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Project Progress Update 2

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At this point in my project, I have found historical information that I will include on the website. One of the goals for this week is to continue looking through the material that I have gathered, including those discussing the memorialization of Pearl Harbor. I also plan to write out the information I have collected and make it understandable and beneficial for all website users. Unfortunately, I could not focus on my time management skills with the project and my other school commitments. I plan to make that my primary focus for the next couple of weeks to catch up and stay on schedule.

As said before, one main challenge is getting back and staying on schedule. Another challenge that I want to work on this week is making the website not only user-friendly but attractive as well. When I add the information to the website, the style, navigation, and exhibits are effortless for users. This would also give me an idea about how the information and format will look. I also want to do this before so that it will be less of a headache. One thing I learned last semester is that if you wait till the end to change the style and format, it can mess with how the information looks on the website, and it will not be user-friendly. Working on the format and style, I can see how the information and material will look on the website and plan accordingly.

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Project Progress Update 1

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So far, with my project, I have created an outline of how I want the website to look and how people can and will navigate the site. I have begun adding images, videos, and audio to the site and am looking for more. I have created different collections to divide the items to make navigation easier for users looking for specific items. There will also be a section dedicated to the contributions that users give. I have also created four exhibits for the site. The Historical Background is divided into four sections, each containing cited historical information. There will be a page with information on the Arizona Memorial. Finally, I have a section with further reading and information that will give users different sources and websites should they want to learn more. There will also be a link to this section in the other exhibits. I have also set up the contribution page, but I still need to set the terms and conditions for contributing.

I have a couple of challenges that I will work on this next week. The first challenge is the historical information that will be included on the site. I have begun to start reading the sources I have collected for research. However, the challenge is deciding on what information I want to include. I must be limited in what information is included, but I must also provide enough to satisfy different users. The second challenge is just time management. I am working on this project while also taking another class and with work on top of that. I will figure out how to divide my time between the project, my other class, and work so I don’t overwhelm myself and give each the required time.

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Personas Revised

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After completing the readings for this module and thinking more about my project, I realized that I needed to revise my personas slightly. Below are my now-revised personas.

Persona 1: Primary Target Audience

Name: Anthony Sutherland

Demographic:

  • Age: 35
  • Gender: Male
  • From: Sacramento, California
  • Education: BA and MA in Economics
  • Job: Financial analyst
  • Income: $75,000

Descriptive Title: The Cautious Visitor

Quote: “I like to do my research before visiting a site”

A Day in a Life:

Anthony is a financial analyst for a company in Sacramento, California. Most of his time is spent working with little time left for himself. With this, he is picky about what he chooses to do with the small amount of free time he has for himself each week. Usually, when he has the choice, he chooses to spend that time outdoors, especially at national parks.  He says California, and the neighboring states, gives him plenty of opportunities to spend his time outdoors and national parks. However, before deciding what to do, he conducts research online. He wants to ensure he can get the most out of a place before he throws away his extra time. He also likes to learn more about other parks he can’t visit based on his work schedule. He likes websites that can give him information contained at the site without him visiting.

End Goal: Anthony wants a website that can give him historical or scientific information so he can either decide whether or not to visit or learn more about a site he can’t visit in person.

Persona 2: Secondary Target Audience

Name: Layla West

Demographic:

  • Age: 42
  • Gender: Female
  • From: New Orleans, Louisiana
  • Education: BA and MA in History, MA in Museum Studies
  • Job: Educator at the World War II Museum in New Orleans
  • Income: $55,000

Descriptive Title: The Lifelong World War II Historian

Quote: “World War II is one of the most fascinating moments in history. I’m always looking to learn more about it.”

A Day in the Life:

Layla is an educator at the World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her job consists of helping create exhibits, lesson plans, and programs at the museum. These responsibilities require her to know about the history of the topic or topics she and her team are focused on. While she does use physical forms of scholarship, she mostly turns to digital forms to conduct her research. She especially takes advantage of websites that use different media forms to tell a topic’s history. She feels that physical forms of scholarship that lack these different forms are not as engaging as these digital sources. She thinks that websites from the National Park Service and the Library of Congress provide the most valuable sources for research. However, she finds it takes a lot of time to gather the sources from the different websites. She likes to take advantage of websites that contain many sources and material she needs for her research all in one place.

End Goal: Layla would like a website that contains much of the material on a topic’s history.

