Unit 14: Tools, Tools and Tools

TIME AT A GLANCE

      A timeline is the graphic representation of the passage of time as a line. It shows chronologically how events happened, perhaps making it an easy way to comprehend how one thing led to another.
      For my assignment this week, I created a timeline for a property in Alexandria known as the Murray-Dick-Fawcett house -- a name chosen by the Office of Historic Alexandria (OHA) based on three former owners. It has had other names over the years. The timeline title is 517 Prince Street, Alexandria, Va. It is a public timeline. The URL link is

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-house-on-prince-street 

(NOTE: This is different than the Blackboard link I sent! I created the timeline, then changed the title of it while editing to make it more specific; apparently, you can't do that.)

         The city bought the property in 2017

with the intent of turning it into a museum. (Here is a photo I took from the garden area that shows how the 1772 part of the house was expanded in 1784.) That museum date is indefinite because the resident was granted life tenancy. I've been volunteer working part time on the house history since late last year, after taking Dr. Dluger's museum practice class. 
          I chose the timetoast tool after looking on YouTube at videos of several timeline tools. This one said about 30 to 40 items work best in a timeline, partially why I chose it. Tiki-toki looks easy to use, and there are more choices on graphics and looks, but the results seem cluttered.
         You can see from my timeline that the Brown family may have owned the property for 184 years, but there is not a lot included about them. They were not rich or famous. Some of them lived in the house their entire lives, but a tool other than a timeline would show their stories better. 
          This timeline uses some of the primary source documentation I have compiled. Since some is from deeds, wills and official documents, and not everything is online, I used a few important to telling this story on the timeline.It is much easier to use this online timeline than the way I have been doing it -- written out in Word. However, the online tool itself seemed to get stuck sometimes. Twice my work got erased. I was surprised that uploads were easy from my own computer, after resizing images. 
            Tracing the history of this house in a timeline works well. In museums visitors like a quick view of significant events or facts. Often an exhibition has a timeline near the front as an introduction to the topic. If this property opens as a museum, a graphic like that would be useful right inside a door. In fact, this timeline tool on an interactive notebook or other device right inside would work, too. 
            Fine-tuning is needed if this timeline is to be used for real by the Office of Historic Alexandria. In any case, should I buy a basic timetoast account so I can embed this on my own web page (and take credit or blame)?
              This tool also would be good for a timeline of the Loudoun County historic cemeteries such as those used in my final project, or a complete list of county cemeteries.

PROJECT UPDATE

             The story map on 20 Loudoun County Historic Cemeteries is being worked on in arcgis online. I am rewriting descriptions in a more standardized way so that the reader is not confused, including the address, when the cemetery was started, by whom, and at least one or two facts about why each is interesting.
            I may reorganize the photos but don't think a chronological or alphabetical order is the best way to present this project, although that can be changed later. Interspersing landscape shots with tombstones and iconography makes for a more visually appealing story. I am having problems subbing some photos and thumbnails, but will stumble along! 

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/index.html?appid=b8dff999034e45de8cb54a39d62faaea

It is shared. Use https://arcg.is/KbuTa as the link to view it.

Unit 13: Big Picture, User Participation Projects and Crowd-Sourcing

The Force of the Crowd

           Crowd-sourcing is a great idea. The idea of tapping multiple people with diverse backgrounds both professionally and personally is brilliant (who first thought of it? --- maybe began with a teacher who assigned group projects). It depends on volunteers, however. In my experience, working with volunteers also requires that you offer incentives or carrots, something that induces participation. If not, you might get a few people who are a bit crazed, some who have too much time on their hands, or some who always have something to say to show others how smart they are. Whether that helps the “conversation” is debatable. As in school group projects, there is usually someone who takes the lead, someone who carries the research load, and someone who does little.

            I could not find much crowdsourcing on NoVa sites. Things asking for comments, but…

             An idea for Virginia history: A crowdsourcing project for a property in Alexandria that was bought by the city of Alexandria, the Murray-Dick-Fawcett House, could be done before the property opens as a museum, especially because that date is indefinite. Participants in the Vernacular Architecture conference this Spring had many comments about the house, but they are not being compiled anywhere. The house is unique architecturally, since it was built in 1772 and many things exist from that time. But architectural historians do not agree on things about the house. Getting their input now is crucial to both the house history and documentation.

