Category Archives: Hist 1914

The End (Or Project Reflections and Defending the Contract)

Century America, contract defense, Digital History, Hist 1914, project contracts, reflections, research, the great war

As I sit here typing this, I’m in the middle of making some edits on our site and I can’t believe my Century America experience is almost over. I’m graduating in a little over a week and soon I will be on to my next adventure. For now though, I have some school work to attend to and finish up.

Everytime I go onto our site to correct errors and make changes to our content, I feel extremely proud of the work Colm and I have accomplished this semester. It’s been stressful and frustrating at times, but it’s also been an incredibly rewarding experience and I’ve learned a lot about the world of digital history. It was great to get back into the archives and do hands on research, too.

When it all comes down to it, this journey was a trial and error process. I’m incredibly pleased with the way our site turned out, but the journey to get to this point involved straying from the contract and ultimately figuring out what do with the website that was in our best interest as a team with the amount of time we had. Initially, we were going have a “Highlights” and “Full Report” page. The home page would provide links to both pages and it would be the first thing viewers would see when they came to the site.

The “Highlights” page was initially meant to be a platform for people interested in learning about our research without having to read through the full report. It was going to allow people a quick run down of the material that wouldn’t necessarily be as enriching, but would be just as interesting. That page ended up involving into what we called our “Getting Started” page in our first website draft. All it had on it was a few key points from both the Stevens County section and the West Central School of Agriculture section, and a map. It transformed from a run down of the material to an introduction, and it was not being used effectively at all. With more time and a better understanding of digital technologies, I think we could have made an effective use of the “Highlights” page. However, after negative feedback from Drs. McClurken and Pearson and the rest of the class, we decided to scrape the page all together. The “Highlights” and “Full Report” pages were completely taken out and visitors are now immediately greeted with links to the Stevens County section and the West Central School section on the home page.

All in all, this makes much more sense and makes the whole website more accessible to viewers. I’m happy with the way it looks. It would have been neat to integrate a successful highlights page, but Colm and I may have been a bit in over our heads when we included that in the contract initially.

When it comes down to research, I felt like I got started on it later than I would have liked and I ended up having some setbacks along the way–my car wouldn’t start because of the cold here in Minnesota and I was unable to make it to the museum for a couple weeks, which I was worried would set my research back a lot. Fortunately, despite my worries, everything turned out okay. I am proud of all the sources I’ve gathered at both the Stevens County Historical Museum and the on- campus archives at UMM. We had put March 20 as the date that all research was to be completed, and I made sure to be done by then. That said, an opportunity–when the archivist on campus ended up coming across some relevant Morris Tribune articles from the time period–came up later. I took advantage of that opportunity because I wanted to see if there was any more useful information I could garner–which there was–and it was a rather small stack of newspaper copies in the first place.

In terms of general timeline things, I can’t speak for Colm on his research, since we did much of it separately, but I believe I upheld everything on the timeline quite well.

Division of labor remained the same, except Colm and I ended up working on the home page together–it was initially given to Colm as a task, but it just ended up working as a team effort. Colm chose, edited, and uploaded the pictures and I wrote the text.

Much of our project contract is built off of our idea of the “Highlights” and “Full Reports” pages, so it does look much different from what eventually resulted in the final project. Other than that, I believe I’ve upheld my side of the contract rather well. All the pages I said would be created for the WCSA side of the site were created and I’m really proud of the way they turned out. We did say we were going to use a commenting tool, however that didn’t happen–which I think is for the best, as I really like the way the site looks as it is and I fear comments would detract from that.

This project was quite the journey. It was an adventure to utilize digital media in class and in video conferencing into class every week. Technology glitches happened more than occasionally and they were just something we had to accept as a class–it always made for a much more interesting hour and fifteen minutes, that’s for sure! I had so much fun learning about the West Central School of Agriculture and I truly feel a stronger appreciation for UMM’s campus history now that I have all this knowledge about it from the Great War period. This journey wasn’t always easy and mistakes were made, but I’m incredibly proud of the website Colm and I have put together and I hope the citizens of Stevens County, as well as anyone who stumbles across it on the web, enjoys it too.

