Oh, Wikipedia!

I have to admit- I am guilty of using Wikipedia whenever I just want to make a quick reference to something, but I would never use it in my academic work.  The argument made for Wikipedia in the Middlebury College forum confirmed for me that this is the right thing to do.  While I was watching it, however, they did convince me of one thing: that Wikipedia could be a good place to start, and that it could be a great place to find sources.  It seems to make sense that when there are sources cited on Wikipedia, that they would be worth checking out.  Worse case scenario is that they would be unusable, but you could gain a valuable source that could be used for a paper.

But then I actually looked on Wikipedia on several different historical people and events.  As previously mentioned, I have only used Wikipedia for a quick reference in the past.  I have never really sat down and read an entire Wikipedia entry before, and looking at the history of these sites I am glad that I never really have.  The vandalism that is heard about on the site is a lot more prevalent that I had ever thought.  At one point, King Charles I of England had a 50 year period where he didn't call Parliament instead of the 11 that actually happened (not to mention the fact that he didn't even rule for 50 years before he was beheaded).


My favorite correction had to be in the article on women's suffragist Alice Paul, where the article said that not only did she help with the passing of the 19th Amendment, but her actions also helped with the raping of midgets.  Obviously, this was untrue and it is offensive to say about a woman who, in my opinion, was an amazing figure in U.S. history.  It's worrying that things like this are being posted and staying on this site for who knows how long before the volunteers who look for things like this take them down.  But before they get taken down, who knows how many people have seen and believed things that aren't true?

The discussion forums were not much better.  Here it was pointed out that in the Cleopatra VII article, some of her biography was taken form the HBO series Rome instead of historical sources.  There was also a very lengthy section debating on whether Cleopatra and her family was fully Greek or whether she was part African based on some claimed anthropological evidence and skulls.  The problem I have with this is that Cleopatra's final resting place is no longer known so how could a skull be used as evidence (not to mention may other things wrong with this thinking)?

After actually looking at what the people that are changing these articles are saying about these topics, I'm not sure that I will be going back to Wikipedia anytime soon.

The Playboy Contract

Creating our group contract has been a trying process.  Between one of our group members suddenly having to drop out of the program and another falling ill, it really fell on mine and the final member’s shoulders to finalize our idea and come up with our contract and schedule.  After meeting with Dr. Cox (who really helped us narrow our focus and gave us a lot to think about), Jessica and I were left to make it work.  Because it was only the two of us, some things were a bit of a challenge to figure out, like the full division of tasks and the final schedule.  We did the best we could to logically divide the workload and make a schedule that the three of us will need to follow.  In the end I think that we did a pretty good job coming up with a final direction to take our exhibit and giving ourselves a timeline with a little wiggle room for unexpected snags.

Now that we have an official focus and aren’t confused about things, I am getting really excited to start this project.  We are going to be looking at how Playboy presented sexuality for both men and women in the mid 1960's to late 1970's.  I personally will be focusing on how minority groups were represented within the magazine at the time.  I am eager to see how the civil rights movement changed the magazine.  The thing that I am most looking forward to, however, is actually getting to put the site together.  While not techo savvy, I love organizing things like this.  I think that it is going to be an excellent learning experience; one that I hope will make me a bit more trusting of and confident with computers.

The thing that worries me the most looking at the project ahead is trying to choose the actual pieces that are going to go in our exhibit.  We have a run of Playboy that, with the exception of 1971 and 1972 and a few missing issues in the late ‘70s, covers the years 1965-1977.  That is well over 100 magazines that need to be gone through, looking for the 10 articles, cartoons, ads, or covers that we each want to put up.  Just glancing through the magazines, there were already so many things that we want to include pertaining to sexuality (given that it is Playboy Magazine after all).  It is going to be a bit of a challenge, not only finding those 10 perfect things that represent each of our individual topics, but then also making sure that those objects mesh together as well, making a cohesive exhibition.

The September 11 Digital Archive

Before I even went on the site, I knew that the September 11 Digital Archive would be a very moving experience.  The events that happened on this day were some of the most horrific things that most of us will witness in our lifetimes.  That being said I think this site did a good job of capturing this fact: that the events of this day are now a part of all of us.  Not only were stories accepted from these that were directly affected by this tragedy, but also anyone with a story to share could submit.  There were many from all over the country that had shared their story, reinforcing the together feeling that all Americans had in the weeks immediately following the attack.

This site was easy to navigate through with the quick links of simply Browse, Repository (which had everything broken up into specific categories like "Satan in the Smoke" Emails), and Special Collections.  The subcategories within each were also clearly laid out, and so it was very easy to find either a story or a picture or a video within Browse, or see how Chinatown was affected within Special Collections.

What I most liked was that there was an FAQ page with quick facts about 9/11 as well as things before and after the attacks.  There is also a links page with a comprehensive list of other sites dedicated to September 11, 2011.  Usually it isn’t a good idea to take people away from your site, but I think that in this instance it works.  This site is all about capturing the events of the day, not really a memorial to those that had been killed, but if that was what you were looking for it was listed on the links page.

All of this, in my eyes, definitely fulfills the website's purpose, which is to "collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath."

We All Love a Good Timeline

I am even more excited to finally get to work on my online exhibition now that I have found what will probably be a very useful plug-in.  I went to the plug-in page of the Omeka website and at first was a bit overwhelmed.  I had no idea what some of them were actually meant to do (I am not a techno savvy person), and even after looking at a larger description of some of them I am still confused.  When I saw the timeline plug-in, however, I knew immediately that this would be helpful in our project.

We will be working with Playboy Magazine covers and, while interesting, I know that if we were to just throw the covers online it would not be a very classy or educational exhibition (and would not fulfill the requirements of the assignment at all).  This is why I feel the timeline will be so useful.  With it we could make a timeline of the major events happening in the United States at the time the covers in our exhibition were released.  In this way, it may be easier for visitors to relate the covers to a certain period in American history.