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Project Proposal

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On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii. Many lives were lost that day as the Japanese destroyed American military planes and ships. The day after, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan and enter World War II. That moment served as one of the turning points of the war. In 1962, the government built a memorial to commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbor. Named after one of the ships destroyed during the attack, the USS Arizona Memorial is visited by many people each year wanting to learn more and pay respects. When people visit memorials, they think about the event and their feelings. Their thoughts then add to the ever-growing remembrance and scholarship of the memorialized event. The digital public history project will focus on this remembrance and thoughts about a historical event commemorated by the USS Arizona Memorial. The project hopes to answer how people who visit the USS Arizona Memorial feel and think about the event, what happened afterward, and how that affects and changes how they remember it. With this in mind, the project will include sources and items from different points of view. It will include commentary from visitors on their thoughts and a way for them to contribute to the project. There will also be historical background sources for people who have not visited the memorial, giving them the opportunity and accessibility to contribute to the project.

            The presentation of the project will be through an Omeka website with the contribution plugin installed to allow users to share their thoughts on the memorial and the event. Other plugins include CSV Import, Docs Viewer, Embed Codes, Exhibit Builder, and Simple Pages. The website will also have different forms of media to increase accessibility, including documents, photos, audio recordings, and videos. These items will provide information about the memorial and remembrance, including historical background about the event and World War II. For example, one of the items is a video of Japanese Americans sharing their experience after the attack and during the war, providing both background on remembrance and history. Another source showcases a transcript of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech, providing historical background and serving as a way for people to garner their own ideas and thoughts about the event and memorial. Those contributions will be added to scholarship about the event and the memorial as people contribute.

            The project will focus on two groups, one primary and the other secondary. The primary audience is those contributing to the project with their thoughts on the attack, the events afterward, and the memorial. The project’s main purpose is to discover how memorials serve as a way for people to remember an event in history and how people remember both the main event and the events that happened afterward. The material provided also helps those who have not visited the memorial learn and think about the memorial and the events. The hope is that they, too, can provide their own understanding of the history and the memorial even though they cannot visit the historical site or have not. The secondary audience is historians or those interested in the event’s history or the war. The website also provides historical background while including sources that focus on the memorial and remembrance. The project will also include scholarship sources for further research. Historians can use the project as a research tool, and those interested in the history can use it to learn more about the events. While the project’s primary purpose is for people to contribute, it will also provide historical background for other users interested in the event and memorial.

Definitions, Guides

Portfolio Blog Post 1: Audience and Content Relationship

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Public history is a heavily contested practice in the history profession, mostly on what the practice truly is. According to John Dichtl and Robert B. Townsend, in their article “A Picture of Public History: Preliminary Results from the 2008 Survey of Public History Professionals” (2009), state, “Public history is one of the least understood areas of professional practice in history because the majority of public history jobs are outside of academia . . . One of the most significant challenges for public history as a field is ambiguity about the definition of the term.” (Dichtl and Townsend). Historians have had difficulty understanding the purposes of public history. While there are debates about the practice, one aspect remains true: the combined effort of historians and the public. In his article, “Whose Public? What is the Goal of a Public Historian?” (1981), Ronald J. Grele states, “But such work has always combined a commitment to one’s own research and a commitment to helping people do their own history, to involve themselves in their pasts, to increase their historical consciousness.” (Grele, 47). Historians work with the public to create projects that fit their needs. Public history projects following this model have implemented cooperation in different ways.

            Understanding the public and shared authority are some of the main goals of historians working in public history. Serge Noiret, in his article “Sharing a Public Historian’s Authority within Communities” (2022), explains, “A long time practitioner of these shared authority practices in community projects in the UK, Paul Ward, tells us that ‘community research […], consistently seeks to sustain our community, revitalize and return our people back to their culture and language.’” (Noiret, 51). Historians should research the public to understand the community’s needs better and create better projects. One of the ways to do this is to interview people. According to Erika Hall, in her guide to “Interviewing Humans” (2013), “The goal of interviewing users is to learn about everything that might influence how the users might use what you’re creating.” (Hall). Different projects have implemented this strategy to help create and design to fit users’ needs better. One such project is the “Building Histories of the National Mall” (2015). The project creators used interviews to gauge what users wanted from the website, stating, “These findings guided the development and refinement of the Explorations section, and also guided the content team on where to focus research and writing time.” (Brennan and Leon, 25). Interviews are one way that historians can create projects with shared authority. Personas are also a way historians gauge users’ needs. Shlomo Goltz, in his article “A Closer Look at Personas: What They Are and How They Work” (2014), explains, “A persona is a way to model, summarize and communicate research about people who have been observed or researched in some way . . . Personas aid designers to create different designs for different kinds of people and to design for a specific somebody, rather than a generic everybody.” (Goltz). Historians use personas to help fit all potential users’ needs and understand the community. Both interviews and personas help historians and the public work together in a shared authority to create projects that fit the community’s needs.

