portion of a digital project to the likely audiences and/or donors. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/collecting/index.php
The second chapter of Digital History for this week is focused on the issue of digital preservation. The most important point that the authors have in this chapter is that there is a preservation issue when it comes to digitized information.
According to the authors digital information is arguably more fragile then its non-digital counterpart. While a paper document can take a certain amount of damage and still be readable, information stored on a CD will often become unusable at the first sign of corruption. Because of this it is especially important that a digital preservation project has specially trained staff to ensure the integrity of each electronic record.
Apart from this the other preservation issue the authors tackle is the rapid evolution of digital technology vs. digitized information. Digital technology is evolving so rapidly that it outpaces programs and devices used to hold digital information making retrieval of older information potentially problematic. If programming language changes rapidly it may be difficult to retrieve information stored with an earlier version of a program (say a file was created with a program on Windows 95). When these situations come up specialized (and often expensive) software is needed to retrieve and translate the older information into a newer form. The authors talk about some of the custom programs that can ensure that information is encoded in a way that is more likely to handle the rapid advancement of computer technology. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/preserving/index.php

Next we concentrate on a specific form of outreach called crowdsourcing. In recent years open media sites have appeared online. These sites are freely accessible and used by many different people. Historical collections can be copied and posted on these websites and after being tagged with relevant labels they can attract a new audience. http://www.flickr.com/commons?GXHC_gx_session_id_=6afecb2055a3c52c http://www.spellboundblog.com/2008/01/17/loc-flickr-equals-crowdsourced-tagging/
The example used for our reading is the Library of Congress and Flikr. Recently the Library of Congress decided to make two of its digital photograph collections available on flickr. The idea was that it would generate a lot of new attention for the photograph collections contained within the Library of Congress. This is probably true although the drawback is that flickr like many other open sites is to a certain extant user editable. In the case of flickr users can add notes directly on to a photograph and comments below. The problem is that many of the comments added are not even remotely historic and add nothing to the collection. For more historical background users are better off using the Library of Congress website and even getting an account which allows users to interact with the historical aspects of a collection. http://northwesthistory.blogspot.com/2009/06/lick-this-loc-flickr-and-limits-of.html https://myloc.gov/Pages/default.aspx
The final group of readings for this week go back to the issue of preservation and we take a look at a program called Omeka, an open source software program specifically designed for the preservation and online publication of historic material. There is also a more simplified online version of the program called omeka.net. http://omeka.org/about/ http://www.omeka.net/
I have yet to use either version of Omeka but if the sample sites we are given are indicative of the possibilities of the program then I would have to say I am impressed. Although the question of how easy it is to use the program has yet to be answered. http://omeka.org/showcase/ http://www.digitalamherst.org/

Museum of Transportation (St. Louis)

The Museum of Transportation was founded in 1944 by a group of historically minded local citizens who had just acquired an old mule driven streetcar called the Bellefontaine. Over the next couple of decades the train collection grew and a disused railway station was acquired along the Missouri Pacific Railroad.
On September 1, 1979 the St. Louis County Department of Parks and Recreation assumed responsibility for the operation and development of the site and the collection before acquiring full ownership of the site from the museum founders in February 1984.

Museum of Transportation (St. Louis) Location

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Museum of Transportation (St. Louis) Pictures

St. Louis Union Station: Memories Museum

Completed in 1894 at a cost of $6.5 million (1894 amount), St. Louis Union Station was the passenger hub for St. Louis area. At the time of its construction the massive station was one of three main U.S train stations in America, the others being in New York and San Francisco.
With the decline in passenger rail traffic St. Luis Union Station lost its preeminent status and in the late 1970s the mostly deserted station closed its doors. In the early 80s the former train station was converted into a shopping mall. The Memories Museum was created by the new owners in partnership with the Museum of Transportation and occupies a store space on the second floor of the mall. The museum pays tribute to the buildings former life as a railway station.

St. Louis Union Station: Memories Museum Location

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St. Louis Union Station: Memories Museum Pictures

Reaction Paper #3: Digital Libraries and Archives

Our readings this week dealt largely with the process of designing a web page for a digital library and/or archives, how to reach out to an interested audience, and possible uses of an online archive using the Old Bailey as an example.

In our first Cohen and Rosenzweig chapter for this week entitled Designing for the Digital Web, the authors cover some of the basics of how to design a good web page for a digital library/archive. What is problematic about this chapter is that what amounts to a well designed web page is somewhat based on the opinion of the person looking at the web page.

