Public History Online - Latest Comments

Re: Closing Thoughts

Emily Pfotenhauer — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:49:24 -0000

So many good points in this last round of comments...these are a few that stood out to me:

Chris: "I feel that we talk a great deal about how to create archives, metadata, exhibitions, and catalogs digitally, but we've not talked a great deal about how to network, market, and publicize digitally."
Will: "Doing public history online is almost pointless if general audiences cannot access, do not know how to use, or are failing to hear about our latest projects."
Justin: "In my mind, to be successful public history has to bridge that gap that makes so many people not like history. It has to be usable by the layperson as well as the academic."

Together these comments brought me back to one of the core issues of this discussion--doing better public history online is not only about better software tools and better resources, but about new ways to connect with communities and engage audiences. This is not only a question of promoting digital resources but of planning and designing resources with these goals in mind from the start.

Something we haven't addressed so far (and it may be a little late for me to throw this into the mix, but I will anyway) is the ways in which "the public" is _already_ doing history online. Apps like Billon Graves, commercial sites such as Ancestry, and numerous Tumblr blogs ("OMG That Artifact") and Facebook sites ("You know you're from Milwaukee when...") have become popular ways to generate conversations and share experiences around history/memory/genealogy. What is the role of the public historian in this environment of passionate online amateur historians?

Re: Closing Thoughts

Chris Cantwell — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:35:04 -0000

First, I'd like to start by thanking Will and Jordan for all the work with this project, including keeping us on task.

As to the questions, my reaction to all of the questions is quite similar so I will simply summarize them as one comment. I have been greatly impressed that while everyone here has articulated a variety of obstacles and opportunities in their work, the one common theme (besides, perhaps, money) is that the field's breathless turn to digital history has not brought with it important analog skills. I feel that we talk a great deal about how to create archives, metadata, exhibitions, and catalogs digitally, but we've not talked a great deal about how to network, market, and publicize digitally. I think this is true both at the level of pedagogy (Kyle's course outline, for instance, is the exception that proves this rule. It's the first course I've heard of to spend time on social media), but also at the level of scholarship. The current issue of _The Public Historian_ just arrived at my desk, and its articles include: a critique of Jim Grossman's Plan B, an article on "outsider" and amateur history makers, three articles about historical sites as themselves places with contested histories, two articles on curating and preservation standards, and several content-based reviews of digital and physical exhibits. Though not a digital history project, the public is just as absent. (Of course, there are questions of a journal's audience and medium, but I think my point stands).

So in response to all of these questions, I've come to determine to spend more time intentionally thinking about how to incorporate people and publics into future digital projects both as an audience, as participants, and as practitioners.

Thanks everyone for a very stimulating set of reflections.

Re: Closing Thoughts

Jordan Grant — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 15:43:30 -0000

1.) What have you learned about doing public history online from your peers’ reflections and comments?

Reading everyone's reflections dashed (productively – I believe) my desire to look for universals. I'll go ahead and say it; there is no one-size-fits-all list of standards and best practices for doing public history online. This comes as no surprise, I'm guessing, to more experienced hands in the field. "Public history" encompasses an impressive range of disciplines, professions, and pursuits, and its digital efforts share that same heterogeneity and complexity. With that in mind, I agree that our goal should be a great conversation – one that acknowledges the specificity of each project but gives all of us the chance to converse and, with luck, learn.

Here are a few other "lessons" I can share (and would love to debate).

A successful digital project requires a great deal of planning – arguably more than a non-digital (analog?) project. Why? We need to make room for collaborations with new groups (programmers, web designers, New Media professionals), and that often that pushes us out of our established channels. On the back end, it requires extra time for training, both for us and for the various "publics" we hope will collaborate with us on our digital creations.

While technological innovations (social media, Web 2.0, etc.) have lowered the bar, there's still a glaring need for more technical expertise among public historians. I agree that the first step may be better communication skills (we need to learn how to speak competently to IT professionals and other technical stakeholders), but I don't think we'll see truly game-changing work until historians are as comfortable programming and building as they are now with reading and writing.

None of our reflections feature a project that was conceived, pursued, and realized entirely online. I think the potential is there, but at the moment, the most successful projects seem to fuse grassroots social outreach and face-to-face interactions with work online.

2.) How will what you learned from this process shape your next online project?

All of your reflections reminded me of the original "why" behind this group: How can we use new technological innovations –social media, mobile devices, etc.– to do public history in a more "democratic and sustainable" way? "Democratic" might be the more loaded term here, but also the most pertinent. In the future, I think I'll approach digital projects with a greater awareness of how my work could break down or reify the social, cultural, and professional boundaries that public history, as a discipline, arose to combat.

3.) What is missing from our discussion about doing public history online?