PEOPLE VERSUS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

           This unit asked a question: Who decides what should be preserved, and what not?

Which websites should be preserved? I went to Wayback machine to see 2012 websites for my neighborhood, randomly cached (www.mantua.org) . Not much there. Worthy of saving if other records are available? Plus, as I know from living here, that info was compiled by a public relations firm after an oil leak tarnished the name of the neighborhood. I don’t think it needs to be preserved.

           About blogs worthy of saving: Can and should the federal government have the right to preserve everything it wants to, not Google and commercial enterprises? Cat is out of the bag – companies did this before government.

          Random thoughts” About “meta schema” – that is robots, not people. This is artificial intelligence making sense of our data.

           About code – does standardized code threaten genius? Maybe.

Migration of files is important for future. WordPerfect files gone as an example.

          The Memory Project, by ancestry.com and The Holocaust Memorial Museum, is an effective way to capture history before those who lived though the Holocaust are all dead. This goes to the museum’s collections for free. It links to ancestry’s DNA test kit, optional.

But this link for the Geographic Project also goes to a site for buying a DNA kit https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/

The Smithsonian Transcription Center has more than 1,000 “volun-peers” contributing. The sheer volume of what is being transcribed, including much Civil War-era stuff, is astounding.

Reclaim the Records https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/ uses the Freedom of Information Act to get records that. This site is by and for historians, genealogists and others who want to keep public info free. – gated info that should be kept public! Only New York for now, but with help could be national. Nothing is on their “to-do” list for Virginia. https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/to-do/

BAD LINKS: from Historical Transcription Assignments

http://reports.crowdsourcing.org//document/8-crowd-sourced-transcription-projects-you-can-contribute-to/10957

and

https://shop.nationalgeographic.com/collections/sale which is supposed to go to the Field Expedition Mongolia page. If you type those words in the Search box, you go to

https://shop.nationalgeographic.com/products/geno-2-0-next-generation-genographic-helix-dna-ancestry-kit-u-s-delivery where for $99.95 on sale you can get a DNA test.

It was good we saw the project cached on YouTube!

PRESERVATION

               From Cohen and Rosenzweig: “For now, you are the best preserver of your own materials. Pay attention to backing up, and try to create simple, well-documented, standardized code. After covering those basics, you might search for a preservation “partner,” an institution that would be interested in saving your website or its constituent materials after you can no longer provide the attention (or financial resources) …”  

This goes back to the question of what should be preserved, and who makes the decision?

A few days ago, my daughter, whose husband Luis Vicente died in February of brain cancer, was told about this blog:

http://luisvicente.blogspot.com/

                The blog was mentioned at a memorial workshop for her husband last week in Leiden, in the Netherlands, by a friend of Luis. Luis got his PhD in Leiden, worked there for a while, and then went to the University of California Santa Cruz for his post doc work. That is where he met my daughter. The University of L held a linguistics workshop in his honor, as a memorial. My daughter, who was married to Luis for almost 8 years, did not know about this blog. Of course, we all went to look at it for the first time when she told us it existed. Loved the part about why he never wanted to return to Spain to live, although some of his school was financed by the Basque government.

                While it is mostly comforting to read this now and understand Luis better, will this live on blogspot forever? Will Luis’s now 4-year-old daughter access it at some point? Is that good or bad?

                 I guess we should be careful about we post on blogs and anywhere online. They live forever, unless some decision is made, commercially or by the government, to take then down.

                I sure hope this blog does not live long after I do.

MY PROJECT UPDATE

Please go to this

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/index.html?appid=b8dff999034e45de8cb54a39d62faaea&edit

with password

https://arcgis/KbuTa

to see a project called Loudoun County Historic Cemeteries. I have 21 cemeteries, but this will be just 20. Am working on fixing photos that will not load, and will fine-tine the descriptions of each cemetery. It is unknown how many actual burials are in each cemetery, because most are active – people are still being buried there. Many of my project photos have not focused on names and living people, because I was told by one caretaker that I would need permission for that from the Board of Trustees. I think I got some representative photos of each cemetery, and have many more photos from most to choose from.

