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I come to this class having been teaching at the college level for almost 20 years now. I have about 20 more to go before I, maybe, can retire. This program is a bit of a mid-career shake up as I hope to develop a public history concentration to the history department at Le Moyne College where I work. I think this will be of service to our students, and I am also hoping that it will put a little life back into my own research, writing, and teaching.

I am not necessarily new to Public History. I have a M.A. in Public History or Cultural Resources Management or Historic Preservation (there was a bit of a debate going on at my institution as to what to call the program when I was there.) I then worked as a “Historic Preservation Specialist” for a few years in the Cultural Resources section of a major engineering firm in Pittsburgh. I did a lot of field work and report writing for cultural resource segments of environmental impact statements for road projects. So it was not necessarily even the public history that those who have heard of public history think about. Our main client was the West Virginia Dept. of Transportation. Now that I have an idea about writing a persona, I’m wondering what exactly that would look like in this context.

I did decide to move on from that work and get a Ph.D. in “traditional” history. Now 20+ years later, I look to return a bit to the Public History realm, and realize I have missed a lot in that time period. If I am going to teach this to students who were not even born when I left my CRM work in the 1990s, I better catch up. The most challenging part, and hence my enrollment at George Mason, is the digital development in the field. I know it as a consumer of content, but making that content? That’s another story. I hope to learn as much as I can about how to create historical content for the public and online. I know I am interested in creating web sites, working with mapping tools, and possibly trying my hand at podcasts. Our work in the introductory class last semester has given me a good idea of possible projects and programs, along with their particular benefits and challenges. It was an eye-opening experience. Likewise, I am looking forward to learning about opportunities and possibilities specifically in digital public history that I haven’t even thought about yet.

My aim for this project was to begin to investigate how I could use travel narratives to help understand environmental history, particularly of the Upstate NY and Great Lakes region. I chose this because I have moved into environmental history as of late with a focus in this region, which is also where I live and work. I am also hoping to create opportunities for my students to work in the history of current local environmental importance. My aim remains the same, but HOW to exactly go about this has caused me to pause.

I chose travel narratives because they do offer observations of the natural world. The narratives range from 1653 to 1852 including a chapter of a volume from the Jesuit Relations, a narrative from naturalist John Bartram, a narrative from a European explorer in 1818, and the journal of a missionary in 1852. Although they did not help me to really answer any historically significant question regarding environmental history at this point, I believe they can. I also like the idea of using sources in creative ways. I talk about that in the opening of my project. There are also many narratives out there, so it seems that there is a large enough data source to help answer some questions.

I believed the best way to go about this experiment was through using Voyant for basic text mining to see upon what the authors were most focused. This was not so helpful in gaining insight to their environmental observations, but it did give me ideas in how I can teach students that although a source doesn’t cover exactly what we are looking for, it doesn’t mean it is not a valuable source to help answer questions. I believe there is more I can do with the text mining tool, however, as a way of exploring changing attitudes over time, but that was not the intent of this project.

From there I went through the sources to gather data on locations of flora and fauna as observed by the authors. The 1852 journal was probably the “best” source for ease of gathering that data. Place names were clearly presented along with descriptions of animals, trees, and plants observed. I was able to create an excel sheet and then convert it into a csv file to upload to kepler. Just the fact that I did that is a big step ahead in my digital knowledge. It was a very rudimentary point map, but I did what I hoped to do.

Then came the other sources. My European traveler was much more interested in urban development; so after reading through that narrative and getting some data, I decided it wasn’t really worth the effort of the data entry. It was extremely difficult to follow where exactly Bartram was at most points, and even when he gave a name of a town, I had to double check to see if 1. it still existed and 2. if it still had the same name. The Indian town of Shamokin is now Sunbury, PA and there is a Shamokin, PA, but not anywhere close to the original. That was the easy one to find out. Other place names seem to have disappeared from the record as well as the map. But he gives great information as to flora and fauna. Is it “worth” the time to figure out exactly where he was? Probably, if I want to be as thorough as possible in showing change in flora and fauna over time. I encountered many of the same problems with the Jesuit Relations. The Jesuits also used French renditions of Iroquois place names that are then translated into English. Fun.

All of the authors of these narratives were interested in recording the flora and fauna of the lands through which they traveled to learn how best they could be exploited as resources. With this, one must always consider if there is exaggeration of quality or quantity in their descriptions? Jacobs is traveling to and serving in Hudson Bay Co. communities. Are some of these observations somehow to serve the HBC? The Jesuits were also looking for resources along with souls. How does this affect the way they write? These questions remain whether we are collecting information for a data to be input into a mapping program or a more traditional qualitative study.

I still believe this project could be useful in answering the questions of how the environment of Upstate NY and the Great Lakes changed over time, but I see this as being a much larger undertaking than originally thought. I also have to consider more the data I am collecting and the tools I am using. I think there are questions I haven’t considered to ask given the abilities of the tools. This course and this project has helped me to see a bit further as to what lies ahead.

