Blogging Greenwich Village History (10% of grade)
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The class will contribute to a blog, Researching Greenwich Village History, writing two substantial posts, and commenting on classmates' posts.

Joining

You will receive an invitation to join the Researching Greenwich Village History blog before the first class. You will need to establish a WordPress.com account (free) if you do not already have one. If you do not receive an invitation or if you already have a WordPress.com account attached to a different (non-NYU) e-mail account, please contact Cathy directly and provide your WordPress user name.

Developing Your Professional Voice

When you search for your name in a web browser, what do you find? As you start your career, first as graduate students and soon as professional historians and archivists, you will build an online body of work that may be the first thing that people learn about you. It is never too early to start thinking about crafting your presence on the web, to develop a web persona that is professional and uniquely yours. Your voice should be consistent whether you are writing posts or commenting on the posts of others.

Blogging Basics

Blog posts should not read the same way that your scholarly papers read. Your goals should be to engage an audience, made up of both class members and the general public, to impart some information on the history of Greenwich Village, and to attract readers and comments.

Here are some helpful articles and sites on writing blogs and commenting on blogs:

Promoting your posts

It doesn't matter if your posts are great if no one reads them. After you publish your posts, promote them with social media tools to increase the number of views and comments from outside the class.

Extra credit will be given to the authors of each month's most popular posts - awarded on October 31, and November 30.

Assignment Requirements

  1. Join the blog and post a brief biography with an illustration by Week 2 (Sept. 15). Provide your background and interests so that readers of your posts get a sense about who you are.
  2. Post two extended posts, of at least 500 words. Post the first by Week 5 (Oct. 6), and the second by Week 10 (Nov. 10). Your extended posts may be on any of the following themes:
    1. A tutorial on how to do research related to Greenwich Village History. Examples might be explaining how to find and use census records, how to locate church records for Village residents, how to find images of buildings in the Village for different time periods.
    2. An interesting bit of Greenwich Village history that you learned about in the course of your research. Here you might provide information on the larger context for your exhibit, discussing the art scene in the Village in the 1950s, for example, give a short biography of an interesting character that was not the central theme of your exhibit, or write a discussion of the various neighborhoods and their changing names and locations within the Village.
    3. An interesting digital history tool. Explain its goals, how you think it works or doesn't work for historians, and how it can be used to study Greenwich Village. Choose from the suggested tools below or find your own:
    4. An interesting web-based resource. Explain the resource and how you used it for your Greenwich Village project. Please do not choose bad resources in order to review them negatively. The point here is to offer help and advice on good resources.
    5. An interesting print resource. This can take the form of a short book review. Explain the resource and provide examples of how it is useful for conducting research on Greenwich Village. Please do not choose bad resources in order to review them negatively. The point here is to offer help and advice on good resources.
  3. Read posts made by others and rate them 1-5 for quality (anonymous).
  4. Comment on at least six of your classmates posts during the semester (more would be better).
  5. Promote your posts to get the most views.

Grading Criteria

Basics

Were posts completed? Were they completed on time? Were they the right length or longer? Were the posts well-written? Did they contain typographical errors? Did all links work?

Content

Were the posts informative? Were arguments well-reasoned? Do they relate to research on Greenwich Village History? Do they contain links to additional information? Do they contain images?

Comments and Promotion

Did you comment on other pages, were the comments well written and reasoned? How well were you able to promote your own posts?

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