 

Errors Caught and Lessons Learned

Century America, Digital History, error, Hist 1914, historical research, mistakes, Morris Minnesota, research, research error, the great war, West Central School of Agriculture

Earlier today, when I came into work, my boss at the archives gave me some copies of old articles of the Morris Tribune from 1917-1919 that he had recently come across.

Although I’ve considered myself formally done with my research for a few weeks now–I mean, our website is due next week–I was grateful that he thought of the project. I decided they might have some nice information in them to beef up my existing pages on the website. I never got around to looking at the newspapers when I did my initial research, though it probably would have been a good idea.

Good thing I decided to take a look, too: as I was looking through the articles related to the West Central School of Agriculture, I came across a glaring error in my research.

One of the articles reported that in 1917, 150 students were enrolled in the school, a thirty-five student increase from the previous year.

This was all fine and dandy until I realized I had documented and included on one of my website pages that there were 500 students by 1914. This could not be correct! The math did not add up. 500 in 1914 and 150 in 1917? No, that was impossible! The source I got the 500 number from was The Great War documentary created by the Stevens County Historical Society. I’m not sure if I wrote down the numbers wrong when I was watching the movie or if they reported inaccurate information in the film.

Regardless, I found myself freaking out because I didn’t want to be responsible for shoddy historical research! As I thought about it more, I realized that the small size of the campus couldn’t have even supported 500 students in 1914. The two residents halls weren’t big enough  (The Boys Dormitory, which is currently known as the upper-class residence hall, Spooner Hall, only houses up to 90 students today) and the few other ill-equipped buildings on campus in 1914 couldn’t have sustained such large numbers. As I found out by looking through more of the articles, by the 1918 school year, the school was in dire need of overflow housing with close to 200 students. Furthermore, the 1914 Moccasin, which I did look through early on in my research, had relatively small class sizes with nowhere near 500 students in the whole school. I should have been skeptical of the 500 number from the start.

I’m so glad I was able to look through these articles and catch this mistake. I haven’t changed it on the website yet, but I will soon.

I’m taking this as a lesson–to be more careful with my source information in the future and to question information that doesn’t seem right from the beginning. After all, this is a learning experience. Although I’ve done historical research before, I’m still learning. We all make mistakes and this is one I’m definitely going to keep in mind for the future.

 

 

Working Towards the Finish Line

accessibility, Century America, Digital History, final product, Hist 1914, homework, minnesota, morris, Stevens County, the great war, webpage navigation, webpage work, webpages, Website

Well, hey there! It’s been a while.

I didn’t really have anything new to blog about last week since we weren’t supposed to be doing any work on our websites while waiting for them the be reviewed. Since presenting and receiving feedback, I have a bit more to say that I can actually turn into a successfulish blog post.

As the semester is coming to a close, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m going to get everything done in these next few weeks. I’m presenting research I did for my comp studies class last semester at Morris’ Undergraduate Research Symposium next weekend, so I need to finish up and prepare for that presentation.  I have to finish writing my English senior thesis paper and then prepare to present that, which is going to take up a lot of time–I mean, this is the only class I actually need to graduate and it’s necessary for receiving my English degree…so it’s kind of a big deal. I have responsibilities to attend to for my one other class here on campus and I have to finish this website…and then promote it to the community. I also have Hall Director stuff to get done, as we near move out and hall closing for the year.

Okay, so it’s no that much. I only have twelve credits this semester and it could be way worse. I’ve experienced way worse. But I just worry about getting things done by nature so, naturally, I’m worrying.

My main concern with our website right now is the layout. Colm and I realized how utterly useless our “Getting Started” page is and we are seriously considering getting rid of it. We probably will. Rearranging our menu so that the Stevens County and WCSA pages are more accessible is a top priority, too. I also didn’t consider how clinical “Full Report” sounds until it was pointed out during our presentation, so Colm and I will definitely be changing that, too.

Overall, I’m super thrilled with how our site looks and the Nirvana theme has been pretty good to us…but let’s be real–webpage accessibility, which was important to us from the beginning, is actually pretty crappy at the moment.

I have some work on my own pages, which I was aware of. Lots of proofreading needs to happen plus a few small things that will make a huge difference.

Our “About” and “Resources” page needs work too.