I've begun to wonder whether the people doing the grandest, most "public" work in this field are not professional historians at all, but entrepreneurs and computer programmers: the people behind creative platforms like Flickr, Ancestry, Wikipedia, and HistoryPin. The digital turn in public history might force us to rethink (yet again!) the distinctions between "public" and "private" history, and the many ways people engage with the past outside the frameworks we provide.

Re: Closing Thoughts

Charles — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 09:52:21 -0000

Thanks to Will and Jordan for presiding over our working group.

I learned quite a bit about the common problems online projects face in getting an audience to contribute to a site, in overcoming institutional limitations on technology, and in planning the right mix of digital tools. I'm impressed with the many options our group suggested for overcoming these common problems: advance planning, research on a particular audience, connections with a particular outside group, and the use of specific software programs.

In our session I hope we can expand on the strategies suggested in the case studies and comments. I also hope we get a chance to talk together about the specific technical skills public historians need for online projects.

I'm looking forward to meeting you all next week. Thanks again. --Charles

Re: Mitchell’s Reflection

Charles — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:56:10 -0000

I learned a lot from this case study and the subsequent comments. On the question of whether to contribute to an existing platform or to build your own encyclopedia, in my state (Arkansas) the folks who created the encyclopedia project built their own architecture. I doubt the Arkansas project would have received as much grant funding if it had contributed to an existing platform.

Re: Kyle’s Reflection

Charles — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:49:33 -0000

Thanks for the great case study. That sounds like an excellent class. I agree with the comments of Will, Jordan, and Chris on the importance of having students run their own new media campaign. I'm wondering if the group has a consensus on the question (raised by Will and Jordan) of what skills students should learn in a Public History New Media class like Kyle's. Should students learn some html, as in Kyle's class? Should students learn about project management? Is there any room for readings on digital research (like Moretti's "Graphs, Maps, Trees")?

Re: Closing Thoughts

Olmstead Justin — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:54:38 -0000

1) I have learned that there is a lot more going on in public history than I realized. Yet with all of the public history topics there are many obsticals that must be overcome.

2) I believe that from what I have seen here, a master plan that has been fully vetted and has a good internal structure (financial, technical, and content) is needed before moving ahead with any public history project.

3) I'm not as worried about the face-to-face connectons as I am about usability. In my mind, to be successfull public history has to bridge that gap that makes so many people not like history. It has to be usable by the layperson as well as the academic.

Re: Closing Thoughts

Will — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:04:23 -0000

1) This working group taught me that public historians share in many common obstacles when doing public history online. First, we need to identify our target audiences and engage them effectively. Enticing the public to collaborate and share can be a difficult process when we do not possess large marketing budgets and use social media properly. Sometimes, as in Emily's case with Flickr and the local Native American tribe she worked with, the social media and the audience is there, but proprietary or sensitivity issues exist.

Second, online projects require a lot of planning and perhaps experimentation before getting into the "nitty gritty" of development and design. I know from working with Jordan that its easier to finish a project when museum curators and other web-team members have specific objectives and have literally mapped out how they want to achieve their goals. When necessary, we must take the time to spell out how certain technologies or web applications function for less knowledgable team members or traditional academics.

Finally, institutional, and, in Chris' case, software constraints can impede creativity and functionality when doing public history online. Some university's require us to render digital collections using a single platform like Content-DM, which I believe is the case for Charles, while institutions like the Smithsonian are so concerned about e-security that they obstruct the development process (my own experience). These can be difficult issues to work around and I feel that communication and openness is key. We as public historians should not be afraid to approach IT professionals or software developers and ask those tough questions that might expose our own ignorance when it comes to using certain technologies.

2) For my next online public history project, I plan to better research my target audience and learn how they consume online media. This aspect of doing public history on the web is so crucial, especially since people of different socio-economic means use the web in different ways. For example, in Chris' case, Pullman's "silent communities" may be more inclined to interact with a project using mobile devices than personal computers. Here, we get to questions of access and usability. Either way, doing public history online is almost pointless if general audiences cannot access, do not know how to use, or are failing to hear about our latest projects.

3) I agree with Catherine that this project is missing the connections we make when speaking face-to-face at a conference. Our experiences prove that doing public history online requires both digital and physical interaction. I look forward to hearing more about Chris' experiences with Omeka, I want to talk to Gerben about using (and installing) Drupal, and I want to discuss with Charles how to engage a community when doing a civil rights-based digital history project - critical to my work as a PhD candidate.

I look forward to meeting you all next week and thank you for participating in this working group!