The main advice of Cohen and Rosenzweig is to make sure that text and images retain the character of the original documents while at the same being easy to view and read. Another equally important issue with a web site representing a digital collection is to make sure the mission and purpose of the website is stated clearly in an easy to find part of the web page for new users. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/designing/5.php

The second chapter of the digital history book for this week focuses on building an audience for a digital collection. This can be done with both old fashioned methods of promotion as well as new methods of promotion that have emerged with the World Wide Web.

As the authors point out some sites are fortunate enough to automatically get free promotion through their role. Web sites that contain government records will automatically get a certain amount of attention if they contain information that is commonly accessed by the public. The authors mentioned the 9/11 Digital Archives (http://911digitalarchive.org/) which received a lot of publicity from newspapers like USA Today due to its subject matter.   

 

However most digital databases are not lucky enough to receive this kind of publicity. Certainly publicity from a mainstream media outlet (newspaper or TV) would be of enormous benefit, but for historical subject matter this isn't always possible. However the Internet has provided a new outlet for publicity particularly in the form of blogs which allow historical databases to generate their own advertising and connect with like minded people/organizations who might be interested in the material contained in a digital database. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/audience/index.php http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com/search?q=a+naive+bayesian+in+old+bailey

The ease of accessing information via the World Wide Web instead of in person at an archive and the advantage of having digital copies of documents/artifacts available in order to reduce handling of the physical copies has led to a large number of online databases for a wide range of material. http://www.arts-humanities.net/project http://oedb.org/library/features/250-plus-killer-digital-libraries-and-archives http://oedb.org/library/features/250-plus-killer-digital-libraries-and-archives

Digital databases can be based around a geographical area or in the case of the Old Bailey archive based around a specific record series. The record series in this case are all the court cases that went through London's central criminal court (Old Bailey) from 1673-1913. http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

As both the Digital History from Below and the Teaching with the Old Bailey Article show, the Old Bailey archive alone produces a wealth of potential educational value for classrooms at all levels as well as scholarly research. https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2299/38/1/102846.pdf http://ancarett.com/?p=157

Clothing of the Year 2000

How clothing designers in the 1930s viewed eleven years ago. Warning: This is a little sexist.

Racist Anti-Drug PSA Addendum

I should add that on top of being humorous the Racist PSA is a testament to how the digital age has made it harder for various agencies to keep secrets. Remember this PSA was pulled off the air shortly after it first appeared and an attempt was likely made to destroy most or all of the copies. Nevertheless, here it is.

Racist Anti-Drug PSA

This was a real PSA created by The Partnership for a Drug Free America in the 80s or early 90s. They pulled it fast when they realized what they had inadvertently created, but a somewhat damaged video copy ended up on Youtube.

Reaction Paper #2: Development and Conflicting Technologies

Our reading last week focused on the development of digital databases along with some of the new challenges and rules that they brought into the traditionally paper based history profession. Largely these new challenges and rules had to do with issues of differentiating extensively researched historical content with some of the less professional (sites run by nonprofessional volunteers and/or hobbyists) historical websites on the web; as well as some of the new rules of conduct in the on-line world.

This week our reading dealt with the technologies that have emerged for digitizing text, images, sound, and moving images; as well as the storage of digital information in an on-line database. Since the early 1990s, when easy navigation of the Internet first became possible the variety of software available for the digitization and storage processes has increased exponentially.

Our readings from Daniel J Cohen's and Roy Rosenzweig's show that the greatest number of choices for digitization are in the area of text and images. As the authors show this goes back to the creation of HTML (or Hyper Text Markup Language) early on that provided a digital format for the arrangement of images and text on a web page.

Building off of the HTML software a number of competing programs were invented that allowed for the more complex arrangement of digital information. Some of these programs are the more easy to use packages like Dreamweaver or Adobe that come with a certain amount of per-formatting. Other programs have been created that allow for much more complex custom formatting and more direct manipulation of HTML codes that many professionals need when they are working with a complex database.

With sound and moving images the authors describe a similar pattern where there was an initial pioneer in the field of getting various multimedia on line (RealPlayer by Real Networks). As the technology for digital storage and putting multimedia online became more complex a number of competing software formats have emerged for multimedia. The authors describe the emergence of Windows Media Player, and Quicktime as well as a possible decline of RealPlayer.

What I found most interesting about our readings was the two major digital rivalries (technology wise) that have emerged with the increasing numbers of options available to people in the areas of digital storage and software. 