I’m eager to complete our site and show off the finished product around the community, but I’m not gonna lie–I’m also really nervous. The first version, though it was supposed to be as complete as possible, had some leeway because it was the first version. Turning in the finished product, though? That’s going to be a different story. I’m going to want everything to be perfect and, of course, I’ll worry that it’s not, that’s it’s really super crappy and shouldn’t even see the light of day.

Colm and I still have a lot to do about it.

I guess instead of blogging about how worried I am, I should actually do something about it and get to work!

Best of luck to everyone else as you all finish your sites up, too!

Business as Usual

Century America, Digital History, Hist 1914, local history, minnesota, Minnesota History, Morris Minnesota, research, Stevens County, the great war, West Central School of Agriculture, World War I

Well, yeah, I guess.

Today I went to the museum in town to watch the World War I documentary that they made last year. Colm told me about it ages ago, though I forgot about it; he reminded me that it existed when we were both doing research over there on Friday.

I decided I might as well get around to watching it. Even though I’m focusing on the WCSA specifically, I figured it was a good idea to know what was going on in the county during the Great War period. I mean, the WCSA is apart of Stevens County…also, I figured I might find some useful information.

A lot of the information presented in the documentary was as I expected, just from my general knowledge of Minnesota history during the war and what I’ve been hearing from Colm about his research. I did find out a few useful things to add to my portion of the site. For one, the WCSA hosted a HUGE patriotic rally in August 1917 after the U.S. joined the war. There was a huge push for patriotism through Minnesota specifically with the Commission of Public safety, and a few local names associated with the Commission also had connections at the school. People from all over the county came and it was a big deal. Furthermore, I was made aware of Florence Hulett, the registered nurse at the WCSA before the war. A graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, she enlisted to serve overseas as a nurse once the U.S. joined the war. I’m going to get in touch with museum to see if they have a picture I could use for her on the site, since I would like to insert a little bit about her into the War narrative since she was a WCSA staff member.

Generally speaking, I’m glad I went to watch the documentary today. It gave me a bit more confidence as I dive into more writing tonight and I did discover some useful information. Really, I should have gone to watch it ages ago!

Now, on to more writing…

Research and Website Update

Century America, delay, Digital History, Hist 1914, minnesota, morris, museum, research, Research Updates, spring break, travel, updates, WCSA, Website

Hey all,

Since I wasn’t in class last week, I thought I’d take some time to update you on where the Morris group is on our site.

I admit that I haven’t done a whole lot lately. I went on a really amazing spring break trip and let me tell you, it was much needed. I was definitely feeling the mid-semester slump (especially because it’s senior year) and my road trip was a fantastic refresher. However, road trip with friends meant little time for school work. I didn’t bring my computer with me to keep my travel load lighter, so therefore didn’t have access to my school e-mail. I naturally didn’t get any research done.

Never fear, though! The museum has been yielding some wonderful sources for me in regards to the WCSA and I’m going to be finishing up research there this week. I’m excited for the last minute resources that I’ll be able to find and I’m confident I’ll have plenty of information to fill up my portion of the site.

Our site doesn’t have a whole lot on it yet, but the skeleton will be completed in the next couple days. I’m going to start writing up some text for the site this week and Colm and I will have all of our images uploaded to a shared online drive by Friday.

Spring break caused a bit of a delay for the Morris group and I do have a lot to catch up on, but now that I’m refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the semester, I’m confident everything will work out smoothly and as planned.

Stay tuned for more soon!

Responding to Some Readings and Stuff

composition studies, digital learning, Hist 1914, pedagogy, Reading Responses, research, West Central School of Agriculture

For our class readings tomorrow, I was drawn into a piece on Writing History in the Digital Age that was similar in content to research I had done last semester in a composition studies course, research that I will be presenting in April at our Undergraduate Research Symposium on campus. Composition studies is fantastic, for the record, and everyone should take a comp studies class at some point. That’s just my two cents, though it’s beside the point. Anyways, what’s important is the research I completed in my class. My topic? To create a new, writing based pedagogy for lower-level history courses that focuses on developing critical thinking skills. The traditional introductory survey course in history is lecture based with little chance for writing or critical thinking and my proposed pedagogy incorporates both, utilizing writing as a tool to develop critical thinking skills, specifically those skills that are necessary for learning to think like a historian.