This is just a representative sample of 20 historic public cemeteries. 

The Balch Library database is outdated. Numbers of graves etc, cannot be gleaned from here. 

Unit 12: Data Visualization

My Final Project, a Work in Progress

I started a story map on 20 Loudoun County Historic Cemeteries from scratch after losing what I created (and showed you last week, Dr. E). This time, I choose a different layout to experiment with the photos and text and because I thought a thumbnail at the bottom would be useful to locate each cemetery. They are not being done alphabetically. Not sure I like one map style more than the other. Feedback, please!
I have not figured out how to get the Loudoun County map back; it reverted to a broader map after I added locations. I had 14 done before on the first story map. This weekend I finished taking photos (visited 4 cemeteries on Saturday), and am finishing descriptions. Shared the map publicly, though I am embarrassed to do so:

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/index.html?appid=b8dff999034e45de8cb54a39d62faaea&edit 

https://acg.is/Kbu Ta (to access it)

We learn by making mistakes, and I sure am making mistakes. 

DATA FOR THE PROJECT

The Loudoun County Cemetery Collection started by Aurelia McCormick has detailed listings of cemeteries made between 1945 and 1950. Data was sorted by grave location in each cemetery. It is not especially useful. https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=tbl/viletbl00026.xml

The Balch Library cemetery database created in the 1990s may have been updated a little, but the library is not sure who did that or when. Data is wrong for active cemeteries, meaning places where people are still being buried. None of this data is in visual form, but it could be, showing which cemeteries are larger or have more burials, or how many veterans are buried.

https://www.leesburgva.gov/government/departments/thomas-balch-library/loudoun-county-cemetery-database

The information on www.findagrave.com is not always correct.

The Virginia Department of Historic Resources has some cemetery information, but not online, and not data in a chart. 

THIS INFORMATION GRAPHICS UNIT

Tools to visualize data discussed in this unit demystified the job of graphics designer. I didn't know the first infographic dates to 1626, or that Florence Nightingale made her case with them. Michael Kramer says historians can use data as an additional tool, to be creative in explaining data more effectively, but that computers won't think for them.  http://www.michaeljkramer.net/digital-history-as-transliteration/  But some of these tools come pretty close.

Some effective data visualization:

http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/india/brief/developing-india-first-modern-inland-waterway

Ditto for World Resources Institute, but some links go nowhere.

This Fairfax item is for my neighborhood

https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/demographics/community-profiles

but is not as useful as OpenDataDC, which has crime information.

Hard-to-visualize – but effective data visualization projects: 

https://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/viz.php?id=143&project_id=999 and

https://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/gallery.php 

and https://infogram.com/us_military_personnel_during_wwii

[Bad Links:

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

 https://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/global-development/agricultural-development/infographics

and 

https://cas.illinoisstate.edu/jpda/ ]

Unit 11: Digital Online Archives

A PLANTATION, THE COLD WAR, AND A CHURCH

What do they have in common? I uploaded files of these to the Northern Virginia History Archive -- 4 photos of Oatlands Plantation near Leesburg, one of the Cold War Museum near Warrenton, and one of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church outside Middleburg. All were photos I took (but forgot to say that on some). The site is very easy to use. I looked at the collections and at search features.

The similarities in design between this website and Amy Bersch’s Robinson schoolhouses are clear. After reading more about Omeka for this unit, and looking at the projects by the Center for History and New Media, I’d like to try Omeka (but not for this class). Having the support at a university nearby is a plus.

Cohen and Rosenzweig write: “The massive capacity of the web means that historians can push beyond the selectivity of paper collections to create more comprehensive archives with multiple viewpoints and multiple formats (including audio and video as well as text). Given the open access of the web, it seems appropriate to cast the widest possible net …”  The Center compiled the September 11 digital archive quickly as it was unfolding, and with more primary sources, something that no print publication could do as well.