This introductory class on DPH has been eye-opening, at times a bit overwhelming, and overall enjoyable. In many ways, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the class and my goals were rather low-bar: know more than I did when I began and hopefully enough to be able to do some self-guided learning. I believe I did that. I like to tell my own students that if you leave class with more questions than you came in with, that is a good thing.

I believe my definition of DPH remains fairly the same as it was in the beginning. I still very much believe it has to be a collaborative project. Even though I did the work on my own, I never would have been able to get where I am without Dr. Mullen’s help, and I got a lot out of my classmates comments. Moreover, the introduction of work in various parts of DH shows how scholars from different backgrounds have come together to create the technology, methods, research, interpretations, etc. No one person could achieve this work on their own. It’s also interesting to see that while most traditional works of history scholarship are created by individual scholars, many DH projects have a several individuals contributing.

I do have a better understanding now of the “big umbrella” idea of DPH and some of the problems with that. Are digital archive collections governed by the same rules and methods as networking projects? Is the former really an extension of archive management and something separate from a project like Orbis or podcasts? With so many digital approaches to archiving, researching, and disseminating knowledge it seems that maybe the umbrella has gotten too large to do its job. it’s an interesting question to pay attention to as I continue with this program.

While I learned quite a bit about digitizing collections, metadata, and copyright as ways of presenting mostly primary source material for the use of researchers, I was most interested about the technologies used to research and disseminate findings. I love maps. I have always loved maps. I torment my students daily with maps. I really enjoyed the mapping tools we worked with. I used kepler for my final project, but I am still a novice at best. I have to sit and think about how best to use this tool. As was reinforced throughout the class readings, the technology is a tool and does not replace having to create a sound methodology based on good questions. I have to consider methodology and the questions such tools could help with. Network analysis was totally new to me, and I look forward to exploring that method more.

I leave this class now mostly with the question of how do I limit myself with the options available. I have a big interest in mapping, network analysis, and podcasting. My institution is also in the process of hiring a new librarian who would be a part-time, and our only, archivist with an advisory board to help. I will be on that board. How much of digital practice do I bring in there? I found the class readings and videos particularly helpful in asking questions of how to decide what one may want to or should digitize in an archive, even though this is not my main interest. I also need to ask how much of this could/should I try to bring into my own classes. I’ve seen some really interesting collaborative work with students that has given me some ideas with my own classes. There are many possibilities under that big umbrella, and I need to find the part where I belong.

The pandemic hit, travel stopped, and suddenly I was getting messages from many people and institutions about online tours of museums and historical sites. You can experience history without leaving your home! It’s the next best thing to being there! Well, I guess virtual reality experiences are the next best thing to being there, depending on what the “there” is one may be visiting or what the “there” you are visiting is trying to do.

Starting with the virtual tours of historic sites and history museums, I’m a fan, as a place to start. When trying to orient yourself to a particular event in a particular space, say a the WWI Battle of the Somme, a virtual experience is quite helpful. You can get an understanding of landscape and movement across the land much better than a static map with red and blue arrows. Virtual reality experiences that let you control the view is even better at trying to immerse an individual in the setting as he or she must be engaged. That engagement gets the user to think a bit more about what he or she is looking at and where he or she may “go” next. Hopefully the next stop would be to the actual site, if possible. People go to actual historic sites to experience something a bit more authentic, to put oneself in the position of being there. Virtual reality can do that to an extent, but I would think giving the user control would be key.

Tours that are more passive–click the arrow, read the caption–are a bit less engaging for me. I liken it to a less than inspired lecture with a few PowerPoint slides. And while such tours give us the opportunity to see art and artifacts we may otherwise not have access too, I find it hard to gain the same appreciation. But even with a more “realistic” virtual reality experience, I see these opportunities to be more of a starting point to prepare for the actually going to the sites and museums where one is much more in control of where one directs his or her attention and the questions one may ask.

Games offer a way to be engaged, and I am a big fan of games, but I will say a life at sea is not for me, and I would not really recommend the game from the USS Constitution museum to anyone except maybe my six-year old nephew. First it reminded me that as a youth I was never any good at arcade games. Second, I didn’t really learn anything. I could see my six-year old nephew enjoying a chance to play a computer game and make poop jokes. My middle-aged self found that less appealing. I may try an experiment with my nephew to see what his level of curiosity and engagement with such an experiment. His father also likes to play more sophisticated video games, such as Assassin’s Creed, and I know a lot of work goes into such games to give a realistic feel of the place and time. Of course, once the game commences the fantasy part becomes the main focus. So he plays the game, and I observe the setting.

For me, the VR experience is great for creating a setting. The weaknesses come in creating the greater context for better historical understanding. Balancing the visual and control experience with the actual contextual experience is the challenge. But, of course, that is the challenge for most public history projects. How do you keep your audience engaged and immersed, while also communicating complex historical ideas? It is a challenge, but a rewarding experience when they do come together.