Naturally, with this in mind, I was drawn to the piece in Part 3 entitled, “Towards Teaching the Introductory History Course, Digitally.”

I read the first paragraph and immediately and excitedly thought, THAT SOUNDS LIKE MY UNDERSTANDING WRITING PROJECT PART II!!!!!!!! (I may have gotten a little too excited, there). But truthfully, just from the first paragraph, it did. I didn’t focus at all on incorporating digital learning into my new pedagogy, which makes sense as I was focusing more so on writing; with this essay, I was thrilled to start thinking about my own research a little differently, with the digital-based pedagogy presented here.

I was initially really intrigued by this essay because of the very obvious connections between it and my comp studies research. However, it more importantly got me thinking about the Century America class in a new way. I always knew what I was doing for this class was a wholly unique experience. Although I’ve done archival research before, I have zero experience with creating a website, besides the extremely user friendly wordpress.com, where my personal blog is located. But seriously, you don’t even need to worry about HTML over at wordpress.com, though you can if you want. So, though I’m thankful to have basic WordPress knowledge because of my personal blog, this whole building a website business is pretty daunting.

Generally speaking, I feel that we here in Hist 1914 are being exposed to the same pedagogical opportunities presented in Harbison and Waltzer’s essay, albeit a little differently: we are certainly being active as we write on our own blogs and prepare to create our own website. Bringing the ideas we discover in the processes of blogging and website planning to our virtual classroom adds for a much more enriching experience. In blogging, we are being social. We are encouraged to comment on each other’s blogs and we are engaging with the rest of the interweb on these public blogs. Because our blogs, and eventually websites, are public, we are being open with who we interact with and how we interact with them. We have learned about copyright and are aware of the procedures we must go through to abide copyright laws, in order to maintain successful public sites. Our sites will, undoubtedly, be media rich, as we incorporate and embed pictures, maps, and timelines into our project. There is certainly a lot of metacognition going on, as we actively consider the way are websites will be planned out and how we will arrange the layout and the pages to best convey our messages. Lastly, this is certainly one of the most immersive experiences I’ve personally had at the college level. As Harbison and Waltzer state, “The publishing environment enriches the class as a laboratory does in the hard sciences. It gives students hands-on experience with the skills of the historical trade, especially analyzing primary documents.” Not only are we learning how to become better historians in this class, but we are also learning a wide variety of technological skills that will undoubtedly help us later on in life, regardless of where our paths take us after college, in this world of increasingly technology that we are living in.

So, not only does “Towards Teaching the Introductory History Course, Digitally,” have a lot in common with my comp studies research, but it also reinforces a lot of what we are learning in Hist 1914. Though I wouldn’t consider Hist 1914 to be an introductory course, these skills are invaluable to practice throughout the college experience. I’m thankful I’ve had the opportunity to learn from this course in that respect. I guess my extensive ramble about comp studies is my yay for liberal arts moment? I mean, I love making connections between classes! Okay, anyway, onward to the next point…

The other article I looked at was The Future of American History from Perspectives on History. Hochstadt focuses in on some really important aspects of the teaching of American History, how focusing in on historically underrepresented groups is imperative for fully understanding history as a whole. History cannot and should not be told from one perspective (i.e. the white, upper class male perspective). While not specifically related to digital history, I did appreciate this essay for reinforcing a lot of what I have been exposed to throughout my college education in history. The new pedagogies that are including the histories of this underrepresented groups are invaluable for the future of historical education. I thought a bit about how this article could help me in my own research for this class and thought about how, though the story of the WCSA during the World War I era isn’t necessarily the story of underrepresented individuals–unless you count the women students there–it is a story that is invaluable for further understanding the time period in its own right; in focusing my part of the website in on the WCSA, I am adding to an American History that is continually expanding as more information is being discovered and more perspectives are being shared and analyzed with the historical community.

And so ends my offering of reading response insights for the day.