Re: Closing Thoughts

Gerben Zaagsma — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:46:22 -0000

1 + 2) These questions go together for me as our website is now scheduled to be launched in autumn 2012. I noticed several things that various projects have in common and that are helpful in my work:
- multiple ways of engaging users in a project and the importance of starting already before the actual project is launched (Jordan about content planning)
- the need to reflect upon the question of why we go online: Emily’s comment that “going digital should never be considered an end in itself but rather viewed as a tool to support knowledge sharing and community engagement” is very important. Going digital and online is not a goal in itself. This reminded me of a conference I once attended where a guiding question was if the web provides us with a better understanding of history; many seem to think so without questioning enough what we do online and why.
- taking into account the technological skills of the public comes up in several reflections (Christopher en Will)

3) Perhaps the challenge of how to cater for multiple audiences (academic versus non-academic) in a single project.

Re: Closing Thoughts

Clewis1 — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:01:36 -0000

1. From the posts, I have learned that there is a lot of good work going on, but institutions and scholars are struggling to find the right platforms and enough time to complete them.
2. My next online project will be shaped by the discussions - especially the candid comments by participants about their challenges. You always need more time and human resources than you think.
3. I think the only thing missing is the personal connection - the face-to-face communications. But we wil get that next week.

Look forward to seeing everyone. Catherine

Re: Kyle’s Reflection

Chris Cantwell — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:47:01 -0000

As Will and Jordan note, I think a strength of this class is having students fashion their own new media campaign, and returns to the theme that has cropped up several times in these reflections that we often think about digital mediums internally, and don't think about them as an object people will eventually use. Great reflection.

Re: Jordan’s Reflection

Chris Cantwell — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:18:19 -0000

Good summation of the project and your thought process leading up to it. Very informative. I'm becoming impressed, however, that while this is a working group about the problems and potentials of ONLINE public history, a lot of the reflections are calling for more face to face crowdsourcing. Not sure what to make of it yet, but will be worth discussing.

Re: Catherine’s Reflection

Chris Cantwell — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:11:44 -0000

This sounds like a great project. I'm wondering if you've considered reaching out to Atlanta's Muslim community as well? Knowing such communities exist near one's own community can not only raise awareness, but as people see the marked transnational variety of a religion as large and diverse as Islam it can also help break down those stereotypes your current partnership does.

Re: Week 1: Building a Digital Project with Local Communities

Chris Cantwell — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:01:15 -0000

Charles hits the nail on the head here. A perfect summary.

Re: Emily’s Reflection

Chris Cantwell — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:59:25 -0000

Emily, I have little to comment about your post exactly, except to say that it has really helped me brainstorm solutions to my own reflection. I was impressed at the ongoing level of in person, face to face networking that accompanied these two projects and am realizing we did not do enough of this for our own. The level of engagement in both of these is impressive.

And I also sympathize with the fear of how the digital humanities has begun to shift toward perpetuating some of the older hierarchies of knowledge DH's pioneers set out to critique. I hope, as you suggest, that Wisconsin's Area Research Centers and local historical societies primary allegiance is to the communities they serve and not to the state library in Madison. I hope WHO gives them the flexibility to work within its Content DM scheme to the best of their ability, and that WHO could use its (comparatively) larger resources to help them bring the material up to state standard.

Re: Chris’ Reflection

Chris Cantwell — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:52:48 -0000

Thanks everyone for the feedback and I agree with Jordan that there is a great deal of overlap between our experience and that of Emily. And after having read Emily's reflection I'm realizing the use of digital technology in no way replaces getting one's feet on the pavement. I'm now realizing we should have had a more, and hopefully build, a more intentional outreach to the community, networking in analog fashion. This has been great.

Re: Charles’ Reflection

Chris Cantwell — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:17:23 -0000

Charles,
First off, this is a great project and its scope is impressive. And I'll put up front I have limited experiences with projects that take in this amount of material. But I agree with Jordan that being more incisive about audience and public will help you. As I read through, I found myself wondering if organizations like the Arkansas Bar Association are going to be more helpful than a university setting. That would be an audience who may use this, or know directly educators, researchers, scholars, and activists who do.

Re: Week 1: Building a Digital Project with Local Communities

Emily Pfotenhauer — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:03:39 -0000

Charles--
Part of the public historian's role in overcoming these obstacles might be to figure out ways to make it as easy as possible for the community to contribute. We use CONTENTdm for the Wisconsin Heritage Online program and some contributing organizations with limited time and tech skills will provide their descriptive data in an Excel spreadsheet which we then upload to CONTENTdm; that way they can participate without having to learn a new and complex software program.

Will--
I think a core question re: the idea of crowdsourcing comments about tribal materials is "who is the crowd?" Flickr might be a great way to solicit more knowledge about the photographs from members of the tribal community, but it could also open up potentially problematic contributions from the general public. It would be up to the tribes to decide whether they wanted to facilitate/moderate a broad public conversation or whether they want to keep their own voice at the forefront.