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User Research Findings

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Researching how different companies use personas to gauge who may or may not be their audience made me think differently about the website I am creating and who might be a user. According to Shlomo Goltz, in his article “A Closer Look at Personas: What They Are and How They Work,” states, “A persona is a way to model, summarize and communicate research about people who have been observed or researched in some way . . . Each persona represents a significant portion of people in the real world and enables the designer to focus on a manageable and memorable cast of characters, instead of focusing on thousands of individuals.” (Goltz, “A Closer Look at Personas). According to Goltz, personas are a way for someone to narrow down and focus on the different traits of people rather than a generalized public. Before looking at personas, while I thought I was narrowing my primary and secondary audiences down to more descriptive characteristics, I was not looking at the bigger picture. For example, for my project, I stated that my primary audience includes everyday American tourists of national parks or memorials with at least a high school education. However, that was not as narrow as I thought. After reading about personas, I did not consider why people visit these places, what they might have been interested in school, or their degrees. I also did not consider the people who necessarily do not visit these places. According to the WOSP Personas, some people visit, occasionally visit, or do not visit at all. Different audiences should be considered when designing a project to incorporate ways that might make them users. (WOSP Personas).

The Pew Research Center’s research on internet, mobile, and social media use has also made me reconsider who and what my focus is on. According to the Center, mobile use plays a big part in peoples’ everyday lives. The Center states, “Mobile devices have changed the way people think about how and when they can communicate and gather information by making just-in-time and real-time encounters possible. They have also affected the way people allocate their time and attention.” (Pew Research Center, “Three Technology Revolutions”). The last line made me think about how I need to design my project to make it a website for people who want to “allocate their time and attention.” According to the Pew Research Center, social media use has risen in the past years, stating, “The rise of social media and social networking has affected the way that people think about their friends, acquaintances, and even strangers . . . One of the major impacts was that the traditional boundaries between private and public, between home and work, between being a consumer of information and producer of it were blurred.” (Pew Research Center, “Three Technology Revolutions). Again, the last part struck me. For my project, I plan on making the website collaborative. With this new information from the Center, I see that social media can be used for people to be a “producer” of information for the project.

Reviews

Physical/Digital Site Comparative Review

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Many Voices, One Nation: National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.

The National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., is home to many artifacts and items connected to the vast history of the United States. These items tell various stories involving different disciplines of history from military, popular culture, and societal. One exhibit, Many Voices, One Nation, falls under the latter two, telling the stories of the long history of immigration in the United States.

Physical Site

Argument

When visitors walk into the exhibit, they are greeted by the title with some information about it. It states:

The people of North America came from many cultures and spoke different languages long before the founding of the United States, even before European contact. In creating the new nation, early leaders envisioned a country that promised opportunity and freedom—but only for some. As the population grew, the people who lived in the United States found ways to negotiate, or work out, what it meant to be American. That negotiation continues. This exhibition explores how the many voices of people in America have shaped our nation.1

The argument the exhibit is trying to convey is that the United States is a country of diversity and the contributions that different “voices” have made throughout its history. The exhibit does well in communicating that argument with the items relating to other cultures in the country and spanning from the earliest days to today.

Audience

The audience for the exhibit is tourists in Washington, D.C. Being a part of the Smithsonian Institution, the exhibit is free for anyone to see, making it relatively accessible for tourists in the area. Being a short walk from the Metro also gives residents and tourists access. The museums are also favorite spots for field trips for K-12 schools, giving young students access to the exhibit. Other audiences include anyone interested in immigration history in the United States, whether a researcher or the average citizen.

Content

The exhibit contains several items that relate to the argument it is trying to make. The items are divided into different categories that all tell an overarching history of the United States. These categories include religious groups (specifically Catholicism and Judaism), education, sports, and achievements. The items range from statues and different objects to painted items such as the Painted Elk Hide from between 1693 and 1710. There is not one item or items that weigh more heavily than the others. The exhibit shows the importance of all the items equally.

