Thursday, June 6, 2019

Unit 5: Copyright

Copyright is a complicated and somewhat controversial subject. The purpose of copyright laws is to protect an individual or organization's work, this includes, but is not limited to photographs, books, or videos. However, it is also meant to help foster creativity. Today copyright laws clearly favor companies and large organizations over individual creators and small organizations.

A prime example of this is current drama over fair use laws; we are seeing this all over the internet, but currently, YouTube is at the forefront. YouTube used to be a place that championed small creators, fair use, and transformative works. More and more often in recent years, YouTube is ignoring fair use laws in favor of punishing creators for reacting to, talking about, and making parodies of works owned by large corporations. Despite this, often when YouTubers flag each other for stealing work, the company tends to come back and say that the work was used under fair use; unless of course, the YouTuber making the complaint is backed by a large agency. We are more and more seeing YouTube videos like this one made by former Vine star Danny Gonzales talking about this topic. It only takes a few minutes to find dozens of news stories, articles, and blog posts about this issue, typically discussed in the same breath as demonetization. While this doesn't necessarily relate directly to digital history, it does illustrate just how subjective and convoluted these laws can be.

Some Other Points about Copyright Laws:

  1.  Fair use, this is, as stated above, a particularly complicated point. I found this helpful information about fair use at copyright.gov. This quote from that article seems to sum up fair use well, "Courts evaluate fair use claims on a case-by-case basis, and the outcome of any given case depends on a fact-specific inquiry." (U.S. Copyright Office. n.d.)
  2. Some good ways to avoid copyright issues are: using proper citations and hyperlinks; when in doubt asking permission or spending some time looking through information on copyrights and/or plagiarism is never a bad idea.   
  3. According to Stanford University Libraries, most works created since 1923 are under copyright. 
  4. The types of works protected by copyright laws can include, but aren't limited to, written works, photos, video, sound recordings, and even dances. (U.S. Copyright Office. n.d. )

When looking at local museum websites, I noted that the copyright information for them varied widely. While some including Alexandria Archaeology Museum are devoid of any more information than a copyright symbol and maybe a sentence or two at the bottom of the website, others like Manassas City, have a lot of information on and a dedicated section of their website to copyright.  
And on some websites, like the Cold War Museum's website, I was unable to find any copyright information. 





References

U.S. Copyright Office.  (n.d.). More Information on Fair Use. Retrieved from https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html 

U.S. Copyright Office. (n.d.). Circular 1 Copyright Basics. Retrieved from https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf

Stim, R. (2019, April 24). Welcome to the Public Domain. Retrieved from https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/welcome/ 

Monday, June 3, 2019

Unit 4

This unit is one where I've learned a lot because I've come into this class not being the most knowledgeable about coding or web design. From Wednesday 5 June until later this month, this class will be the only one I am taking, so my intent is to get myself caught up, which is crucial in an 8-week class, and start working ahead. In addition to trying to work ahead a little bit, I've been thinking about how to go about making my website; and though I haven't made a decision; I think I will probably use Wix, Squarespace, or Google Sites. I feel pretty comfortable with all three of those and despite having never published a website I have played around with all three of them.


Things I Need To-Do or Start Doing By 9 June:

  • Find similar photo gallery type projects to look at so that I can start figuring out exactly what I want my project's website to be like.
  • Create alternative text for each photo so that a screen reader can be used. 
  • Start editing my photos and figure out which ones I took in which cemeteries.
  • Learn how to put a map on my website that would show where the cemeteries are in the county.
  • Refresh my photoshop skills because it's been a little while.
  • Take the time to do the unit 4 extra credit even though it's too late to get the credit so that I can learn from doing it.
  • Look into the grid systems mentioned here.
  • Continue trying to learn about HTML I started playing with and learning about HTML here.
  • I need to pull all of the photos together from my external hard drives and CDs, and I need to scan any of the photos I don't have on discs or my hard drives. When I took a lot of the pictures I'll be going through and using for my project, I was in a film camera phase, so some of my pictures I only have the copy I got from the photo center and the negatives. 
  • I've at least skimmed through everything for unit 4 but there are some things I skimmed that I know I need to re-read and take notes on.