A TOOL TO FIND A TOOL

A collections database could be started for some of the research I am doing as a volunteer for the Office of Historic Alexandria on items at a historic site. As I slowly compile the information, I can see the benefits of an online database now. It could link to sources located online, such as this carpentry website I found today from the New York Public Library https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e4-50b2-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Some of the items associated with the historic site are tools, found in the basement. A carpenter told me that they are old, maybe before 1900. By using this site, I learned that one item is a planer, and that this type was used by carpenters in the 1880s. The “period of significance” for the site is still being determined. By finding out who might have used this tool, and where, the site might have a story to tell. The database could be shared with a listserv for woodworkers, carpenters, historians, and those interested in historic preservation. The outreach could be a simple comment button, even anonymous, but could lead to more details about how one tool can help explain the site’s history.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS

That’s the motto The Washington Post adopted during the last presidential campaign.

Cohen and Rosenzweig said on using the Internet to collect history: “… it shares democracy’s messiness, contradictions, and disorganization–as well as its inclusiveness, myriad viewpoints, and vibrant popular spirit.” Good newspaper reports strive to include all the views and make sense of a topic or event (editorial opinion pages and clearly labeled advocacy articles are the exception).  

The Post has some good digital archives that come up quickly either because the tags are good or they pay Google (doubtful). If you look under World, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/digitalarchive/index.html you get to The Cuban Missile Crisis: Reliving the World’s Most Dangerous Days, which is a timeline and newspaper accounts of the event. Most newspapers, even national ones, don’t have archivists and librarians with time to create such digital archives unless there is a special section attached (a moneymaking product). Although The Post archive is extensive, it is difficult to find specific things. Since obituaries of ordinary people are rarely printed anymore, searching a name and www.legacy.com yields better results. 

While looking for online digital archives of newspapers as an alternative to ProQuest, I found https://paperofrecord.hypernet.ca/default.asp? I did not know the Toronto Star was the first newspaper to put its papers online, from 1892 until the present. If interested in a site where international as well as historical newspapers are archived, I'd try https://databases.library.jhu.edu/databases/subject/newspapers from Johns Hopkins. It is described as an “independent” newspaper database and requires a login.

Sometimes a newspaper or lay publication may not have cutting-edge research, so you look elsewhere. ProQuest has dissertations and theses, but it is unclear how the list is compiled – who decides the order? Universities must have an account to submit work by their faculty or students. This is about scholarly research on Star Wars: https://www.proquest.com/blog/pqblog/2015/Star-Wars--Theres-a-Dissertation-for-That.html in case you are doing research on popular culture.

With all these resources, a historian’s task is made easier – but not everything is archived.

                                      PROJECT UPDATE!

          I'm working on selecting and sizing the best photos for a story map on 20 Loudoun County cemeteries with historic ties. PROBLEM: I may be recreating it from scratch if I cannot get a free account, or pay for a short time to keep an account, by July 6. (They still insist I must pay.)  Should I sign up for a free public account under someone else's name and credentials? 
          The mapping of each cemetery is being done by address, but might also be done by GPS. 
          The number of graves in each cemetery is hard to locate, and may be impossible. At one cemetery, for example, the caretaker showed me a map and explained that each numbered plat can accommodate 12 caskets. I asked how many people are buried there, such as 500, and he said it is impossible and keeps changing. Some historic cemeteries are still "active" -- still accepting permanent residents. One has been "closed" for more than 100 years might be reopened, I was told. 
          Although I am not focusing on recent tombstones, one caretaker told me that I need permission from the Board of Trustees to use any photos from that cemetery. Dr. E, what do you think? 
          Each cemetery description will highlight a few famous people or features in an engaging, respectful way. I must still take photographs of a few places this weekend. So far, I have been out 7 days doing that. Could not even find one on a badly rutted back road, and was afraid that my 19-year-old small car would get stuck. When a deer jumped in front of me, I knew it was a sign to stop for the day. I don't  want to be a in a cemetery anytime soon unless I'm alive.

THE EXAM 

The psychic who cribbed her entire Mayan architecture and art website from Wikipedia contributors must not have a conscience. What does that say about her being honest with clients? 

Unit 9: Reality vs. Not Real in the Digital Word

The process of holding a book and reading it is not the same as reading a pdf or other online version of the material. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-hold-a-book-while-reading The only interactivity that happens with a book is inside the reader’s head while digesting the information. On the screen, a reader searches for interactivity, for graphics and links. Information may be there in shorter bits. The reader’s hands are not positioned in the same way with a laptop or desktop computer or mobile device as with a book. Whether one is better than the other is debatable, but that physical difference does affect whether one believes an experience is real or not.