Layout

When visitors first walk into the exhibit, they see the earliest items in history conveyed. However, the traffic flow changes once they turn the corner, giving visitors different options to view the items. It also makes viewing the exhibit easier, especially on busier days, ensuring more traffic flows freely rather than a single flow.

Interactivity

The exhibit contains some forms of interactivity with metal booklets showing topics related to the items presented behind them and touch screens with more information.

Curators, Interpreters, and Docents

There are employees stationed at the exhibit to give more information. However, they are regulated to the front of the exhibit at a desk rather than inside, and when I viewed the exhibit, there were few visitors for them to interact with. The only employees present inside the exhibit consist of security guards.

What I Would Change

Some things would make the exhibit more effective. For one, I would add more interactivity for visitors. Most of the exhibit consists of visitors viewing items and reading the information provided. Adding more ways for visitors to interact would give the items and history more meaning. I would also add a way for visitors to contribute. At the Civil Rights Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, there is a section at the end for visitors to add their names and thoughts about the museum and the country’s civil rights history. The museum provided a touch screen to input information, and once that was entered, it showed up on a screen that covered one wall of the room. Adding an element similar to that in the Many Voices, One Nation exhibit would allow visitors to provide their thoughts or even their stories, which can open up a conversation in that history.

The only other thing I would change is more employee interaction. However, since I visited on a slower day, there was less interaction compared to the interactions employees give on busier days.

Digital Site: https://wayback.archive-it.org/3340/20230921075831/https://americanhistory.si.edu/many-voices-exhibition

Unfortunately, the National Museum of American History is changing its website layout, including the separate websites for the exhibits. However, the museum did archive most of its previous site pages using the Wayback Archive, making it accessible to users.

Argument

The website’s argument is the same as the physical site’s, conveying that the United States is a country of diversity and the contributions that different “voices” have made throughout history.

Audience

While the physical site focuses on tourists, the website is primarily for people who need help to make it to Washington, D.C., to see the items. There is also more of a focus for researchers than the physical site, giving more reliable access than a physical site would provide, especially to researchers who cannot visit.

Layout

The website’s layout has a main page giving users some introductory information about the exhibit. It is then divided into sections spanning the history of immigration in the United States with subsections within those sections. It is more free-flowing than the physical site, as users can access whichever section they want to read. An “About” section also gives more information about the exhibit and the donors who contributed.

Content

The information provided in the sections and their subsections is similar to the physical site’s, with information about the different periods, the topics during those periods, and the items included in the exhibit.

Interactivity

There are some interactive elements on the website. Pictures of the items are provided. However, there is no ability to view the record now, and some pictures still need to be included in the website archiving. One of the sections consists of a short video explaining the period, while the other sections only have a short paragraph.

Site’s Creators

Unfortunately, there is no way for users to contact the site’s creators other than getting the museum. There are two different ways for people to contact the museum: email and by phone. It also provides an FAQ page. The contact information can be found at https://americanhistory.si.edu/about/contact. There is also a way to contact the museum’s web team with any questions about the changes happening to the website which can be accessed at https://americanhistory.si.edu/nmah-web-team/contact.

What I Would Change

There are some changes I would make to make the website more effective for users. Just like with the physical site, I would include more interactive elements. This would consist of a way for people to share their thoughts or contribute their stories about immigration. Like the physical site, this would open up a conversation about immigration history in the United States. I would also provide a way for users to contact the creators. By doing some research, I found that the exhibit was produced by Haley Sharpe Design, and some information about their role is provided here. However, I needed help finding out who was responsible for creating the exhibit in the museum. Providing that information would allow users to converse and learn more about different items and elements of the exhibit with the creator/creators. Nonetheless, this is only an archived website. All of these elements might be addressed in the new website that is under construction. Returning to that site once it is completed and comparing it to the original site would be interesting.

