Women and Pepys

After looking through much of Cliopatria's Blog Roll to find a couple of history blogs to follow, I finally found two that are interesting.

The first is Women of History.  I looked at several other blogs that had to do with women's history, but to me this one is the best.  Here there are short blogs about famous women through history and throughout the world.  The entries aren’t too long, just a couple of paragraphs, and the original source of the content if always given.  There is even a section of the blog where you can find different women based on the period that most interests you, like Ancient Egypt or the Crusades.  The short style of blogging is enough to give you a feel for the woman but isn’t overwhelming.  In this way, it is easy to see if the woman is interesting enough to warrant further research or if that is all you want to know about her.

The other blog isn’t a blog in a traditional sense.  From 2003 through the end of 2012, the administrators are posting one entry a day from the diary of Samuel Pepys.  Pepys’ diary covered some of the biggest events in Early Modern British history like the Restoration and coronation of Charles II in 1660 and the Great Fire of London in 1666.  The first of January 1660 was posted on the first of January 2003.  I’m really disappointed that the entries are almost over, but the past entries can be found in an archive, or if that much reading doesn’t seem exciting there are catch ups that can be read covering a year in the diary.  There is also a short biography of Pepys’ life before the start of the diary, and each entry is accompanied by links to interesting things that also happened on that day in Britain.  I will definitely be reading this blog from the beginning.

Website Time Machine

This week was no different from any other in my life as a history student: for class we had to look into the past.  What was cool though was that we needed to look at the evolution of a website over time using the very fun Wayback Machine through the Internet Archive.  This is a really fun site to mess around on and see how what I have become used to looked like even just 5 years ago.  For instance, I learned that the school where I did my undergraduate work had done a total overhaul of their site just a few months before I enrolled.  Also Target’s URL, target.com, was originally owned by a completely different company called Applix Inc. for a year before the giant corporation that is Target stores was able to get a hold of it.

After messing around for a bit I got down to what I was actually supposed to be doing and looked at a site that was historical in its content: the Milwaukee Public Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Growing up near Milwaukee, I had taken several class fieldtrips there when I was younger and thought it would be interesting to see how it has changed over the years, and it has definitely changed over the last 15 years.

The Wayback Machine’s first snapshot of the site was taken February 26, 1997 (probably close to the first time that I would have taken a field trip there), and it has all of the characteristics of the first websites.  It is almost all one bright color (along with black and white), a font that is easy to read in print but a little difficult on screen, and very simplistic.  Though looking at it, it is nice that there are not huge blocks of text on the screen.  It is just a list of links that will take you further into the site and hopefully where you want to go.

In December 2002 the site had vastly improved.  Now instead of just links on the front page, there were some highlights of current and future exhibits and programs with pictures to go along with them.  The links were still there, but they had been moved to the now familiar position of the left-hand sidebar of the screen.  These links were a bit confusing, however.  For example, there were Visit Us, Events & Programs, School Programs, Travel Programs, andExhibits links that could be a little confusing.  If I want to visit to see the temporary holiday exhibit on display, which link would I choose?  This style must have worked for them though because they stuck with it for several years.

Today the website has been overhauled yet again.  Now instead of a bright color or being mostly black, it is nice neutral beige that is less straining on my eyes.   It has also become a bit bigger in font size which has also helped.  Those links are still on the left side of the page, but they have been consolidated quite a bit.  There is also not only one way to get somewhere.  If I want to buy my admission I can click on the Buy Tickets link or through Visitor Info there is also a link titled Tickets. The main events and exhibits are still highlighted on the from page, though now there are more of them with a nicely changing picture above them to catch your attention.  All in all, this site has drastically improved, however there are still things that I find uncomfortable as a user.  For example the links forOnline Media, Press Room, and About Us seem as if they could all be under the same title of just generically About Us.  Plus, although their links have been cut way down and simplified, there are still a lot of them which means a lot of choices that I have to think through, not something I want to do.

I suppose that the thing to remember is that for a not-for-profit museum this is a pretty sophisticated site, and in only 15 years it has changed drastically.  For being so young, web design has improved leaps and bounds to make our experience as pleasant and easy as possible.  In another 15 years who knows where we could be.

What is Digital History?

 The most obvious answer to me would be that digital history is using the new technologies that are expanding every day in a way that helps to share history.  At least that was what I thought before I did my reading.  It turns out that there is much more to digital history than just using technology to further history as we know it.  The problem for digital history isn’t just getting the history out on the web, but the amount and quality of the history that is already out there.

Having been a college student for the past few years, I guess I have taken for granted the databases like JSTOR and ProQuest that were available to me through my library’s website.  Through these I could search to my heart’s content to find that one scholarly article I would need to prove my thesis for my research papers.  What I didn’t realize, or I guess really think about, was that these databases don’t come cheap.  There are hefty fees that libraries have to pay to allow their patrons access to these wonderful scholarly articles.  Also, the general public definitely does not have access to these resources.  I usually have to enter my school username and password at least twice before I can even gain access to the papers I need (which makes me wonder why I didn’t think about being able to access these things when I am no longer a student).

In another article on TechNewsDaily brought up a point of history in our time that I had never even considered.  Almost everyone in my generation has an online presence.  We have Facebook, Twitter, and (though we cringe at it now) MySpace pages to record our lives for our friends and ourselves.  At least that was what I had always thought I had been doing.  It turns out that, without even realizing, we are creating an almost second by second memoir of the daily life of the average person in the early 21^st century.  Historians of the future won’t be struggling to find proof to back up their theories about us, they will have too much to go through.

But then again, they may never have access to it at all.  Twitter saves every single tweet. In effect, Twitter has created a timeline of sorts that stores our reactions to world events.  The problem is that Twitter owns all of them.  It is hard for some families of deceased loved ones to gain the passwords to Facebook or email accounts, let alone some unrelated historian of the future.  With our lives so readily available for all to easily read online, could it be that the future will know very little because of companies protecting “our privacy” long after we are gone?  Sadly, we won’t know the answer to this question, but here is to hoping that we all will a historian our Facebook password so that he or she can include our life in their future work.

My sources:

Digital History by Daniel J. Cohen & Roy Rosenzweig, Introduction and Chapter 1

Digital Age Presents New Problems for Historians by Stuart Fox, TechNewsDaily

http://www.technewsdaily.com/775-information-overload-digital-age-presents-new-problems-for-historians.html