But an online experience can be immersive in ways a book cannot. Digital Karnak https://vsim.library.ucla.edu/xmlui/handle/20.500.11991/1012 and the Edinburgh project are examples of that, taking you back in time. Online, a website visitor clicks away, picking and choosing bits of appealing information. Karnak links don’t all work anymore; Daily Rituals, for example, no longer has video. The site lacks sound, and the 35-second video that supposedly shows visitors today is blank. Nevertheless, with what is available, a visitor can process a “book” full of information much more quickly than reading a book. People process images more quickly than text, unless the text is a big red STOP sign or something similar.

The article that discussed the aroma of new and old books in chemical terms was wonderful. Some people love musty old books. Others won’t touch them. An online experience has no smell. It is sanitized.

An example of real versus non-real: During the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s, British and American television showed film of young pilots bombing enemy targets. They used technology https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Persian-Gulf-War/276372/206294-toc and https://www.militaryfactory.com/battles/weapons-of-desert-storm.asp that mimicked the video games the generation of pilots knew well-- talk about blending real and non-real. Military training incorporated virtual reality for soldiers learning combat for Afghanistan. Virtual reality came later to the general public.

MAKING MUSEUMS FUN

Some go to museums for reality, some for fantasy. Online, you get just a taste. There, you get text and images and maybe more interactivity. An acquaintance told me she recently went to The Museum of the Bible, but it was too much information, even though she is religious. The museum does not charge admission, but does have a “ride” of sorts, an immersive experience. https://www.museumofthebible.org/visit/current-attractions/washington-revelations  It cost $5. “This was the best part of the museum,” she said. While she was telling me, her husband pulled out his mobile and proceeded to show me the photos he took – about 50. “I liked the Bible room, but all the signs everywhere were overload,” he said. “This way, I can look at these tomorrow and understand what I saw.” For whom was that experience more real? They both liked Nazareth Village. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6rdjOVMYwg 

Can a museum online experience be real, the same as visiting the museum? The Washington area has some of the best museums in the world. The National Air and Space Museum website present to a visitor information on exhibits and objects, and that IMAX films are available. There is no information about the virtual-reality rides, which any visitor I’ve taken there has enjoyed. Like the no-admission Bible museum, you don’t mind paying for this immersive reality, or for an IMAX movie. Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom may not sound like air-and-space museum fodder, but if that’s what it takes to get someone to like a museum, why not? https://www.si.edu/Imax/

George Washington’s Mount Vernon slave exhibit https://www.mountvernon.org/plan-your-visit/calendar/exhibitions/lives-bound-together-slavery-at-george-washingtons-mount-vernon/ is so popular that it has been extended. It is the opposite of flashy but brings reality to the visitor. Research into the slaves who worked at the estate is presented in their words, their lives from their viewpoints. This is an example of mixing the non-real past with reality very effectively.

Colonial Williamsburg’s https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/ formula – costumed narrators, curators, old-time crafts, etc. – seems to be replicated at many museums, whether they are a historic house or not. In my opinion, the formula needs updating – but it is tricky to create a “real” museum experience. Charging admission to present a short program on Alexander Hamilton’s ties to the Washington area and inviting participants to try on clothing similar to that worn in Hamilton’s time may be too immersive for some museum-goers.

One of the best museums I have visited is the Jorvik Viking Center https://www.jorvikvikingcentre.co.uk/  in York, England. There are smells both pleasant and not, scares and surprises. The visitor can choose to be an observer, merely reading signs and seeing objects, but participating in the full immersive experience includes a train that loops through scenes from times past (with latrine and animal smells), plus video, costumed staff, and interactive exhibits. The website doesn’t have the same impact. 

Check out http://www.museumofdeath.net/ and you are probably, like this writer, glad that interactivity goes only so far. 

Photo from Museum of Death website

With virtual reality, real and non-real blend in museums https://unimersiv.com/virtual-reality-used-museums/

The reality is that not everyone can get to good museums because of health problems, lack of money, or other reasons. But they can visit the websites and judge how real the experience is, something that could not be done 30 years ago. Digital reality bridges the divide.

