Kiwi Courage

As you can see, I updated the 'about me' section of my blog this evening. I'll be travelling to New Plymouth, New Zealand on Thursday to work at a museum and I am, to say the least, nervous and scared. It's a big deal flying 20 hours to a destination where I won't know a soul and will be 16 hours ahead of the people who I regularly rely on keeping me calm and happy.

Tonight, however, my mom gave me my graduation present (NZ dollars!) and a card with an appropriate quote by Vincent van Gogh: "What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" My mom and Vincent are right (leave it to moms to give just the right amount of encouragement). My New Zealand excursion will be a wonderful, educational experience. I will discover different cultures and histories while observing and practicing Public History at a local museum.

Life will always require us to be courageous. In fact, it wasn't that long ago that I was entering into a similarly scary and new period of life: this time last year I was a timid grad student, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to learn the ropes of Public History. Now, a year older, I am ready to put into practice all the knowledge and experience I gained during my MA. I am confident in my skills and abilities and look forward to an international foray before settling down. Of course, despite my upcoming independence and sense of adventure, it still helps to have that little push from mom. : )

LAC uncovers document more precious than gold!

I'm glad the Olympics are over. I was sick of hearing about how poorly Canadian athletes were fairing and I was/am sick of hearing how the Canadian government should give more money to sports and Olympic aspiring athletes.

Don't get me wrong, I like sports and I like the way Canadians rally behind our athletes during the Olympics. The games definitely inspire a sense of togetherness and Canadiana. But I'm not so sure that athletes, people who eat, sleep, train, and breathe their respective sports, deserve more money than other culturally inspiring or important jobs or activities. I would venture to say that waste collectors, city gardeners, librarians, and clinics are more deserving of funding than athletes.

Just before the Olympics occupied every waking moment of CBC's news coverage, Library and Archives Canada was briefly in the news too (really briefly, the story won't take you more than 20 seconds to read). Sometime last year, a LAC employee, who has unnecessarily remained anonymous, accidentally discovered an Australian playbill among Canadian documents. The playbill, possibly the earliest printed document in Australia, dates to 1796 and has been an important item in strengthening the relationship between LAC and the National Archives of Australia.

The lack of coverage this story received is really unfortunate. The story was passed over by the Canadian media in favour of Michael Phelps's eating routine, a report that is hardly worth your time.

While the playbill is ultimately Australian, it is interesting to follow the document's path to Canada where it was safely stored for almost 100 years. If nothing else, the LAC-NAA playbill situation serves to connect Canadian-Australian cultural relations and it should have received more coverage than it did. Archives and museums can encourage a sense of Canadiana and togetherness just as sports can, and probably even more so.

The Olympics come every two years, but archives are forever!

What the sky taught me

The digital history Sky exhibit has long since ended but a summary post is definitely necessary! Overall, I think the exhibit was a success. We had quite a few visitors throughout the day including faculty, library staff, and some students and from what I could tell, they all seemed to enjoy our digital creations!

As a member of the Stonehenge team, I am not embarrassed to say that our design was a little bit disappointing. We had far too much information on display with three monitors displaying facts and tidbits of information. By observing visitors interacting with our model, it was obvious that people simply wanted to press the buttons and watch the lights, the corresponding facts seemed less important. One other problem with our design was the length of time the buttons were disabled after one was pushed. Nobody wanted to wait for the slides to cycle through before being able to push another button!

Despite the issues, the day was very rewarding. I had a great time talking to and explaining our model to visitors. I was happy that people complimented our scale model, arts and crafty as it was. I was proud of our design and it was great being able to practice public history on campus. While Stonehenge wasn't as successful as we had hoped, it certainly wasn't a failure. Visitors asked us questions about the technology/digital aspects of the model, they were interacting with our model and the information, and they were interacting with us not as students, but as public historians!

Stonehenge and the Sky taught me some very valuable lessons with regards to digital and public history.
#1: The less information the better!
#2: Talk and interact with visitors. Many of them told interesting stories about their own trips to Stonehenge.
#3: Sometimes, the simplest things are the most effective. Visitors REALLY seemed to like our model, without the digital components and the lights.
#4: The sky really is the limit! As public historians we need to know the different types of technology available to us. Digital history has taught me to think digitally when trying to promote history. There are no limits to the ways in which we can display history.

