Visualizing History

Visualizing History was the most interesting assignment to date for me. I have no graphic or visual arts background so it was with some trepidation that I approached the task. But, I said to myself, the web is nothing if not visual so how hard can this be? The answer is that it wasn’t very hard, but I have begun to pick up a new skill.

To begin with I picked a subject familiar to me, The Normandy Invasion. Popular books and movies aside, there are many rich collections of photographs and documents readily available on the net to convey, perhaps too graphically for some, the events of 6 June 1944. I have the advantage of a life-long fascination with the Normandy Campaign, as the child of a Normandy airborne veteran, and I have walked the battlefields with my father. I do not necessarily have a more discerning eye than some, but this background helped me cull through many sites and photographs quickly.

Bearing in mind the dire consequences of using images not in the public domain, the five I selected came from the National Archives. This is really not much of a limitation because having looked at a dozen or more sites NARA was really quite good. If I needed to illustrate a coffee table volume I might have to look elsewhere, but for the purpose of “Visualizing History” there were more than enough. I did choose two images, numbers 2 and 4, which are very well known because they are really spectacular photographs. (Obviously that’s why they are printed so often – that and they are in the public domain) The shot of Nancy Reagan that is number 5 was chosen for contrast in that it is a color image, and a more recent one to emphasize the continuing importance, and pain, of that June day in 1944.

Visualizing History: Normandy 1

The Target: Occupied France

After enduring four years of occupation, France was about to endure the price of freedom: invasion.
The map above details the stretch of Normandy coast selected for the Allied return to continental Europe. The planners who created this map, and many more like it, could only hope that the gamble would indeed be a success and lead to the liberation of Europe.

(NARA RG 331: Records of Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, 1907 - 1966 ARC 595474)

Visualizing History: Normandy 2

Prelude to the Invasion

The Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower is shown addressing soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division shortly before D Day. To these men fell the difficult job of invading by parachute behind the invasion beaches to prevent the Germans from reinforcing their beach defenses. Together with the 82nd Airborne Division, and the British 6th Airborne Division, the 101st started the invasion in the early morning hours of the 6th.

(NARA RG 111: Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, 1860 - 1982 ARC 778813)

Visualizing History: Normandy 3

The Normandy Beaches

This was the loneliest place in the world on D-Day, no matter how many men were there. Every soldier had to face his own doubts and fears alone. The location of this landing craft is not given, but this bleak view is emblematic of what any soldier, American, British, Canadian, or Free French confronted on the 6th of June.

(NARA RG 26: Records of the U.S. Coast Guard, 1785 - 1992, ARC 513173)

Visualizing History: Normandy 4

The Wounded

At Normandy, as on any other battlefield there were the "lucky
ones," the wounded who survived. It is only in the chaos of war that injury brings a temporary respite. Here, soldiers of the 16th Infantry Regiment, await evacuation near Collville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France on 6 June 1944.

(NARA RG 111 Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer 1860-1982 ARC 531187)

Visualizing History Normandy 5

Counting the Cost of Freedom

First Lady Nancy Reagan lays flowers at the Omaha Beach Memorial Cemetery 11 June 1982.
(NARA-RRWHPO White House Photographic Collection ARC 198532)

The Origin of Valentine's Day -- Web Style

Having taken Valentine’s Day for granted for many years it came as a shock to me, as I surfed the web, to find that it was not the creation of Hallmark Cards, but a Roman pagan festival, Lupercalia. To be honest, I knew there was a Saint Valentine, in fact several, but I never really dug into the details before. It is a cautionary tale, filled with contradictions, as you will see. The web that is, not St. Valentine’s Day, which will likely survive the many contradictory and sometimes fanciful posts you can find.

Most sites agree that Valentine’s Day had an origin in Rome, and most likely was associated with a pagan holiday. There the trail becomes less clear. One site actually has several origins: “Originally the word Valentine meant the person whose name was picked from a box to be chosen as your sweetheart up until the 1500’s. Then around 1533 it meant the folded piece of paper with your sweetheart’s name on it.” http://www.brownielocks.com/valentinehistory.html The same site goes on to say that it may have originated in during the Roman invasion of France when Roman boys picked girls names from an urn. I guess it was like playing post office and a toga party all in one, but the connection to the French is a little vague.