Unit 8 - The Information Age

Loudoun County's history can be told through its cemeteries, many of them dating to the 18^th and 19^th centuries. My project will be a Loudoun County Historic Cemeteries story map, a website that focuses on 20 cemeteries across the entire geographic area. It should be a way for viewers to find cemeteries easily by address and GPS (or GIS), and have a brief description of why each place is historic, who is buried there, a link to a website if there is one, and a photo. 

Who might be interested in it? Members of the Loudoun County Historic Cemeteries Committee, which encourages the protection and maintenance of cemeteries, and public education about the importance of county cemeteries; other historic preservation groups; cemetery “friends” groups; history buffs; students; and locals and tourists who want to take cemetery tours.  

Loudoun County has almost 180 documented cemeteries, both public and private. This project is just a small number of historic ones chosen for ties to the Civil War, Revolutionary War, famous people, notable events, and unique landscapes or monuments. It is not a comprehensive look at cemeteries but attempts to give a representative sample.

INFORMATION IN LOCAL LIBRARIES

Thomas Balch Library in Loudoun County has a cemetery database with known burials, but it has not been updated in almost 20 years. It also has an index of public and private cemeteries, and about two dozen books on Loudoun cemeteries. The Loudoun public library, as well as public libraries in Prince William and Fairfax counties, has information about cemeteries. A Fairfax County cemetery survey was done almost 20 years ago, the same time that the Balch Library database was created. The Fairfax one (in print form only) is a catalog that does not list individual grave information about the deceased, but rather cemetery names and locations and a few burials. The Loudoun database lists cemetery name and as many burials and facts about the deceased there as can be gleaned from the tombstone, which is much like https://www.findagrave.com . There is a Balch Library Cemetery Collection with photos of varying quality from 1990 to the 2000s, contributed by local cemetery preservation groups. The Library of Congress, Library of Virginia and  National Archives websites have some Loudoun County cemetery information, but nothing that specifically seems useful for this project. Searching these databases for information about individual people may be useful.

Unit 7: Digitizing and Sourcing Images and Text (and Video)

A Lucky Day, Thanks to Grammy

How much was that old glass jar that my husband had inherited from his grandmother worth? I turned to eBay a commercial site, https://www.ebay.com/

It might be worth $6 to $65. Mostly what he and I learned from the search is that it was a Lucky Joe Louis Bank. 

Louis was a boxer and his face was used on the bank after he became heavyweight champion of the world in 1937. Taking that info and going on an antique class collector site, https://www.kovels.com/collectors-questions/lucky-joe-bank.html  I learned that the jar had once held Nash's prepared mustard and was sold in grocery stores in Pennsylvania (where Grammy lived) and elsewhere as a promotion item. This was after the Depression. People needed a reason to buy. The jar had a dual purpose: it provided food and a place to put your (scarce) money. Grammy kept the jar on her dresser and gave a coin to grandkids who might be especially good. This foray into material culture was started because we had an old piece of stuff on the shelf. What we learned from both commercial and collector websites was an example of the knowledge gained quickly

On eBay, which says it facilitates "consumer to consumer and business to business" sales, it's not always clear whether your seller is a collector, a business, or someone cleaning out the basement. You hope they abide by the company's stated good-faith policy. There's a place to make complaints on the site, which means unethical sellers can be barred from using it. 

Another commercial website that is in the progress of taking over the world (in the opinion of some) is Amazon. Most of us look at several website when we are buying or selling, so here's what I got when I looked for Lucky Joe Louis on Amazon:  

https://www.amazon.com/Antique-1930s-Mustard-Lucky-Joe/dp/B004AAOPUC 

Joe was worth $30 and up. We decided not to sell it. But if it gets to $500, then - yes. 

The "search" function on Google or a commercial website or any website today is probably the most time-saving breakthrough on the web EVER.

OTHER SOURCES

Google owns more than 200 companies https://www.investopedia.com/investing/companies-owned-by-google/, including YouTube, a video-sharing website. The search function is crucial there, too. You go there to learn something (like units in this class or running tips), but also for random info that can only be classified as entertainment, such as cartoon and video. Type in "workplace meltdowns" and spend the next hour saying "ohmigod" and "oh no" and "holy whatever."

