In the readings this week I found the discussion of the behemoth Google to be one of the major themes. The Google Books service came especially under fire. I believe one of the major problems with this service is that everyone seems to want or expect something different out of it. For instance Cohen argues that the Google Books cannon should be freely downloadable, focusing on the metadata or searchable text of the books. Unfortunately Cohen didn’t explain why he wanted to do this, perhaps for data mining, I could not come up with a valid reason why this was necessary when Google Books are available online 24/7. Nunberg argues that Google Books is destroying scholarship by having some faulty links and metadata reporting false information, such as publication dates. I respond to Nunberg without sympathy, I believe using Google Books is no different than using other academic sources, you must always evaluate the validity of the source. For instance if you are reading a Google Book about the Berlin Wall written in 1881, it is reasonable to believe that the indexing on Google interpreted an 8 instead of a 9 making the work written in 1981. This type of obvious correction and identification is something that historians should be trained to do in paper or physical sources. The transition to digital world does not mean to leave the analytical skills behind and trust the cloud. Carr comes on strong arguing that Google in general, not merely Google Books, is making us [humans] lose our patience for reading and our reading skills generally. Carr concludes, “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” I couldn’t disagree more. I believe that with sources of information becoming more easily accessible people are forced to rely on their digital skills to look up information and anylize it rather than simply accept it as truth. One of the things I found out from these readings on Google was that we cannot simply rely on Google to give us the answers, we must solicit Google’s help in our quest to find the truth but accept that we cannot rely on Google to give us the truth.
The digital history projects for the week, Cleveland, Spokane and New Orleans Historical websites. These sites are loaded with information from students from the prospective cities which have worked to provide text, photographs, and sometimes audio and video to interpret each “stop.” The websites are laid out well, I believe Cohen and Rosenzweig would agree that the information is well organized and easy to read. However I got the feeling that the sites were not well marketed. Cohen and Rosenzweig talk about driving traffic through links to and from other websites here:
“In particular, try to get links from respected or prominent sites. Your site’s ranking will benefit much more from a link provided by the highly linked (and highly ranked) Library of Congress website than from your cousin’s personal home page.” (Building an Audience, Mass Marketing, Online and Off, Near the Bottom of this website)
If the City Historical websites used this principle, linking to and from other cultural institutions in their area, perhaps it would drive use.
In conclusion this week was built upon using digital skills and interpreting their results. I believe it is important to understand these results and to interpret them before blindly accepting the results as fact or truth.
10/22 Addendum:
In searching the 250+ digital history sites I came across this gem and this failure. Both are from Maine and are examples of digital history websites. The gem is great because it not only fosters interaction but also has lots of rich content in a design that works well. The failure is a product of a website not being kept up over time, videos don't play, and shows us the plight of old websites, c'mon if it is not being maintained take it down folks.
That failure is pretty grim. I suspect we will be able to find the ruins of many a startup history website. Especially dating from the late 90s boom.
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