Not all sites are quite as creative in their explanations. From http://www.history.com/minisites/valentine/viewPage?pageId=882 I learned the basics, the origins in Roman ritual, the existence of at least three Saints Valentine in Roman times, including a priest who defied Claudius’ decree that young men not marry because it weakened them as soldiers. Valentine conducted secret marriages and was condemned to death for the practice. While awaiting execution, so the story goes, he befriended his jailer’s daughter and sent her a love note before his death signed, your Valentine. Well, why not, it was his name, and so I expect she must have been the recipient of the first “Valentine.”

Some sites, including http://wilstar.com/holidays/valentn.htm and http://www.infoplease.com/spot/valentinesdayhistory.html give credit to Pope Gelasius I for introducing a Christian holiday to replace Lupercalia. The former had him suggesting children draw the names of saints from an urn instead of girls, and to spend the rest of the year emulating the saint they drew. The second site admits that no one really knows why the Holy Father picked Valentine, or which Valentine he picked.

Finally, to end my confusion I went to Wikipedia for the real answer. Actually their post, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day was quite informative. In short I feel confident that there is a Saint Valentine’s Day celebrated on February 14. I also am fairly sure that the exchanging of cards began in the 19^th century with handwritten notes, and now a billion cards a year are sent to commemorate it, and of course, love. It does have its origins in the pagan festival of Lupercalia, but the connection is one of timing, not intent. (This is not the only Roman pagan holiday that was adopted by Christians for very different celebrations) I didn’t find a single reference to roses though, or Chicago in the 1920’s in any of the sites I visited.

This exercise was educational in a practical way despite the tongue in cheek tone I adopted in writing about the origins of Valentine’s Day. It is a painless and amusing way to get to the crux of what Wikipedia and the open nature of the web is all about. The reason this is “a cautionary tale” is that I came upon so many unreferenced facts that were fanciful, or misconstrued by their authors. Anyone can post, and for advocates of free speech that is a noble end in itself.

However if you are a student, or a historian the lack of real editing is the other edge of the sword, and the core of the fight between Larry Sanger and Citizendium on the one hand and Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia on the other. I tend to side with the aim of Sanger to have a means of properly vetting the facts of a post, at the expense of having more posts. Wikipedia has, without doubt, cleaned up its act considerably in the last two years, but problems remain.

It may well be that the price we pay for having the internet is learning to take anything that seems nonsensical as just that, nonsense, until proven otherwise. I have been cautioned times without number to know my sources. On the web, frequently that is not really possible. I deliberately chose sites to cite that were funny rather than accurate, but in terms of scholarship that lack of rigor is a real barrier to using net material. I suppose we will simply have to wait and see how the medium develops.

Website Evaluation: The Bisbee Deportation of 1917 A University of Arizona Web Exhibit

The subject of my evaluation is a history website created and maintained by the University of Arizona (http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/bisbee/history/index.html) It is somewhat unusual, in that its scope is a single historical event: the deportation of more than one thousand striking miners from the town of Bisbee, Arizona to Columbus, New Mexico in July of 1917.

It is necessary to say a few words about the event so that the significance of the site can be appreciated. Copper’s importance as a raw material, rising due to the expanding need for wire to support electrification and the telephone, took a leap in value with the coming of the First World War. America’s entry into the war made it a critical strategic material at home as well. It is not surprising that the miners wanted what they considered their fair share of these rising profits. Adding fuel to the fire was the presence of organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World. A strike was called and the majority of miners honored the picket line. The managers of the mines appealed to the governor and the governor appealed to the federal government for assistance. As you will learn from the website what transpired was one of the strangest episodes in American labor history. After spending some time reviewing the materials, you will certainly agree.