Two Things I Know I Want and Need on my Project Website Are: 

  1. A simple map with pins where the cemeteries are.
  2. A page for each cemetery, with a photo gallery, and information about the cemetery.   

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Unit Three Post


History Blogs

Norse and Viking Ramblings  is a traditionally styled blog, about the Norse and Vikings, it covers history, archaeology, mythology, literature, and more pertaining to Norse and Viking peoples.

Digital MedievalistThis is one-part blog one-part website, it is mostly just packed full of Celtic resources, but it also has a tab for a Celtic blog. I really enjoy this because the blog posts are pretty short and it’s a great way to find other resources or to find a jump-off point to do research into something just for the Fun of it.

The use of non-blog social media in digital history

Facebook tends to be kind of wild, but it is easy to make it so that you are only seeing at least somewhat reliable information.  Pages and groups are the two primary places to find information about history. It also helps that many Facebook groups are private and most have active moderators who will kick out trolls and trouble makers, as well as remove posts made/shared by people who are genuinely confused and unintentionally post incorrect information. The most interesting thing to me about history on Facebook is sets of unintentional local history groups, where people are sharing photos of people, places, and things, in addition to sharing archived newspapers and articles, and their own stories. These tend to have names like Rocky Mount … Way Back When (Rocky Mount, NC) and The original Woodbridge Kids from 60's,70's (Woodbridge, VA)

I was allowed to join the aforementioned Woodbridge group after explaining that while I was not alive in the 1960s-1970s, I am interested in looking at their group because I think it has value in relation to historic preservation. The group is interesting, in large part, because It is easy to find photos of now demolished places, class photos, stories about people and places; like its own sort of modern oral storytelling, and much more.


Instagram is in my opinion one of the guiltiest social media sites when it comes to perpetuation of false information about history (and science); it is full of “fact” and conspiracy accounts. The worst things about these accounts is that they A) tend to target children; and B) often mix in bits of real information along with the false; so they may post three false posts and then one true post, which unfortunately tricks a lot of people in to thinking everything that the account posts is true.  I also notice that there tend to be fewer people on Instagram calling out these falsehoods than there are on twitter, that or the comments get buried more easily.  With that said, I follow the accounts of several organizations, museums, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists that are reputable/reliable accounts. 


Twitter also contains these “fact” accounts but these tend to A) have more people calling them out and posting accurate information in the comments, and B) seem to target slightly older audiences who (hopefully) can separate fact from fiction. It is also much easier to find and follow (real) professionals, museums, and organizations on Twitter than Instagram. I have made a Twitter account now specifically for this blog and have been following these types of accounts, especially ones linked to digital history projects. I intend to go follow the historians, anthropologists, linguists, archaeologists, and related museums and organizations, that I currently follow on my personal account on this new one.  The most interesting history account I follow on twitter is @medievalist , it is Lisa L. Spangenberg’s twitter for her blog Digital Medievalist, a blog full of resources and information about the Celts.


Pinterest is a pretty mixed bag; however, it is easier to find falsehoods than accurate information. I find that their humor section tends to be mostly pins from Instagram “fact” accounts. With that said if you type in the correct search terms loads of articles, photos, and blog posts, about history, archaeology, and anthropology tend to come up, from reliable people and sources. 

Monday, May 27, 2019

Unit 2B: Blog Post

I am somewhat struggling with what constitutes a digital history project or website. The more I read of Digital History and the more recommended/required websites I look at the better I understand this. I think the root of this issue is that I have spent most of my life with easy access to digital history projects and websites, and I have taken advantage of that. To the point that at least a quarter of what I do when I go online consists of looking at history websites, reading documents, and researching, because of this I am struggling with being sure that any given website 'counts' in this class because many of them seem like 'normal' websites to me. With that said some of the websites mentioned in the textbook

I think that the Mount Vernon website would be an excellent addition to this list. Its various Digital projects include interactive maps, digital archives, digital collections, dynamic videos, archives, and more. These are found in three of the site, one for k-12 teachers that I think has information that would be of interest to anyone. One under the Washington Library which seems to be geared towards adults. And finally one under preservation, which consists of their collections and information about the archaeological work done on site.