Chugging Along

admissions materials, Century America, exciting, Hist 1914, mn, morris, museum, new findings, research, the great war, West Central School of Agriculture, World War I,

Research is rollling along. I meant to call the museum on Friday, but ended up getting busy with something else and completely forgot. I finally remembered to call them yesterday and ended up having to leave a message for them. I’m going to try again tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be able to get in touch with someone. Last spring when I was doing my honors capstone project, which focused on the early day of Morris in the 1880s, I got in touch with a woman who knew an extensive amount about Morris’ history. She moved to Morris in the 1950’s and has been involved with the museum for quite some time. I’m thinking she might be a good resource to talk about the war with. If not her, I’m sure there are other older folks in the area who would love to share their knowledge; the museum will be a great resource for that, since there seems to be a pretty tight community of older folks there who are passionate about local history.

At the archives, I keep finding more and more useful information in the ledger book from the West Central School of Agriculture.

Yesterday, I was looking through pamphlets that were sent out to prospective students during the summer and fall of 1918. The term didn’t start until October, so these pamphlets range from July to September. Just as college admissions teams do today, these pamphlets were meant to persuade prospective students and parents of all the benefits of the West Central School of Agriculture, what makes it better than other colleges. An emphasis was placed on the modernity of the campus–new facilities that made learning the most enriching experience possible–and the excellent faculty and staff.

More importantly for my interests, there was a huge focus placed on the importance of agriculture in a war-torn world that needed food, and an emphasis on the benefits of education to support the war effort. I am so excited about these, since much of what I had been finding so far in relationship to the WCSA has been about the Spanish Influenza. The Influenza sources are great materials and I’m looking forward to using them, but I was really looking forward to finding information regarding how the war affected the WCSA. Now I am, and that’s great!

That’s research news for me so far. Heading back into the archives tomorrow and I NEED to call the museum. I’ve been so excited about my archives findings that the museum kind of slipped my mind after I wasn’t able to get through to them yesterday. Note to self: c’mon Britta, get your act together and call that museum!

In other news, I continue to be highly amused by all the spam I’ve been getting for this site. My most favorite one of late? Yes! Finally someone writes about best dating sites. Oh, man they hit it right on the nail. That’s exactly the purpose of this blog…

Timeline Time!

Century America, Digital History, digital timlelines, Hist 1914, internships, nostalgia, smithsonian, summer 2014, TImelines, washington d.c.

Well, I successfully figured out how to make a timeline after a bit of a strugglefest. When I realized the step-by-step process on the KnightLab website was actually useful, it went a lot smoother. Who’d a thunk that directions can actually help you out? Apparently I didn’t.

So, I’d say the timeline is definitely a useful feature–something I’ll probably look into for the website Colm and I will be creating eventually. I chose the timeline since I thought it was probably more relevant for the history here in Morris, though I guess the map could be useful too.

I did my timeline on my experience as a D.C. intern this summer. I spent all this time creating a bit of a lengthy timeline (it was a good way to be nostalgic while also being productive homework-wise), but only half the timeline is showing up. I have no idea what’s wrong! There are six more dates that are supposed to show up, but they’re not.

Well, at least I know how to work the technology; hopefully this wont happen if I use this feature on my website!

 

 

Research Musings and Updates

campus history, Hist 1914, Musings, research, UMM, updates, WCSA,

I’ve been meaning to write this post for about a week.

I meant to write up a post last week after some exciting findings at the archives, however I realized I forgot to copy the files of all the items I had scanned into the computer there to my jump drive.

Although I could have gone ahead and written a post regardless, I wanted to reference some of the materials for a more detailed post so decided to wait until I had them copied to my computer.

This week got busy and so here I am, finally finding time today.

Last Friday was my most exciting day at the archives. I finally felt like I was getting somewhere in my research after a few visits of dead ends and frustration.

Although I feel very fortunate that I am able to get into the archives after hours, the negative side of that is not having any guidance. UMM’s archive is divided into two seconds–the history of UMM and the West Central Minnesota Historical Research Section area. I know the UMM section pretty well since those are the materials I work with as an student archives worker. However, since UMM was founded in 1960, those materials aren’t going to be be useful to me. It is the West Central Minnesota Historical Research Section area that I’m most interested in and it also happens to be the area that I know nothing about.

Well, I shouldn’t say that. Through my days there researching, I’ve gotten to know what’s there pretty well. I was basically told I could look through whatever I want to, so I’ve been rifling through a lot of materials at my leisure and having some hits but also a lot of misses.

My best finds have been in the WCSA yearbooks, particularly the 1919 yearbook.