The site is organized around five drop down menus: History; Primary Sources; Resources; Deportees; and Teacher’s Corner. The titles are generally self explanatory, but the designers intended, logically, for the visitor to move from left to right beginning with History which contains an overview of the event and a list of key participants (Who’s Who). The Primary Sources contain an outstanding and comprehensive collection of government and commercial documents, newspapers, photos and interviews. Resources includes contemporary and modern secondary sources, dissertation references, the sites single video, and most valuable the Library’s Finding Aid for the entire collection, which has links to the documents on-line. The Deportees section provides both a demographic breakdown of the miners that were deported as well as a list of them by name. The Teacher’s Corner is well organized and designed to allow a high school teacher to make full use of the site in the process of teaching students how to use historical materials.

All this is well and good, you say, but does it work? Evaluating the site on five criteria, Usability, Content, Scholarship, Presentation, and Use of New Media should allow an objective, or at least practical judgment. The site does have a clear organization, uncluttered with handy drop-down menus. Cross links are used extensively and allow navigation along a train of thought through the material with ease. What the site lacks is a map, which would be helpful, but it is not a show-stopper. On a one-to five scale I would rate Usability at 4.

Content stands out as the real strong suit of the site. The broad scope of the sources, many impossible to find elsewhere, is as good as any comparable site I have used. Bearing in mind that this event took place over a matter of days, not months or years, there is a limit to what is posted. This limit, however, has an advantage to the teacher who wants to introduce students to historical methods and how to use them without crushing them under a mass of sources. I give content a 5.

The scholarship is reflected in the broad content. Dealing with a controversial topic requires discipline, and this site does reflect that open-mindedness which is the hallmark of an objective historian. Scholarship and content in this context can get a little blurred. The breadth of content I mentioned is an indication of the level of scholarship employed in the site’s construction. If no new analysis was performed in this process that should not reduce our appreciation for the scholarly effort expended to assemble the material. I rate Scholarship at 4.5.

If there is room for improvement it lies in the Presentation of the material. While there is not much you can do with a newspaper article from 1917, the site itself is rather drab. Perhaps it is appropriate to use the pale pastel shades of sand in keeping with the southwest locale, but it is rather drab. Presentation rates only 3.5.

The site has a single video so the Use of New Media is not a high point. The strike did occur in 1917, and to the best of my knowledge no newsreel footage exists of the events in Bisbee, so there is not much for the University of Arizona to work with. I think they should be given a pass on this one.

I confess I may be less than completely objective because I find the subject matter so fascinating, but I give this site high marks. The strike had national repercussions and this is not something of solely regional interest. I give the website a 4.5 overall. I think if you spend some time there yourself, you will agree is a gem, even if a small one.

What is Digital History?

The four web sites chosen for this week’s assignment are an excellent cross-section of approaches to doing history on the web. Differences in presentation, content, detail, and source material reflect the purposes and resources of their respective creators. They are well chosen to illustrate what Cohen and Rosenzweig[1] have ably discussed in this week’s readings, not in terms of web history, but what history can be on the web. I used a rating of one to four stars for content and ease of use.

The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/

The Valley of the Shadow is an impressive web site from any perspective, and the awards and accolades it has received are no surprise. It draws on virtually all the possible materials that could be asked for including archival material and images. The availability of diaries, letters and newspapers, as well as official sources is particularly interesting and underscores the level of effort expended to provide a balanced and broad collection. It, like DoHistory and the National Museum of American History sites, offers a guide for the use of the site that is particularly well suited to teachers using the web in the classroom. I found the history of the making of the site interesting in light of reading Cohen and Rosenzweig, because this site really did begin on the ground floor of the digital history “movement” and has evolved into a major resource. I give the site four stars for content and four stars for ease of use.

The History Channel

http://www.history.com/

The History Channel’s web site is much as one would expect: primarily a vehicle to hawk the channel’s programming. This is not to say it is unattractive, far greater than an individual, or most history departments for that matter. There is interesting content, but it is largely entertaining more than informing. I am not disputing the factual from it. The resources available to a corporate web developer obviously are far basis for the features, such as “This Day in History” but amusing as this site can be it is really a mechanism to sell a product, either directly from the site, or via its television. Fun to play with, but not as well put together as the rest of this week’s sites, and certainly not history with a capital H. Like my colleagues in the National Archives, I frankly cringe when answering any public query that begins, “I saw this thing on the History Channel.” I give the History Channel two stars for content and three stars for ease of use.