The first rivalry involves storage of digital information on a single computer vs. storage on a wider online database. Until recently digital information such as email was stored in a database on a computer belonging to the owner of the information and/or the company he/she worked for. The necessary software was generally provided by the same company responsible for the internet connection to a particular computer or by the company that provided the operating system. However with the increasing availability of online storage space companies such as Google, Microsoft (Hotmail), and Yahoo have created large amounts of online storage that can hold email, blogs, and various forms of multimedia; people are increasingly turning to online storage that is not based on a single hard drive. 

 

The other rivalry mentioned in the reading is the rise of free programs (software created by groups that are either nonprofit or get their money through other means besides charging for the program). The reading talked about the challenge of the companies that sell the paying software packages to make sure that their product is noticeably better then their free competition.

However I would have to say that the problem is a little more complicated then that. I use the OpenOffice software package (free) for my word processing needs. Between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office, it is Microsoft that has the better program (in my opinion). Microsoft Office is far less prone to minor glitches and has a better spelling and grammar checker. In spite of this the fact that OpenOffice is free made me choose OpenOffice because in spite of its minor faults I have saved 100+ dollars. If I am representative of other American software users then the makers of the paying programs are also going to have to figure out a way to cut costs or rely solely on their distribution deals with large institutions.

Sources

http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/starting/index.php

http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/digital-humanities-in-2008-ii-scholarly-communication-open-access/

Daily Show Blooper

The cracking up is not scripted.

Reaction Paper #1: What the Heck is Digital History

“The use of Digital Technology to both represent and analyze a store of information.” http://digitalhistory.unl.edu//interviews/alkalimatint1.php

After reading our material for this week I think that the definition of Digital History can be broken down into two sub-definitions. One is the above statement which alludes to the use of digital technology within the field of history, the other is a much more literal definition.

The literal definition of digital history is the history of the digital technology itself. In the case of digital history the two significant inventions are the computer (and its related accessories) and the internet. It is these key inventions that have made digital technology a good medium for historical information.

Our reading for this week completely skipped over the early history of the computer and largely skipped over the early history of the internet (1980s, ARPAnet,etc). Instead the focus was on the development of some of the first easy to use software packages designed for exploring the Internet with ease. This began with Mosaic in the early 90s, largely succeeded by Netscape (as the most popular tool for exploring the internet in the mid to late 90s, before being succeeded my Internet Explorer. It was the development of Internet Exploration Software that made the internet usable to the general public for the first time and expended the use of the web for transmitting historical information. 

 

 

Along with this the background history that we read also focused on the creation of usable and reliable search engines for the internet. In the last fifteen years the amount of historical information and material available through online databases (government, commercial, or private) has increased exponentially. Because of this a complex search engine capable of finding relevant sources for a particular topic is as necessary as a web browser. I found it particularly interesting that a search engine that was once considered state of the art (yahoo), is now rapidly becoming outdated because of its inability to find some of the less organized and cataloged sources on the internet.

With the development of web browsers and search engines the use of digital technology as a tool for store and representing historical information/material became practical as well as viable. Beginning in the early 90s many government and private interests began exploring online digital databases for storing and transmitting historical materials/information.

If you were to ask me who pioneered online projects I would guess either the federal government or a large corporation; essentially some organizational body with a lot of funding available. It was no surprise that the first group to create an online digital archive was the Library of Congress using collections that they had digitized as early as the 1980s. 

 

As digital storage space increased and became more readily available (at an increasingly lower price), digital databases began appearing from smaller government, academic, and even individual sources. A good example of the increasing ease of creating a digital database is the Anti-Imperialism in the United States 1898-1935 online collection. This was a database created by a Syracuse University Graduate Student named Jim Zwick using his dissertation and other materials from his research. In many ways you could argue that Jim Zwick was one of the forerunners of bloggers who publish their personnel interests and projects in an online digital database.

As for the Boilerplate comics, although intended to be silly they are an inadvertent testament to the ease of manipulating digitized information (photographs in Boilerplate's case) and the need to make sure information is produced or reproduced accurately when it is published in an online database.

Sources

http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/exploring/

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/business/yourmoney/11archive.html?_r=2&sq=digital%20archives&st=cse&scp=8&pagewanted=all

http://www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/index.html

September 11 Digital Archive

On the subject of Digital Archives I found this one particularly interesting. It is an online archive that contains documents, photographs, audio recordings, first hand accounts, and emails relating to the experiences of people on the day of September 11 as well as the immediate aftermath.

 
This archive was set up as a collaboration between the Center for History and New Media based out of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning based out of the City University of New York.

Also contained are links to several other 9/11 related Digital Collections from a number of  other educational/historical institutions including the Smithsonian. 

Here is the URL: http://911digitalarchive.org/

Macbook Wheel

Apple is determined that Mac products in no way resemble a PC.

Hello

Hello