So there you go. The exhibit was a great success with lots to be learned by all. My biggest complaint? Our model didn't ever end up with neolithic sheep on it!

Geocaching and history: an adventure in waiting

My aunt is really into Geocaching - a hobby that combines adventure, caches, and a Global Positioning System. A cache is usually a logbook that contains the records of all those people who have visited the cache and can also include things like contact information, information about the city or town in which the cache is located, and even jokes. Some caches contain things like maps, books, and even jewelery. People who 'Geocache' (I think I just made up a new word) look up coordinates online and then use their GPS to find the cache. Once they've found the cache site there are a few rules that Geocachers must follow: 1) Take something from the cache, 2) Leave something in the cache, and 3) Write about it in the logbook.

I think Geocaching is an awesome tool for public historians. Museums, for example, could create walking tours that make use of a GPS and historical artifacts (replicas, of course). Similarly, historical societies could create country-wide historical adventures that lead Geocachers on a hunt for a series of artifacts that are relevant to Canadian history. With each discovery, hunters learn tidbits of history relating to the artifacst. It might look a little something like this:

In Charlottetown, a picture of the members who attended the Charlottetown Conference is located on the grounds of Government House. On the boardwalk in Halifax, hunters might discover the hasty telegram sent by dispatcher Vince Coleman that stopped a train with 700 passengers from barreling into the city at the time of the Halifax Explosion. In Quebec, Geocachers are directed to the Plains of Abraham to find a French Infantry Musket used during the fateful battle. The next stop is Toronto where the goal is to find a miniature version of William Lyon Mackenzie's printing press that was thrown into Lake Ontario. In Regina, a buried stethoscope represents Tommy Douglas and the development of Medicare. In the Nass River valley of British Columbia, hunters are guided toward an indigenous artifact belonging to the Nisga'a people. Finally, the search ends with the discovery of gold in the Klondike near Dawson City, Yukon.

Of course, searches like these can, and probably should, be limited to provinces, regions, and even cities. Geocaching has a lot of potential for public history and historians and is a great way to combine new digital technologies with traditional histories.

In Other Group Project News

Along with the sky exhibit, there is another group project that Public History students are working on. This time, in co-operation with Museum London, we are creating three different modules for Eldon House using SMARTBoard Technology. SMARTBoards are sort of like interactive white boards or PowerPoint presentations. Each module will be used for the museum's educational programming and will be presented to elementary school children of the Thames Valley District School Board.

My group has been working on the Rebellion of 1837 module for about seven months now and we are getting closer to the final project each week. I am responsible for the Rebellion in the London District and as a result, I learned a great deal of local history. The Duncombe Rising to the east of London is a topic of which most elementary students and the general public might not be aware. Similarly, the meeting that took place in London's Flannagan's Tavern on 11 December, 1837 yielded the rebel's resolution to protect the city from further Loyalist influence is a wonderful piece of local history that needs more attention.

Thankfully, Museum London has invested a large chunk of money into SMARTBoards and is bringing these histories to children and the public in an interesting and digital manner. For example, the technology has allowed me to turn an archived painting into a sliding puzzle. London's Barracks (1842) by Henry Francis Ainslie has been transformed into an interactive puzzle that teaches children about the consequences of the Rebellion (London received the barracks after the rebels were put down).

I look forward to working with things like SMARTBoard in the future as they are great tools that can increase interest in local and Canadian history. I encourage you to check out the sliding puzzle I made and you can learn a little bit about the way London looked in the mid - 19th century during the construction of the barracks at what is now Victoria Park.

Here's the link! It's available for one month.

Digitizing Stonehenge Part I

I spent this inaugural Family Day with my archeo-astronomy kin.

In preparation for the digital history sky exhibit, my group met last Monday to construct Stonehenge - on a scale of 1:50. We spent about three hours molding the clay into the stones that made up the original design. Our model is in the beginning stages. We plan to cut the board into a circle, decorate it with moss, green felt, druids, and sheep (of course, they will be authentic Neolithic sheep).