DoHistory

http://dohistory.org/

This is a fascinating web site and, as deserving of its awards as Valley of the Shadow. The content is interesting in itself, but the meta level introduced by using a real person and events that carry a contemporary flavor are a very powerful resource. I am not a teacher, but if I were this would be high on my list of sites to use as a teaching tool. In fact, its section on Doing Your Own History Project is better than most similar guides I have seen in print. I give DoHistory three and one half stars for content and four stars for ease of use.

National Museum of American History

http://americanhistory.si.edu/index.cfm

The National Museum of American History web site is as good as any public museum site I have browsed. The richness of its graphic design is every bit as good as the History Channel’s without the taint of crass commercialism. It also represents another resource for teachers. It is attractive to the eye without being busy and seems to be kept current. It does have the limitation of any museum site in that the primary focus is, understandably, material culture and the context is not as full as a historian might desire. Historians are not curators however, and the site does a good job of introducing its collections to the public and generating interest in potential visitors and that is its purpose. Considering those specific limitations, I give the site three and a half stars for content and three and a half stars for ease of use.

I must admit that I had no idea of the diversity and quality of history materials on the web. I could find small faults with the sites we have used this week, but they are head and shoulders above what I have previously used. With the possible exception of the History Channel site I would use any of them if called upon to write or speak on their respective subject areas.

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[1] [1] Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, Digital History http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/

Blog This

For my first assignment I chose to read an established, main stream blog, Chris Cillizza’s The Fix (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/). I made this decision with malice aforethought for two reasons: I am familiar with the author’s style from reading his newspaper, The Washington Post, and his articles for Roll Call before he moved to the Post and two, my general unfamiliarity with the blogosphere. I must not be alone in this unfamiliarity since the spell checker for Word does not recognize “blog” or “blogosphere.”

The comfort of The Fix lies in its predictability. The prose is the kind of pleasantly crisp declarative English one expects of an experienced journalist on the staff of the Post. It may rarely excite, but it never offends. His coverage of the lead-in to last week’s primaries was insightful and sympathetic, if a bit conservative in the literal sense. He spent considerable time in detailing the landscape of the growing friction between the Obama and Clinton campaigns with some insight, but no excursions onto any opinionated limbs. The audience is obviously intended to be informed middle-of-the-road to mildly liberal – the sort of people who read the print version of The Post.

The mechanics of Cillizza’s blog are as good as the Post can make them, and that is very good indeed. Links to video feeds are flawless and relevant – for example, the sound bites from Obama and Clinton appearances that support the author’s narrative. Photographs from the campaign trail are present without being intrusive. Cillizza posts daily most of the time, and more often as necessary in the case of recent Presidential Candidate Debates.

Unfortunately, some of the outstanding characteristics of The Fix will alienate many in the blogosphere. Cillizza’s very predictability that is certainly in keeping with The Post’s editorial policy will alienate a significant number of people for the same reason it comforts others: no fire. I began this review by confessing my lack of experience with blogs, but one thing I do understand is that, at best, blogging represents a new avant garde of thought, a place where innovation counts for more than safety.

While it is not surprising that so august an institution as The Washington Post remains true to its institutional conservatism it is unfortunate that its on-line arm cannot rise to the opportunities that the blogosphere provides. It is not due to lack of talent, for Chris Cillizza really is an informed and able journalist. I am afraid that something else is at work: the curse of the larger brand.

Blogs, I am finding out, are often messy and sometimes chaotic – not the stuff of newspaper legend or Pulitzer prizes. There is a kind of freshness about them that attracts pointed commentary and out-of the-box thinking that is refreshing, if less rigorous than some readers would prefer. This is not to say there are no standards, but there is a certain lack of consistency that comes from the lack of an Editor. I have reached a conclusion: I’ll read my newspapers off-line and my blogs on-line.