Looking at my title for this post, it makes me think that many academics might believe it to be redundant. Isn’t all crowd sourced information found online a fake? It cannot be trusted. Who knows who is actually making these posts? Do they know what they’re talking about?

I’ve maintained my own reservations of crowd sourced knowledge, like Wikipedia, but the more I learn the more I see that inaccuracies or misrepresentations can be dealt with. The safety next is in the crowd. Sure there are people out there who deliberately place false information into sources, such as the John Sigenthaler example where false information was placed in his entry as a type of joke. It stayed a while but was eventually found. More on intentional fakes later. More likely are inaccuracies and less malicious misrepresentations. How are these to be handled in crowd source information?

It seems the best way is the crowd itself. From my own experience, many more academically inclined individuals believe that those participating in crowd sourcing are people with no knowledge. It is true they may have no academic credentials, but some are quite knowledgeable about certain events, ideas, people. Sometimes a bit too knowledgeable. The numerous editors and other Wikipedia users are quite thorough and quick in catching errors or misrepresentations. This is especially true in purely factual information, and it is in the purely factual where Wikipedia has its strengths, which was made clear by Roy Rosenzweig in his article “Can History Be Open Sourced?” These numerous editors and contributors can be considered the peer reviewers of the crowd sourced encyclopedias.

It is in historical interpretation where things get messier in crowd sourcing, and where it may be more difficult to the “peer reviewers” to be helpful. Interpretation must go beyond the purely factual, and here is where academic historians may find the crowd sourcing to be truly problematic. Calling out misrepresentations can be difficult and lead to, as David Auerbach said, “a rancorous, sexist, elitist, stupidly bureaucratic mess.” However, anyone who has gone through an blind, academic, peer review process could probably say the same thing. Yeah, I’m talking about you “reviewer #2!”

No system is perfect and we must also consider the intent of the sources, especially intended audience. People are curious and often have very specific questions they’re looking to have answered. How did the asteroid belt form? Who is John Sigenthaler? What the heck are Digital Humanities anyway? Crowd sourced knowledge is quite beneficial in answering these questions AND in leading people to more sources and information to go further in their queries. Research of a brand new topic, especially for students, usually starts with reference sources, and crowd sourced knowledge like Wikipedia provides a good source that is available to anyone who has internet access (who has internet access is another issue and one highlighted during the pandemic.)

Then there are the truly malicious attempts to pass off a source as authentic that is really not. Although advances in technology seem to make this more prevalent, fakes are nothing new. From the Hitler diaries to the recently revealed Vinland map fake at Yale’s Beinecke library (although this came as no real shock to many scholars) fakes have been around, and scholars, especially librarians and archivists, remain alert to their presence. Of course now it’s not a single material object that can be faked, but a video, sound recording, photograph, etc. and these technological fabrications can be spread far and wide via social media in particular.

It seems simple to merely dismiss all use of technology in such a manner as unethical and unacceptable, but, like with so much else, once you dig a little deeper, it gets a bit more complicated. Is using software that can recreate Anthony Bourdain’s voice in order for it to “read” some of Anthony Bourdain’s words the same as using that same technology to have Bourdain seemingly say things like “McDonald’s is the only decent restaurant in the world!” They do not seem equivalent in intent.

Photoshop allows users to doctor images like never before. But is this the first time photography has misled? Famed Civil War photographer Matthew Brady rearranged scenes of fallen soldiers before shooting the picture. This was purposeful intent and would be quite problematic today. At that time the technology was still new especially in “photojournalism” and the rules yet to be written. So do we just need a new set of rules to deal with this technology? Who gets to write them and how do they keep up with the rapidly changing technology? Can I answer these questions? No. Maybe we should crowdsource it? You can check out Deepfake on Wikipedia and see what it has to say.

I used Voyant to learn basic text analysis utilizing the corpus of WPA slave narrative documents. I used the five default tools: cirrus, reader, trend, summary, and contexts. While at times I had problems getting certain elements to work (particularly having the “trends” tool display document level trends of words) the exercise was quite revealing on several levels.

First, it is clear how such a tool can be beneficial in exploring larger trends within a large corpus of information. To see the relationships between commonly used words would be almost impossible by reading through the many volumes and thousands of pages of documents. Once common words were edited out, I saw a pattern in topics revolving around people and relationships, both relationships between members of enslaved families and between enslaved peoples and whites. See my post on the Cirrus cloud.

Second, it is clear that consistency matters. Interviewers did not use consistent terms in transcribing their interviews. Many wrote in a dialect so “master” became “massa” or “marster.” Through the summary and trends tool one can see in which states such dialect transcriptions were used. With each interviewer using their own spellings, it makes it difficult to see the bigger trends within the corpus.

Even with the challenges, use of Voyant with these texts gives a pretty good idea of overall topics when you pay close attention to the various terms. It also provides a way to direct future research into the WPA sources and other sources that may exist. It will take me some time to get proficient with the Voyant tools, but my limited experience has shown me it would be worth it.