Little Bighorn

Mary Hill Park

Its been awhile.

Its been awhile, but I'm going to return to this blog. I don't know if I'll focus on digital history, or expand this to other historical topics. Suggestions are welcome from anyone still working on their digital history blog!

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