Mining for Data

I have to admit- this week's reading had me out of my depth and I found myself googling (ironically) some of the terms in the articles on data mining.  What I took from the readings was that data mining is finding the key words and phrases in the context of documents so that search engines will be able to get us the best results possible.  The article Googling the Victorians by Patrick Leary really helped to put it in context when he pointed out that this is the type of thing that historians do on a daily basis with the books and articles that we read.  Historians don't read every single word of other people's scholarship, but instead skim for key ideas and the evidence to support them.  Search engines seem to do the same thing, just on a much larger scale with millions of sites at the same time.

Leary also brings up another argument that people are still making seven years later: the internet versus the library or the archive- which is better?  Only yesterday I was on a database of African-American newspapers from the 20th century and was looking up articles spanning a decade from several different publications that I would never have been able to accomplish using the original print media in the short time that it took me online.  Leary seems to be of the opinion that many have adopted today  the internet and the digital age is clearly here to stay, so we might as well embrace and make the most of it.  However, there is one thing that I have not been able to duplicate in an online search that a physical library gives me instantly: related works.  In a library, I can look up a book on, for example, Alice Paul, and when I go to that section I can find multiple other books about her and the feminist movement that would be extremely useful.  The only thing that I have found close to this online (and if anyone out there knows something different, please let me know) are the recommendations that Amazon gives you at the bottom of a product page.  Instead, while searching online, multiple ways of searching the same thing have to be typed in to the search engine to ensure that an accurate representation of sources comes up.

This speaks to what the other two articles were about.  In his 2006 blog post, Searching for History, William J. Turkel talked about the release of data from search results made by about 500,000 AOL users.  My first thought was that the fact that the release was from the users of AOL showed the age of the article right off the bat.  However, it was really informative in the way that different people are searching for historical subjects.  Looking at this data today even can show how to set up your site so that a search engine will grab it over other, similar sites.  For example, Turkel states that most people search "American history" or "U.S. history" rather than "history of the United States."

The final article, From Babel to Knowledge: Data Mining Large Digital Collections by Daniel J. Cohen, talked about the benefits of using a specialized search engine, rather than just relying on something like Google, to get more accurate results.  He spoke of a program he created called H-bot to use for quick history facts.  My only problem with this was, it is six years later and this was the first time that I am hearing of this program.  Now, maybe I m not as connected to things as I should be and just missed this site, but to my knowledge people just use Google to look for their quick facts.  I do know that specialized search engines can be extremely beneficial, however.  I personally have used Google Scholar to find articles or journals for papers and found things that I would not have been able to just by using a regular Google search.  By paring the results down to only peer reviewed scholarly sources, it is much more efficient.  This being said, I understand the premise of H-bot, and it is a really good idea, but how can it compete with a giant like Google when the results are the same?

This article also spoke of the importance of non-profit archives having and running their own search engines, a premise that seems way out of the reach of many not-for-profit organizations.  This could have been a change since the article war written, but now many sites are using Google to search within themselves.  Many search bars have the little Powered by Google sign posted underneath them with the option of searching just within the site or on the entire web.  I'm not sure if this is the way to go about things, but the comfort of a familiar search engine like Google running these pages makes it much easier to browse through the results.

twitter role play

Teaching with Twitter: how the social network can contribute to learning  was written by Rosie Miles, a senior lecturer in English at the University of Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom.  I read over a few different articles on how twitter can be used in education, but this one stuck with me.  Miles spoke of how she used a system similar to twitter to have her students delve deeper into the material they were assigned to read.  She had her students become a character from the novel and argue online with each other in this way.  It made me wonder, how can this be translated to history and actually be used on twitter?

The twitter problem seems self explanatory- protect the tweets.  The system Miles used was like twitter (limited to 140 characters and even using #hashtags) but it was not accessible to people outside of the classroom.  Miles felt that this would give students more of a sense of security to be more open.  However, just protecting your profile on twitter would solve this problem.  Then you could use the site but people would need to be approved before the tweets could be seen.

