Discussing Digital Debacles!

  The most recent reading for my digital history class was Chapter 3, "Becoming Digital", from Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web by Daniel Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig. This chapter is near and dear to my heart because of my past experience digitizing text and still images.

  One concern I have when the word "digitization" starts getting thrown around is that a distinction needs to be made between "making something in to a digital format" and "making something available online". I consider my past work as a volunteer and intern (explanation to come, hold on) to be "digitization" even though most of what I did has not been put online and probably will not be. As discussed in Chapter 3, considerations about picture quality and file size hinge on what audience you are serving; not just hundreds of students vs. three researchers per year online, but also public vs. in-house.

   An example of what I consider a public digitization project. This is a clear example of creating digital files and images of analog things and making them available to the wider public by putting them on a host website (Recollection Wisconsin). Having been the main person working on this project, I got a crash course in metadata, TIFFS, JPEGs, and dots per inch.

  I also consider scanning, photographing, and adding search terms and other metadata to the in-house cataloging software (PastPerfect) to also be digitization. I believe both forms of making a digital product to be important and equally time-consuming.

Another AWESOME digitization project, just on a larger scale. The Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin. This was one of the things I kept thinking about while reading Chapter 3.

Questions I had while reading:

1. Are there examples of scanned documents that are searchable? I feel like there should be (Chapter 3 says there aren't, but this book is dated)

2. Is "mark up" text still a thing? I don't think I've read a typed transcript of an original document that used the mark up symbols the authors show in the "To Mark Up, or Not to Mark Up" section.

-B-

Blogs!

Let's reflect on blogging, shall we?

  For me, blogging = journaling in public. I have always been a big journaler of my private thoughts and never shared those physical journals with anyone. Getting my thoughts on paper takes weight off my mind and can help me think through some of the tangle of emotions or ideas that get all stuck together if I don't say them out loud or write them down.

 Blogging is slightly different. I have started and deleted several blogs in my young adult life. Neither of which were meant in any way to be professional, I might add. My most recent attempt made me re-think what I wanted to do with blogs and what they meant to me. I wanted to use it as an outlet for my inner thoughts, but I am definitely aware that anyone can read these things if I have a public blog. And being public is an essential part of blogging, right? So then I should ease off the personal and talk more about school or food or Milwaukee restaurants or scholarly things...right? But then how personal does one get when talking about things like that? And how do you get "followers" for your blog if you're not really sure what you're writing about or, really, what you're doing at all?!

And now, this blog has been created.

In the spirit from which this was born (a class requirement) this blog's content will be more focused, if not scholarly. Digital history is an evolving area of study (or perhaps "method" or "tool set" would be more appropriate) that is extremely important for traditional historians and public historians alike. So let's dive in to some actual content!

Some thoughts on blogs:

1. They are a nice way to convey well-written ideas without having to publish them in a journal, newspaper, newsletter, etc. (online or paper)

2. Through this Blogger platform, customization is pretty simple (but sucks me in for at least 30 minutes....I have to get that font color just right!)

     -One of my classmates is giving a presentation about Word Press sometime soon, so it will be interesting       to learn about that platform.

3. They can be time consuming to maintain. This is especially true if you are a small historical organization who wants to have content in social media/blogs, but does not have a dedicated position for digital media.

4. For researchers or professors, a blog could be a journal about research processes or structuring a course. If it is a public blog, you could share it with colleagues anywhere you wish and get feedback about your problems or triumphs.

To conclude, here's and example of a Public History blog: National Council on Public History's blog called "History @ Work". A fairly simple set up, but with the abilities to tag subjects, add photos, post news, and leave comments.

-B-