Our goal is to develop an interface that viewers can use to learn more about Stonehenge while using our model as a starting point. I'm talking buttons, lights, animation, and FACTS! Viewers will be able to push a button and a corresponding light on the model will light up and the laptops will display a cleverly designed animation and/or an interesting fact that relates to the light on the model. The button/light topics will include the summer solstice sunrise, the winter solstice sunset, the stones themselves, Neolithic culture/people, and Neolithic religion.

I will keep you updated on the progress of our exhibit!

Looking to the sky

My digital history class has been working to develop an interactive exhibit for display at UWO in April. We've decided on the "sky" as the overall theme for the project and there will be four displays that correspond to the sky in some way or another. Our goal is to show how history/a topic can be combined with facets of the digital world to create an interesting and interactive display.

My group is looking at Archeo-astronomy and more specifically, Stonehenge. We are hoping to create both a digital and actual model that will show viewers how the sun reacts to the ancient creation.

Other topics include comets, constellations, and flying machines and satellites.

I'm really looking forward to seeing it come together as an overall exhibit. Stay tuned to the website and my blog for more information!

Fabregas is related to Puss in Boots? Well, they're both Spanish.

In digital history last week, we learned about Mash-ups and APIs. Mash-ups work together with APIs to create wonderfully interesting web applications like a Google Maps map that displays the addresses of all the places in London, ON that sell Arsenal FC merchandise. Just, you know, for example.

The other day, I was looking around YouTube and came across YouTube's new application called "Warp". And, while I'm not sure if it's the same thing as a Mash-up, it's really kind of fun. In fact, it might be more of a visualization.

Warp visualizes the connections between videos. It can only be used in full screen mode and its icon is in the bottom left corner of the screen - it looks kind of like a web map. So, I searched for Cesc Fabregas, Arsenal's up-and-coming Spanish midfielder. I watched the video in full screen mode and then clicked on the icon. Immediately, a bunch of different bubbles splurted out all over the screen. From there I was connected to a number of other bubbles that were related to the first video. I found my way, somehow, to a Puss in Boots video clip from Shrek.

By clicking on a bubble, you can watch the clip. Once the clip is finished, a line appears and connects you back to the original video. It was really a lot of fun to see the wacky connections between videos.

This sort of visualization or application, or whatever it is, would be really cool if it could somehow be used on old, historical (ahhhh...the real connection) photos. If this visualization could somehow be applied to family photos you could roll your mouse over a person in a photo and all of a sudden bubbles would display his/her family and friends and even other photos of the same person. This tool would be great for genealogists.

I'm not sure that it's even feasible to use Warp in such a way that I described above but it's interesting to imagine the possibilities. So, go try it and think of some other neat ways to use Warp!

Public what?

Over the holidays I usually make appointments with my doctor, hair dresser, dentist, and optometrist. It's a time to get healthy, regenerate, and share conversation with the health professionals who have been seeing me since I was a kid.

This year, however, the conversation was not about family, holiday plans, and life in general; rather, appointments consisted of me explaining public history, my MA program, and my future career options. When I described public history to my dentist and the kinds of jobs that I could possibly have once I graduate, he responded, "I didn't even know those kinds of jobs existed." Similarly, while answering the same questions from my doctor, he said, "You're speaking Greek to me."

I recognized early on that most people didn't or wouldn't know much about public history but a simple explanation seemed to yield an understanding nod and smile. I was quite surprised, however, to hear the responses of so many supposedly well-educated, socially aware Canadians.

This got me thinking. What is the point of public history if the 'public', this kind of history's namesake, doesn't even realize its significance. There is, indeed, public interest in history - historical novels, movies, and television shows are more popular than ever before. Perhaps, as public historians, we need to be more concerned with the public rather than the history. My digital history course is obviously helping to foster this attitude.

How cool would it be if museums had temporary exhibitions for which the subjects were based entirely on public interest? Museum administrators could poll their communities to find out what topics would draw the most amount of visitors. This would probably lead to a type of history less interesting to most museum administrators and historians. A less 'academic' type of history. Does public support automatically tarnish historic validity?

I wonder if it is possible to bridge the gap between what the public wants and what historians want. I'm not entirely sure. I do know, however, that as I continue to find my way as a public historian, I am leaning more toward the attitude that supports and favours a public friendly history.