Unit 2: The Local Digital History Scene

While reading the introduction for Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, found here, I was very struck how relevant Rosenzweig's seven qualities and five hazards of digital media still are despite the publication date. I knew they had to have some useful information or else its reading would not have been assigned, yet time moves very quickly in regards to technology and web design so anything written usually requires frequent updates. By sticking to some core universal content and design concepts, the introduction was able to withstand the test of time. Hopefully the rest of the book holds up as well.

Of the concepts presented, the concept I believe which is most discussed today is the problem of inaccurate data on the web. We judge the credibility of information based on the design of the page we read it from. A well laid out page with a well designed business logo is usually a sign of a credible source who has at least fact checked their information before presenting it with their usual biases. But through that unwritten rule of well designed websites and skillful naming of web pages, an alarming amount of websites spouting incorrect data have been able to pass themselves off as news sources, beguiling the uninformed readers who then share and spread the misinformation. Yet now there has been a push through social networks to educate people not only on the dangers of misinformation, but how to spot and then stop the spread of it in the first place. Here is a recent CNN article about the involvement of Facebook and its attempts to stop the spreading of fake news (link).

While the text discusses at length the issue of photoshopped images and forgeries, today a simple reverse image search can help trace the image to its source and then compare to see if or how much it had been altered. And now with the rise of memes, there are plenty of photoshopped images of impossible scenarios, whether it is the gifs of Confused John Travolta or the many iterations of President Trump in Saudi Arabia touching an orb. And yet no one is trying to argue that those are what actually happened because of how they are usually presented.

For the final project, I am toying with two possible ideas. The first being a continuation of my project from Historical Archaeology class, The John Poultney Mill and the two years it was in operation along the Old Carolina Road. The second being researching the Chapman's Mill; it was suggested to me since the Field Survey of Archaeology Techniques class I am also taking is going to feature a fair amount of time devoted to the Mill.

As far as commentary on local university and public library's websites, I find it is very useful that many of them allow for their collections to be searched without having to physically be in the libraries. It makes trips to them far more productive since that allows you to plan out which books or documents will need to be pulled.

Last semester I spent a lot of time in the Balch Library in Leesburg, and I would have to carefully plan my visits making many lists of what material would need to be accessed when I finally was able to take a half day from work to get to the library during their hours of operation. Many libraries may fear putting too much information online will stop patrons from actually visiting their location, when in fact it would make the information available for people not in the immediate area. This idea is touched upon in Rosenzweig as well and I cannot wait to get to that chapter.