Cathy Moran Hajo, ude.uyn|ojah.yhtac#ude.uyn|ojah.yhtac
Office hours: by appt.
Class meets on Tuesdays, 4:55-7:35 in Room 607 of King Juan Carlos Building.
Historians who work with the public have a particular need to be comfortable with digital tools. The course offers students a basic grounding in the technological skills needed to conduct online historical research and to present the results of their research online. It also introduces students to issues in digital history such as copyright, intellectual property, information abundance, and how the Web changes the relationship between historians and their audience.
Course Aims:
* Learn research skills appropriate and necessary for conducting research in the digital age
* Learn to research, write and promote the results of historical research for a general audience
* Describe historical objects using structured metadata and folksonomies
* Contribute materials to a digital archive on Greenwich Village history
* Create a digital exhibit
* Exposure to encoding digital texts, maps, timelines and visualizations
Major Readings
- Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, Digital History (2006)
- Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, eds. History in the Digital Age: a born-digital, open-review volume. purchase, or read online (2013).
- Toni Weller, History in the Digital Age NYU Ebrary (2013)
Software
- Wikidot web-based wiki construction (http://www.wikidot.com/)
- Omeka - server-based content management and digital exhibition (http:omeka.org)
- WordPress - web-based blogging platform (http://wordpress.com/)
- Evernote - note taking platform (http://evernote.com)
- Oxygen - desktop based XML encoding (http://www.oxygenxml.com/)
- Various map and timeline tools
No prior knowledge or experience is required.
Syllabus (
PDF version.)
In weeks marked LAB, please bring a laptop computer or tablet if you have one.
Sept 8- Week 1: Course Introduction / Greenwich Village History
Special Guest: Sheryl Woodruff, Washington Square Park Conservancy.
We will discuss the course goals, assignments, the use of the Wikidot site and other software that will be used in the course. Sheryl Woodruff will provide a brief introduction to Greenwich Village history.
TAKE SURVEY
Join the Researching Greenwich Village History blog at https://greenwichvillagehistory.wordpress.com/ and the Greenwich Village History Digital Archive at http://gvh.aphdigital.org .
Sept. 15-Week 2 - What is Digital History, Digitization and Copyright
How does the medium (the World Wide Web) change the practice of doing history? Is Digital History different from History?
Readings:
- Lisa Spiro, "This is Why We Fight? Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities," in Matthew Gold, Debates in the Digital Humanities (2012), 16-35.
- "A Short Guide to the Digital_Humanities" in Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp, Digital_Humanities (2012).
- Toni Weller, "Introduction: History in the Digital Age," in History in the Digital Age NYU Ebrary (2013).
- Jennifer Howard, "What You Don't Know About Copyright, but Should," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 29, 2011.
- Jeffrey R. Young, "Pushing Back Against Legal Threats by Putting Fair Use Forward," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 29, 2011.
- Daniel Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, “Becoming Digital” in Digital History (2006) .
- Maine Memory Network, "Photography Standards and Instructions," n.d.
Assignments Due: Post your biographical blog entry.
Sept. 22-Week 3: Researching in the Digital Age /Constructing a Historical Research Question.
How does the digital medium change the ways historians conduct their research?
Readings:
- Ansley T. Erickson, Historical Research and the Problem of Categories: Reflections on 10,000 Digital Notecards, Writing History in the Digital Age , Spring 2012 version.
- Charlotte Lydia Riley, "Beyond ctrl-c, ctrl-v: Teaching and Learning History in the Digital Age," in History in the Digital Age NYU Ebrary (2013)
- William Turkel, Kevin Kee and Spencer Roberts, "A Method for Navigating the Infinite Archive," in History in the Digital Age NYU Ebrary (2013)
Look over this book if you have not done primary source research in your undergraduate or graduate studies:
- David E. Kyvig, Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You Third edition (2010) (AASLH). (online edition from NYU Libraries)
Lab: Introduction to Evernote (creating notebooks and notes, using web clipper, organizing notes, and sharing notebooks)
Assignments Due: Post the general topic you have selected for your digital archive on your student wiki page. Discussion posts due from some students in the forum start.
Sept. 29-Week 4: Writing, the Web, and You
How do you create an online brand for your work? How does the digital medium change the ways historians write?
Readings:
- Miriam Posner and Brian Croxall, "Creating Your Web Presence," ProfHacker, Feb. 2011.
- Brian Croxall, "How to Google Yourself Effectively and What to Do About It," ProfHacker, Aug. 2010.
- "Personal Academic Websites for Faculty and Grad Students," June 2013.
- Alex Sayf Cummings and Jonathan Jarrett, Informal Writing, Blogging and the Academy," in Writing History in the Digital Age, 2013 version.
- Trevor Owens, Curating in the Open: Martians, Old News, and the Value of Sharing as you go, Dec. 12, 2014.
- Tim Hitchcox, "Academic History Writing and its Disconnects" Digital Humanities Quarterly Mar. 2012.
Assignments Due: Post the general topic of your web exhibit to your student wiki page. Post your historical question essay on the wiki. Post discussion prompts/questions in the forum start.
Oct. 6-Week 5: Introduction to Omeka and Metadata
Finding things in the digital jungle requires careful and consistent description.
Readings:
- Julie Meloni, "A Brief Introduction to Omeka," ProfHacker (2011)
- Tom Scheinfeldt, "Omeka and Its Peers," Found History blog, Sept. 1, 2010.
- Diane Hillmann, Using Dublin Core. Updated version
- Susan Cairns, "Tag! You're It! What Value do Folksonomies Bring to the Online Museum Collection?," Museums and the Web Conference (2011).