I think that using twitter as a sort of role playing scenario could be beneficial for understanding the impact of primary source documents on the people during the time they were written.  For example, if in an American history class that is studying the Revolutionary War, it could be interesting to see the effect of the Declaration of Independence.  Some students could be select founding fathers or the King, some could be loyalists or patriots, Northerners or Southerners.  In this way, rather than just reading about the obvious ways this document changed the lives of the colonists, students would have to understand how it would effect different groups and say why they are for or against it.

Obviously this doesn't need to be done in an online setting.  Similar things can, and have, been done in person in the classroom.  One of my favorite classes as an undergrad was studying Early Modern England, and we actually split up into the different factions involved in the Civil Wars of the mid-1600s and fought it out in class (with words, sadly. Though I was in the "war" faction and we all made swords to intimidate the "peace" and "royal" groups).  Miles stated, and I tend to agree, that sometimes dramatizing things like this in class can get silly and embarrassing.  My Early Modern British history class was an upper level and so we all got pretty involved as we were all declared history majors.  However, I had the same professor for a lower level European history class and sometimes when we tried to do similar things there,  certain students who weren't in the history program wouldn't get involved because they were a science or business major (I have to admit I am guilty of the opposite: I was very against certain science activities when I had to take those classes).  Not having to let peers see how excited you get in person can go a long way in letting certain students get out of their shell, and the internet can provide that screen.

Perspectives: May 2007

In an article from the History and Technology column of the May 2007 Perspectives from the American Historical Association, The Digital History Reader: Teaching Resources for United States and European History by E. Thomas Ewing and Robert P. Stephens, a digital history reader was highlighted that was released by Virginia Tech.  The article itself is simply an overview of the site along with some student feedback in case you need some convincing that it works.  Looking at the site myself, it is really cool.  It takes the classic primary source reader and improves it ten times over.  There are of course letters, newspaper articles, and political cartoons, but the online format allows the expansion of content.  In this reader there are also links for sound bites and movie clips and, because the reader only covers the 19th and 20th centuries, they were able to add quite a few of these.  In addition, there is also a multiple choice quiz at the end with the option to email the results to your professor.  Now there are many undergrad texts that come with online components, but these usually come with a code in the book that you obviously have to pay for.  This is free for anyone to use, which is great because it could even be used in high school courses.  The only downside seems to be that since this article was written in 2007, not much appears to have been done with the site.  While there are several modules on different points in US and European history, there are many subjects that aren't covered that really could be.  For example, the last module on US history is on Richard Nixon.  There are a couple more decades after that in the 20th century that could have been covered.  Maybe funding was an issue, but these five years could have expanded this site into something even cooler.



A different article from the Viewpoints column was The Historical Profession 
and Archival Education by Joseph M. Turrini.  I really enjoyed this article because it made me think that there has been a rivalry between archival programs- one which history is losing.  I can say that my experience looking for a graduate program in public history  I did notice that there was a lack of archival studies offered  and often it would just be one semester class on the subject.  However, I didn't think anything of it because of the offerings that library science programs make on the subject.  The Southeast Archives Education Collaborative spearheaded by Auburn University came up with a really interesting solution to try and keep history archival programs in the game.  They teamed up with five other universities (Louisiana State University, School of Information and Library Science; Auburn University, History Department; University of Kentucky, School of Information and Library Science; Indiana University, School of Library and Information Science; and Middle Tennessee State University, Public History Program) to offer a greater variety of classes to their students.  Through this new collaboration, students are now allowed to take one webcam class at another university per semester.  This is an awesome use of technology and is right in step with the historians basic function of sharing knowledge.  I just wish that there were more schools that were able to do this in other programs.  It would be a really cool way to completely personalize your education and take advantage of online learning while at the same time having a classroom experience.  It would also allow students to see how different parts of the country think about different issues in the field.