behind AotW

a companion to Antietam on the Web

Year: 2006

  • JFK papers, photos to go online

    Big news for practitioners and proponents of Digital History: the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum yesterday announced a massive project to digitize and make available online all of the millions of documents, images, and audio and video recordings in their collection. See more in the Press Release.

    Being one of the twelve such Presidential Libraries under the direction of the National Archives (NARA), hints that they might all eventually get this treatment. If they can do it, who else might follow? Keep those cards and letters coming …

    JFKL&M is getting help from EMC who are donating hardware and software assistance, estimated to be worth 1 Million $US. Good press and credibility for EMC – more power to them. Featured is the EMC Documentum product – a suite of management and “transformation” tools to support digitizing, data management, and web delivery. I worry a little that this suggests some proprietary software platforms or storage formats, but trust that core data will be available to the end users in standard web-friendly formats like .txt, .xml, .pdf, .jpg.

    “The project to digitize the collection is expected to take more than 10 years and will begin with the official papers of President Kennedy”, says the press release.

    Keep your eyes on this one as it goes forward. The potential here – for all of us – is enormous.

  • Problems in Digital History 1 (scope)

    OK, so what do I think Digital History is, exactly?

    Digital History (DH) is a subset of the field of History the branch of knowledge that records and analyzes past events in which historical information is discovered or created, stored, published, distributed, and/or consumed on interconnected (networked) computers. The products should be universally available and generally accessible.

    A Word document on your hard drive isn’t DH: it’s just a work in progress until you publish online. A CDROM archive is just local information unless I can see it on the network. A PowerPoint classroom presentation is just an abomination, not DH.

    If I have to pay extra to read your dissertation or query your historical database, by the way, it’s not Digital History, it’s Commerce.

    Digital History is a relatively new field, first practical in the early 1980’s with the advent of cheap personal computers. It has been recognized by a measurable number of historians only within the last 10 years, or so.

    In earlier years DH relied on portable media (floppy disk, videodisc, CDROM) for publication and distribution. These have since been made obsolete by the ubiquitous nature of the Internet. The proliferation of the network and wide availability of the PC together enable mainstream DH.

    DH is not separate from traditional History, nor is it a challenge to the field or its professionals. It offers new tools, techniques, and capabilities to the profession. The fundamental nature of the study of History continues.

    DH is used to

    • Teach: guide students to resources (analog and digital); distribute classroom materials to geographically diverse students; share resources with other teachers; visit historical sites and sources virtually,
    • Research: find and use digitized primary source materials; do peer review; keep current with advances in the field; use software to mine and analyze data sources, and
    • Publish, Preserve, and Share: publish findings online for easy access and peer interaction; archive and organize born-digital information; convert and store historical documents and artifacts digitally; capture and serve current events (tomorrow’s history).

    I’ll explore further in future posts in the series [see intro].
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    More on doing Digital History:

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    Source for “the branch of knowledge that records and analyzes past events” is Merriam-Webster, Online Dictionary

  • On ACW blogging and AotW

    Covering some odds and ends, prompted by my Internet Friends …

    On the community blogging the American Civil War

    Joe Avalon has just posted a listing of Civil War-related blogs on his venerable Civil War Interactive site (tip from Drew). Joe already has the preeminent set of recommended ACW web links at Link Central – over which he’s labored for at least 10 years. This is a welcome and logical addition. As a relative newcomer to these blogs, but not to the War or the web, Joe’s first impressions are quite valuable. He opines:

    [These blogs] … tend to have something in common: terrific material and not enough comments.

    A blog isn’t just a soapbox set up in a vacant lot for people to declaim their voice to the weeds and litter and less identifiable rubbish lying about – it is, ideally, a meeting place for a community where voices go back and forth, opinions are shared, questions are asked and answered, and people who would otherwise never have met get acquainted.

    As I hinted to Joe on his board, I wonder if he isn’t expecting too much from us, or blogging generally. Judging from my web server logs and stats posted or derived for other ACW blogs, I believe there’s a group of maybe 50 to 100 regular readers for most of these. A core subset are the bloggers themselves. An almost incestuous little community are we. (more…)

  • Fine day in Western Maryland

    Sharpsburg claims one of the original Memorial Day parades in the United States. Begun soon after the war as Decoration Day, the celebration was to honor the soldiers of the Civil War … Later … the parade drew thousands of people to Sharpsburg to see the many marching bands, dignitaries and costumed school children.

    Today the tradition continues … Saturday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend.

    Had I done my homework, I wouldn’t have this afternoon wandered into the biggest traffic jam Greater Sharpsburg has probably seen all year.

    Even with that, it was still the best day in a month, for me, easy.

    I began my trip to the Park this morning with a planned stop in Burkittsville to visit briefly with Tim Reese to help him thin his library. I’m afraid I ate up his morning, but we had a great chat, and it was very good to put a face and voice to an online friend.

    It was an enlightening drive there, thanks to the route Tim suggested. West from Frederick, I topped the Catoctin Ridge on US340 and was dazzled by the view. South Mountain was clear and sharp from the water gap at Weverton to Crampton’s Gap and a little beyond. (more…)

  • Go Chargers

    I’m sorry to say I’d never heard of Hillsdale College until last week.

    My loss.

    In south-central Michigan, Hillsdale was a hotbed of liberal thought, abolitionism, and Unionist sentiment in mid-19th Century America.

    Because of its dedication to the principle of equality, Hillsdale became an early force for the abolition of slavery and for the education of black students; in fact, blacks were admitted immediately after the 1844 founding. The College became the second in the nation to grant four-year liberal arts degrees to women …

    … Because of its early crusade against slavery, its role in helping to found the Republican party in Jackson in 1854 (President Edmund Fairfield was a leading founder of the party), and its location on the first railroad to pass through Michigan to Chicago, Hillsdale College was a natural site for more than two dozen nationally recognized speakers in the antebellum and Civil War eras … Frederick Douglass, Edward Everett, Governor Austin Blair, Senator Zachariah Chandler, Senator Charles Sumner, Carl Schurz, Wendell Phillips, Senator Lyman Trumbull, Owen Lovejoy, and William Lloyd Garrison …

    I’m guessing this tradition, those speakers, and the political bent of the school administration fired-up the students. In 1861, shortly after Fort Sumter, a great number of them enlisted, many in the 4th Michigan Infantry. By the end of the War more than 400 students had served – reportedly a higher proportion of the student body than any other Northern school save West Point. Half were commissioned officers. Among them also were 4 Medal of Honor recipients and 2 general officers. 60 of them gave their lives.

    M.A. Luce
    M.A. Luce

    It was one of Hillsdale’s MoH winners that twigged me to the school and its Civil War history. Moses A. Luce‘s name came up when I was researching his commanding officer in the 4th Michigan at Antietam, Colonel Jonathan W. Childs. Luce was later awarded the Medal of Honor [citation] for retrieving and returning with a badly wounded fellow Sergeant – and Hillsdale man – under fire near Spottsylvania Courthouse in 1864. (more…)