The 1919 Moccasin (the title of the WCSA yearbook) is filled to the brim with so much information. It felt like the jackpot in really allowing me to gauge student feelings during this time period.

I had been getting really frustrated because the 1917 and 1918 yearbooks yielded nothing war-related. I was astounded that the students didn’t have anything to say about the war during those years when I’m sure it affected them quite a lot, at least indirectly, out here on the prairie. The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety was ruthless in promoting patriotism and in weeding out the supposed “traitors” throughout Minnesota in order to set them straight. The Non Partisan League–a well-known political organization that exhibited anti-war sentiments–was also really active out here in this section of Minnesota also. I would not be surprised if the Commission of Public Safety and the NPL butted heads out here on this side of the prairie.

Upon realizing that the Moccasin went to print in February, it made sense to me that the 1917 yearbook yielded no information about the war. War wasn’t declared until April, after all.

The 1918 yearbook though, puzzled me. Then again, as a college student, I’ve found it’s really easy to become disconnected to the outside world while focusing on my studies and such. Perhaps the WCSA students had a similar experience when the war was going on. Or maybe, they were too caught up in digesting all the changes that the war brought to them at home that they chose not to concentrate on it in the yearbook because it was just too much. Of course, this is all speculation and I’m not really sure either way.

What distinguished the 1919 yearbook from 1917 and 1918 was not only the content, but also the nature of that content. The 1919 yearbook had a really nice memorial to the WCSA students–past and present–who fought in the war, as well as a short history of what the WCSA students were up to during the war.

The majority of the content that I was interested in, though, focused on the the Spanish influenza. There were numerous references to how the influenza affected the student population–the influenza reached Western Minnesota in the fall of 1919, which pushed back the beginning of the semester; football season wasn’t able to happen that year, and it got the year off to a bit of jarring start for the WCSA students.

The most interesting part of the 1919 Moccasin, though, was an abundance of quips and cartoons that made light of the influenza.

We do this all the time today. A terrible thing happens and we use humor to help us cope with the horribleness. Well, the WCSA students were doing this too; responding to this terrible influenza epidemic in the aftermath of an extremely influential war with a humor that at first seemed a little out of place to me–until I remembered that humor can sometimes be an extremely effective way of coping.

Here are some examples:

1919 Flu comic 2

All on account of ‘fluenza

 

 

1919 quips

“Perhaps his nose doesn’t fit the mask”

 

1919 last will

“Earl Leaf….All the flu makes worn by us during the epidemic”

I love how these little quips and cartoons say so much about the WCSA students at the time. Then again, this might just be the sense of humor of the editors showing, but I do get the sense that the editors were made an effort to include all students in the yearbook in some way, shape or form. Regardless, it does give a glimpse into the way some of the students reacted to the influenza, at least.

Furthermore, in really delving into the content of this yearbook, I felt as if I got to know the WCSA class of 1919 a little bit more. My favorite party of history is those personal stories, and I was really able to get an idea of some of the student’s stories while going through this yearbook.

I still have a lot more to look through in the archives. I am currently sifting through oral histories; yesterday I found an oral history from a World War I veteran and I hope to find some more regarding the war during the home front.

I am eager to find more WCSA materials regarding the war, since that is what I realized I’m really interested in for this project. The campus archivist has a really great source that he intends to get to me one of these days, though he can’t seem to locate it at the moment. I really hope he does soon, since, from my understanding at least, it seems to be a collection of recollections from WCSA students during the war period.

I haven’t talked to Colm in a little bit, though I intend to sometime this weekend in order to get an idea of where he is at research-wise. Getting to the museum is still on my list of things to do, but I want to make sure I don’t go through anything he’s already looked through when I get there.

Next week I intend to dive further into the archives and hopefully the archivist will have a better idea of the whereabouts of that source by then!

 

Exploring!

Century America, Digital History, digital scholarship, exploring, Hist 1914, website aesthetics, website design, website navigation, Websites

And by that, I mean meandering around on digital history sites!

I did, however, take some time to explore (and get a little bit of research done) in the archives today too…yay for successes!

The three sites I chose to look at for this assignment were The Tran Atlantic Slave Trade Database, Gilded Age Plains City, and Mapping the Republic of Letters.