  1. Many Voices, One Nation. Exhibit. National Museum of American History. ↩︎
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Introductory Blog Post

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Hi, my name is Audrey Schroeder, and I am a graduate student working towards a Master’s in history. This is my second semester in the program at George Mason. Before this program, I received my Bachelor’s in history at the University of Mary Washington. I tend to focus on popular culture and World War II in American history. Before I chose history as my major, I was initially working towards teaching in Early Childhood Education. My background in digital humanities at the moment is limited. My research, in general, takes advantage of digital sources. For example, my senior thesis at Mary Washington was on Hollywood movies used as propaganda during World War II, which required me to find and watch said movies. I also made use of individuals involved during that time. I also had an assignment in one of my classes requiring me to record the metadata for a document in an archive for the school. So far, at George Mason, I took Intro to Digital Humanities last semester, which I enjoyed. I decided to include the certificate along with my major because my ultimate goal is to work in a museum setting one day. Since digital exhibits are becoming more of the norm, learning how to create them would be beneficial. My goal for this semester is to learn how to create accessible digital exhibits for the public.

Definitions

(Re)Defining Digital Humanities

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Through this course, my definition of Digital Humanities has changed significantly. Looking back at my original definition, it seems plain, almost like a basic textbook definition of the topic. There is so much that I would change in the original. One of the first things I noticed while reading through it was that I note digital tools without giving examples. In my new definition, I detail a few of the tools I learned in the course and how they are used in Digital Humanities. For instance, I would mention the text-mining tool Voyant and how historians use it to find trends and patterns within their source material. I would also include how historians have used digital analysis and research. One example would be crowdsourcing projects that encourage people to volunteer to help transcribe documents into a digital archive or podcasts that involve people in a historical story.

I would keep the original definition but tweak it slightly. My original definition was, “Digital Humanities is a field of study in which different disciplines work to analyze, archive, and preserve historical material in the digital medium.” While I still believe that to be true, I would add to it. I would include, along with different disciplines, that historians involve the public in projects and have similarities and connections to public history. I would also include using various tools to analyze, archive, and preserve in different projects. I still believe that my original definition holds. However, my view of Digital Humanities has broadened to see that there is much to offer in the field.

Tools

Podcasts & the digital humanities

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Humanities scholars have analyzed sources and moments in history in various ways. Many conduct research through the traditional means of reading and analyzing sources and even delve into the digital world through different tools, including maps, graphs, and text mining. However, there is a reasonably recent medium that humanities scholars have begun to use to analyze and research: podcasts. Podcasts have become a viral medium for people to consume different topics. According to the Pew Research Center, “Roughly half of U.S. adults say they have listened to a podcast in the past year . . . including one-in-five who report listening to podcasts at least a few times a week. Among adults under 30, about a third listen to podcasts with such frequency.” (Pew Research Center, Podcasts as a Source of News and Information, 2) With it being a popular medium for people to use, historians have begun to use podcasts to exhibit their research.

There are many different reasons why historians have stepped their toes into the Podcast medium. One reason is that it vastly differs from other modes of research and analysis. Liz Covart, in her article History Podcasts: An Overview of the Field (2022), states, “Podcasts serve as the perfect medium for our mobile, digital age. They are downloadable and streamable audio files that you can listen to whenever and wherever you want. They provide convenience.” (Covart, History Podcasts: An Overview of the Field, 221) Podcasts are a way for historians to reach a wider audience than they would have with traditional means. They are also a form for historians to connect with other people. Covart explains, “When riders and drivers listen through the sound systems in their cars, they invite podcast hosts to keep them company on their trip. Given the human need for stories and connection, podcasts humanize stories in a powerful way unique to the medium. The intimacy, oral storytelling, and this power to humanize make podcasts an effective tool for historians to convey the past.” (Covart, 221) Podcasts connect people to the hosts and the stories they tell, and historians have turned to this medium in the hopes of the same connections to history.

While podcasts are vastly different from traditional and even some other digital modes of research and exhibiting, they share some similarities, too. One of the things that I noticed between podcasts and other digital tools is that they are all new ways to analyze and present data. When someone listens to a history podcast, they go into the host’s mind and connect to the story that the host wants to tell. This is not different from other digital tools. For example, when a historian makes an exhibit using Omeka and text mining tools like Voyant, they want the audience to connect with what they see rather than listen like with a podcast. All of these digital tools together change the way that research is done. In his keynote at the Sound Education conference, Dan Cohen states, “We can take some helpful clues about this situation from other new media formats that have flourished on the web over the past quarter-century. For instance, since the advent of the web, and its ability to serve a wide array of text, in difference lengths, sizes, and contexts, we have seen the birth of new genres that challenge traditional writing and break out of the constraints of print publication.” (Cohen, Sound Education) Podcasts and other digital tools are making waves in how historians analyze and research different material.