Re: Mitchell’s Reflection

Emily Pfotenhauer — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:16:25 -0000

I think the question of whether to go it alone vs. taking part in an existing structure is an important one, especially as new social tools for sharing historical content continue to appear and typically have large audiences and broad appeal (Wikipedia as well as HistoryPin, Pinterest, etc.). Aside from their visibility, another reason to engage with sites like these is that they provide the opportunity to engage with people beyond your expected audience. On the other hand, there is the concern of sustainability/data preservation--Wikipedia presumably does not offer an option to export copies of the records you've created, for instance.

Re: Week 4: Bringing Digital History and New Media into the Classroom

Will — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:39:29 -0000

Hi Kyle,

I have two comments:

First, your "Public History and New Media" course reminds me a lot of the "History in the Digital Age" course I took at American University. This class introduced me to the digital humanities and completely changed my perspective on doing history. It included MA's, PhD's, and undergrads, also qualified as a "skills," or "tool of research" elective, and combined group discussions of theory with practicums using various web-based applications like WordPress, Flickr, and Omeka.

However, one aspect of your course that intrigues me - and was noticeably absent from the one I took - is training students to create effective social media campaigns for their online projects. Based on other reflections in this working group and from my own experiences, getting people to notice, use, and contribute to a web-baed project is probably as important as creating the project in the first place, especially if it relies on collaboration and user interactivity.

I'm curious, what methods or techniques in building social media campaigns worked best for your students? Do you find that Facebook and Twitter provide the strongest results or are there other tools that your students have found useful?

Second, Jordan and I faced the same institutional challenges at the Anacostia Community Museum in terms of adding WordPress plug-ins to our website. Fortunately at American Enterprise (Jordan's case study), the National Museum of American History's New Media department had already experienced issues with testing new plug-ins on Smithsonian hosted sites and they chose to purchase an outside domain. Conversely, curators at the ACM wanted to prove that the Smithsonian could successfully host a functional and flexible WordPress site that included all the bells and whistles their web-team desired. The result: epic fail. Our actual website (or development instance) could only be accessed using a Citrix log-in that allowed remote access to a Windows 98 (I think) computer on-site at the museum, plug-ins could only be tested by IT administrators, and access to our WordPress theme's CSS and HTML files was severely limited. The site remains unavailable to the public and new IT issues continue to arise several months after the fact.

Anyway, I just wanted to share in your frustration over this common pitfall and suggest hosting your students' sites beyond Loyola's servers. Hopefully we can come up with some real solutions at the conference.

Re: Kyle’s Reflection

Wtchak — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:34:27 -0000

Hi Kyle,

I have two comments:

Re: Mitchell’s Reflection

Mitchell Koffman — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:29:46 -0000

Jordan, I'll collect my thoughts about the basics of IT and discuss the first point briefly.

In terms of going alone vs. hitching a ride, I think it's really dependent on the institution. If your institution is fully committed to a project, then diving right in would allow for complete control, but requires the most amount of time and money. While working with an existing structure limits individuality, the likelihood of success it greater.

Re: Jordan’s Reflection

Mitchell Koffman — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:51:53 -0000

In terms of getting the public involved, I think that you have to remember who might be interested in such a site to begin with, as not everyone is going to become a visitor, so a low number of visits is not necessarily a bad thing (at least in the beginning). I would suggest that this site be targeted to more history related audiences (possible colleges and high schools) where a higher concentration of potential viewers and contributors are and determine a way for them to then share what they have found with their friends/family and so on.

Re: Mitchell’s Reflection

Jordan Grant — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:23:43 -0000

Hello Mitchell,

Thanks for your reflection. It's difficult to write about projects that didn't come to fruition, but I think we learn as much (if not more!) from the projects that failed as those that succeeded. I was wondering if you could expand upon two points in your reflection. First, on the macro level, do you think a state-based encyclopedia is a valuable investment, or should public historians look to contribute to more popular (albeit proprietary) information sources like Wikipedia? I think the project directs our attention to what of the new challenges presented by the web, the decision to "go it alone" or hitch your star to an existing structure. Second, in keeping with this week's larger topic, could you expand on what you think public historians need to know? In other words, what are the "basics of information technology" that public historians should learn before they begin these projects?

Re: Kyle’s Reflection

Jordan Grant — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:44:53 -0000

Hello Kyle,

Thanks for sharing. Your reflections reminded me of my own experiences as a graduate student in a Digital History / New Media course. I'm intrigued by the elements of your course that dealt specifically with public history. As a person who works, in part, for a museum's New Media office, I'm always wondering what a digital PH course should aspire to teach. Although I've gotten by with a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and software like WordPress and Omeka, I think the most essential skills have been non-technical -- project management, essentially. In many cases, I've felt more like an editor than a traditional public historian. I don't know how long you've taught this class, but have you received any feedback from students on how they've translated what they learned in class into their professional life? I'd be interested to here what aspects of the class they found most essential.