As an English major, choosing Mapping the Republic Letters was a given. I actually feel like I’ve seen this site before…maybe for the letter-based research project that I did last year? Well, it doesn’t really matter for the purposes of this blog post anyhow. The other two were random selections that just kind of happened.

So, here’s the verdict on each of these here sites…

Upon entering The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database, I had high hopes. I’m a bit of a sucker for aesthetics and have the tendency to judge a book (or in this case, a website) by its cover. Of course, I know that a pretty cover doesn’t equal stellar content, but it’s still something I’m very aware of. I have a personal blog and try to be active in the WordPress community (yes, that’s a thing); the overall design of the site is the first thing I notice when I visit a blog for the first time. So, I thought The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database looked nice…nice colors, over all nice design. Furthermore, everything on the homepage seemed easily accessible with the click of a button.

to the map on the left side of the page and immediately tried to click on one of the areas, in the hopes that it would bring me to a full page of sources/information about that area. Alas, it did not. I love that the  map is there…it’s really useful for seeing the geographical areas of focus for this site. However, I personally think it would be even more useful if it provided links to pages devoted to information and sources about teach area in question.

I am trying to come up with more critiques of this site as I continue to look through it, but I really can’t. It’s really, quite easy to use. All the pages are set up with easily accessible information and links. The “African Names Database” page on the site even provides links to another site–the African-Origins Record–in order to provide further information about individual slaves, which I found to be rather impressive.

Overall, this is a great site. It’s looks nice, it’s easily accessible, and it’s just super interesting. I could spend hours on here just looking through everything. There’s even a downloadable PDF guide on how to navigate the website. It’s an easily navigable, professional-looking, and overall well-done site.

Next up is Gilded Age Plains City. Again–looks nice, is pretty easily navigable, and the interactive map is super cool! I love that they provide a document archive in a separate location from the story of the murder itself. The document archive is also easy to navigate and there is a lot there! I guess my one critique (and this is really nit picky) is that much of the site is really wordy. This is great in that it allows for the full story to be completely fleshed out; however, other than the interactive map, it doesn’t offer many opportunities for people who just want to quickly browse around. I mean, I love words…I’ve spent 75% of my college career reading them because that’s practically all I do as a history and English major (besides paper writing). However, some people want to be able to go to a site and come away feeling like they’ve learned something without having to read paragraph upon paragraph of text (including myself sometimes).

And of course, last but not least, Mapping the Republic of Letters. The home page is really beautiful in its design. The narrative panorama, which is pretty much the first thing one sees upon entering the page, is really neat and extremely detailed. However, it’s also really, really busy and even though it is possible to click on the picture to make it larger, there is no way to zoom in to the visible, but extremely small timeline at the bottom of the image. The “About” section is right below this panorama image, which is great…but I nearly missed it because the text almost blends in with the background of the page. Okay, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it still could be a bit brighter. The introduction video next to the “About” is nice, though.

Navigation is pretty easy on this site, though two of the links are broken–the link to the blog and the link to the contact information. Clearly, this site hasn’t been maintained very well if those two pieces, which have visible links at the very top of the page, are no longer accessible.  I was about to call this site a dud…until I went to the Case Studies page. OMG! So much information! So cool! This is what this site is all about, and it did not disappoint. The letters of prominent historical thinkers have been examined in detail–from Voltaire to Ben Franklin–and each thinker has a page devoted to those letters. There are lots of visuals on these pages of where these letters were dispersed to (so cool!) and there are a few interactive options, which make the experience really enriching. Overall, Mapping the Republic of Letters has some issues–including the fact that it almost seems as if some of the smaller projects have been left at a standstill…some of the pages have an extensive amount of information while others have almost nothing. Despite the issues this site has, it also has made available some really fascinating information that this English major loved.

So, this sums up my experience exploring these three digital history sites.

I would say this was definitely useful in getting a better understanding of what digital history sites look like and in regards to what works and what doesn’t. Accessibility and navigation are extremely important–something to keep in mind when Colm and I get to the designing of our own site part. Although I place a high value on aesthetics, I worry that I wont have the technological expertise to make my site look as nice as the ones that I just looked at. However, I’m not going to worry about that too much right now, as I have a heck of a ton of research and planning to accomplish before that step!