YouTube empowers ordinary people as well as experts to share their knowledge. How do you know who vets them? You don't. It is a user-generated website. How do you know what is fake and what not? You don't. (Yes, this comes from Wikipedia, but explains in one place well all the technologies and ways YouTube works : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube) 

YouTube was started by three former PayPal people. Now many of us can go on Amazon and use PayPal to pay for purchases. Companies and membership associations rely on PayPal to do transactions for a small amount of every purchase. 

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, often pops up first on Google searches.  But those who contribute info to the site may or may not be experts on the subject. Citations are there, but further research needs to be done by those searching for primary sources.

Facebook may have privacy problems lately, but that doesn't stop us from using it. It is the form of social media for sharing information at personal, group, neighborhood, national and international levels.

THOUGHTS ON IT ALL

"This exciting prospect of universal, democratic access to our cultural heritage should always be tempered by a clear-headed analysis of whether the audience for the historical materials is real rather than hypothetical," say Cohen and Rosenzweig. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/digitizing/ 

Digital searching most dramatically transforms access to collections, whether they are commercial websites or historical ones. Commercial websites make money. Historians have to justify can digitizing costs; a collection of personal papers that attracts very few researchers is costly, as C&R say in this chapter. The Library of Virginia, for example, has some personal papers described online, yet available only in the library. http://www.lva.virginia.gov/ 

The speed with which research can be done today from digital collections is astounding, although getting access to some data has become harder as firewalls have been put in place for security reasons and subscriptions to publications become the norm. 

Google's plan to create a library was welcomed by those who believe in a democratic web with information available to anyone, but getting things digitized is still a technical challenge.

As Cohen and Rosenzweig note, document markup predated the Internet. Before computerized typesetting, there were copy editors. There still are, but instead of using pencils they use computers and the Microsoft Tracker function to edit, leaving a trail so that changes can be tracked to the person who made them (and heads can roll when there is a serious mistake).

Machines can do much more. Even publications like The Washington Post use computer programs to "write" some stories, notably sports scores. This eliminates the need for the old film version of reporter calling in a score to a copy aide, who then enters it into story.  Scores get "fed" into a database, entered in a column, sorted and placed in context in a sports text. Computerized typesetting revolutionized printing.

Examples of materials I have digitized

1.  At right is a page from an American Historic Buildings Survey (HABS), the 1936 field notes on an Alexandria house. The original field notes, which are small notebooks filled with grid paper, are kept in stored collections at the Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/ A visitor must specifically request them. These survey reports are not available online or digitized, although some sketches from select buildings can be found on the library's website. Field notes are fragile and can only be photographed with approved cameras at select tables in full view of librarians. The sketch here shows the measurements of a door fame, pediment and step. From examining this, an architectural historian may be able to determine its age. The HABS was the nation's first federal preservation program in 1933. Its purpose was to document America's architectural heritage.  https://www.nps.gov/hdp/habs/

2. The photo at left is from an Alexandria family collection. It may have been taken in the late 1880s. The style of dress and hair on the woman must be examined to determine that, as well as the quality of the photo itself. The family member who provided this said he believes it is his great, great grandmother as a young woman in her twenties, or an aunt. He is reluctant to remove the photo backing (paper) to learn more information at this time. This black-and-white photo with white frame is about 3 inches wide by 5 inches high. The family member says he sees resemblance to family members today.

From  consulting sources such as this 

http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/everyday-clothes.html , I learned that dresses in the Victorian era most often were two pieces, blouse separate from skirt, and that collars and cuffs were detachable. From this source https://www.uvm.edu/landscape/dating/clothing_and_hair/1880s_hair_women.php I learned this hair style was popular in the 1870s and as late as early 1900s.

Other sources of digital material: Deeds and will in courthouses are sometimes digitized. Boxes of fragile papers can be digitized so that the information is available to future researchers, but this takes technical skill and money -- the latter, the main obstacle.

FINAL PROJECT

I'm compiling a list of 20 cemeteries from sources in Balch Library, looking for photos on Creative Commons and cemetery websites, and trying to contact people connected with some cemeteries to get permission to use the photos in a story map.