- Clay Shirky, "Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links and Tags," Clay Shirky's Writings on the Internet (2005).
- Peter Merholz, "Clay Shirky is Overrated," Peterme (2005)
Lab: Introduction to Omeka and Dublin Core (creating collections, items, and using Dublin Core).
Assignments Due: Post the first of three blog entries. Post one item to the digital archive with metadata by Saturday, the 17th (midnight). Wait for feedback before adding more items.
Oct. 13-Week 7: Fall Break
Assignments Due: Read and rate other students comments on the blog, promote your post using social media tools.** **
Oct. 20 -Week 7: Hands-on Metadata Workshop
We will go over the sample items posted by students. Students should come prepared to enter additional digital items during the workshop, as well as ask questions about how to handle specific items.
Lab: Entering Omeka Items
Assignments Due:All digital archive items (20 minimum) must be mounted by Nov. 10 with full metadata. Each item should have an entry in the permissions log (permissions do not have to be cleared yet.)
Oct. 27-Week 8: Designing Web-Based Exhibits
Readings:
- Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, "Designing for the History Web" in Digital History (2006).
- Martin R Kalfatovic, Creating a winning online exhibition : a guide for libraries, archives, and museums (2002), Chapter 1-3, Chapter 8, and Appendix B: "Online Exhibitions Versus Digital Collections," "The Idea," "Executing the Idea," "Design," and "Sample Exhibition Script." PDF
- Allison Marsh, "Omeka in the classroom: The challenges of teaching material culture in a digital world," Literary and Linguistic Computing, June 2013.
- Look at a few Omeka-driven exhibits at the Omeka Showcase of Exhibits
Lab: Omeka Exhibits
Nov. 3-Week 9: Digitizing Text
Transcription is just the start; encoding can make documents broadly accessible.
Readings
- Mary Jo Kline and Susan Perdue, "Transcribing the Source Text," Chapter 4 of A Guide to Documentary Editing.
- Lou Burnard, "A Gentle Introduction to XML," TEI Guidelines, 2014.
LAB: Introduction to TEI and Oxygen.
Nov. 10 - Week 10: TEI Workshop
Resources
- TEI Boilerplate
- W3 Schools, "CSS references
Assignments Due: Post your second blog entry. Assignments Due:All digital archive items (20 minimum) must be mounted by Nov. 10 with full metadata. Each item should have an entry in the permissions log (permissions do not have to be cleared yet.)
LAB: Encoding sample document and mounting it on the Web.
Nov. 17-Week 11: Visualizations: Maps, Timelines, and more
Time and place are popular organizing principles for historical presentations. Creating maps, timelines and periodization offer powerful ways to organize and relate historical facts and artifacts.
Readings:
- David J. Bodenheimer, ""The Spatial Humanities: Space, Time, and Place in the New Digital Age," in History in the Digital Age NYU Ebrary (2013).
- Jason Scott Smith, "The Strange History of the Decade: Modernity, Nostalgia, and the Perils of Periodization," Journal of Social History, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Winter, 1998), pp. 263-285.
- Stephen Robertson, "Putting Harlem on the Map," Writing History in the Digital Age Spring 2012 version.
- * Big Data, Wikipedia
- Tim Hitchcox, "Academic History Writing and the Headache of Big Data," Historyonics blog, Jan. 30, 2012.
- Ted Underwood, We Don't Already Know the Broad Outlines of Literary History" The Stone and the Shell blog, Feb. 7, 2013.
- Jim Mussell, "Doing and Making: History as Digital Practice," in History in the Digital Age NYU Ebrary (2013).
Lab: Creating maps and timelines for your exhibits
Assignments Due:Read and rate other students blog posts, comment on at least two posts, and promote your post using social media. Review and correct metadata for your digital archive items. Forum discussion posts due from some students start.
Nov. 24-Week 12: Social Media: Finding, Building and Using Your Audience
How do you attract attention to your digital products? How can you harness the power of Web 2.0 to engage with and use your audience?
Readings:
- Kate Theimer, Chapter 1, "Web 2.0 Basics" in Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections (2010).
- Robert S. Wolff, "The Historian's Craft, Popular Memory, and Wikipedia," in Writing History in the Digital Age, Spring 2012 version.
- Tim Causer, Justin Tonra, and Valerie Wallace, "Transcription Maximized; Expense Minimized? Crowdsourcing and editing //The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham// in Literary and Linguistic Computing 27:2 (2012)
- Trevor Owens, Crowdsourcing Cultural Heritage: The Objectives are Upside Down, Trevor Owens' blog, Mar. 2012.
Assignments Due: Have a draft of the sections and pages (titles only) for your exhibit mounted to the GVHDA. Post your EverNote reflection blog. Forum discussion questions due from some students. start.
Dec. 1-Week 13: Hands on Exhibit Workshop
Plan to work on your exhibits in class, bringing any problems you are having, whether with the research, copyright, exhibit structure, or other topic. We will present and discuss issues and questions informally.
**Assignments Due: Draft three exhibit pages and be prepared to talk about them.
Dec. 8-Week 14: Work-in-Progress Presentations
Each student will present their in-progress exhibit, discussing their historical argument, how they chose and present the items, and any issues they are facing.
Recommended:
Assignments Due: Read and rate the blog posts of other students, promote your post using social media. Provide feedback on the student's exhibit draft assigned to you. --
Dec. 15-Week 15: No class —work on your exhibits!
Individual meetings by appointment.
Assignments Due: Permissions for all items used in digital archive must be cleared (and entered in permissions spreadsheet) and items set to public access. ** By Dec.18: **Your web exhibit is due; it should be set to "public" so that it appears on the GVH digital archive site.