Another site that I am not sure would fit but is worth mentioning is, Google Arts and Culture, one of my personal favorite digital history projects is. It has digital exhibits from projects done by many entities. Most of the projects are art and art history but they have a wealth of history projects. One of the things they do is make virtual tours of both museums and historical sites, such as the catacombs. They currently have several interesting collections in conjunction with ford theater

My Thoughts on unit 2A

My thoughts on unit 2A:

As far as the textbook is concerned, I found the portion of the introduction about accessibility to be the most interesting part in the textbook introduction.  The idea that not only can we use digital media to reach both our target audiences, without cost inhibiting us, is exciting; however, what I find even more exciting is the opportunity this, and the ease of use for the general public, presents for reaching a wider audience. It is discussed in this section, that while high school students don't have access to the Library of Congress, they do have access to digital archives belonging to the Library of Congress. This section is exciting and interesting to me because it discusses, not only opening doors to young people, but of opening doors to persons who lack the ability and resources to travel somewhere simply to gain access to sources of knowledge which they cannot otherwise get.


This prompted me to think about the differences between reading the textbook online versus as a hard copy. It really hit me how much more accessible a digital textbook is as compared to a print textbook. As a person who experiences frequent vision changes, as a symptom of a chronic illness, I find that digital textbooks are much easier to use, but have put very little thought into why that is. Thanks to modern technology it is easy to use most websites with screen reading; Google Chrome has screen reading extensions and Microsoft Edge has a built-in function that will read websites to you. Digital textbooks usually either come with a function that will read the book to you, can be read on Kindles which have similar functions, or can be read by screen readers. Gone are the days of always having to wait weeks for your school's disability access departments to get files for things like Kurzweil to you. Certainly, we still need to do this at times, but even half of digital textbooks coming with these features can save a lot of time and energy for persons with disabilities, and allows able-bodied persons access to things that while not necessary, can certainly be useful for auditory learners.


Digital history website thoughts:

I looked through many local digital history websites for this module and found that a few really stood out to me.
  • ·         The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media: I found ‘the Hub’ to be a really unique feature of the website, it shows recent tweets from the accounts for their various projects, which makes it very easy to follow any of the projects on Twitter and to quickly get an idea of what the projects are. I also felt that this was one of, if not the, most searchable of the websites. It allows you to easily search the projects by content, division, funder, or platform; which is nice because they have a variety of types of content that would otherwise be frustrating to search through. I found The Hurricane Digital History Bank and A Liberian Journey to be particularly interesting projects.
  • ·         Digital History Reader: Seems cool, but is very difficult to read given that at least 80% of the website is just a brown border and the rest is a rectangular space with content with a box that is off center towards the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
  • ·         The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH): Has several projects that I was very interested in looking into, but that lead you to one to two paragraphs discussing the project; but the project is seemingly not yet available. It seems like the site would be greatly improved by having a section for unavailable projects.
  • ·         The University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab: Was my favorite of the websites I looked at for usability; and it has a lot of projects that I found to be very interesting and exciting. I spent the most time on this website, and looking at it has really shaped some of the goals and Ideas I have for my final project. I also really liked that they way the projects where done; they seem like they would interest, and be a great learning tool for, a wide audience.
  •       I learned a lot from looking at these and several other local digital history websites; about what works, what makes a project/website user friendly, how varied digital history projects and websites can be, and how I want my project to turn out.

Thoughts on my Final project:

I think I want to do a content focused website or blog and include either a story map or timeline. I am also pretty sure that I want to, and should focus on, Celtic history.
My favorite sort of general Ideas right now is:
·        Focusing on the history of County Cork Ireland
·         Focusing on the history of the Irish language
·         Cemeteries in Monroe County Illinois, because, during high school, I personally photographed at least half of the public cemeteries in Monroe County; and examined the stories of many of the people buried in the older graves. Unfortunately, I got quite a bit of that information at the library and am not sure how much of it I could access from here in Virginia.
·         A content focused website with a timeline about Brigid and her transformation from a goddess to a saint. Her story says a lot about Celtic history and conversion to Catholicism. This is what I am leaning towards.