The History of the United States as Told by Everyone With an Internet Connection

            For my Wikipedia talk section analysis I chose three articles relating to American History. These include the Wikipedia article focusing on a general history of the United States, the article focusing on United States history from 1776-1789, and the article focusing solely on the War of 1812. Each of these articles’ talk sections contained several distinct sections of comments and responses debating the strengths and weaknesses of the topics in question. Many of the comments centered on differences in what should be considered relevant information for the article and what different readers viewed as politically biased inclusions that should be removed or changed.

            As would be expected, the general history of the U.S. provides a wide range of issues for debate. Many commentators point out that the article disproportionately favors certain subjects such as the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and Barack Obama. One commentator points out the inadequacy of the article in its lack of mention of any history between the years 1630 and 1730. Two of the largest debates in the talk section of this article revolve around the relevance of the subjects of religion and politicization. Several opinions are stated in regard to these subjects and given the complexity of the topic it is unlikely that any of these debates will be wholly resolved within the article at any point.

            The 1776-1789 articles’ talk page is much less contentious than that of the general history’s page. Topics of discussion include whether the term patriot can be used neutrally in the article, the lack of writing concerning the treaty of Paris, and a debate over whether the United States was originally given the name “The United States of North America” or “USNA”. Other minor issues are also commented on such as the inclusion of grammatically erroneous and awkwardly placed sentences. Overall there seems to be much less political debate on this page than one might expect from an article that deals with the founding years of the United States.

            The article focusing on the War of 1812 includes what is by far the longest discussion page of all the articles I looked at. Interestingly enough the foremost argument presented on the page is over the use of Canadian/British spellings of words throughout the article. It appears over time that this discussion of spelling has ballooned into a debate as to whether the War of 1812 carries more significance for the United States or Canada. Some commentators even take issue with the idea of a Canadian opinion of the War dating from the era, due to their status as a subservient colony of Britain. Other issues brought up in the talk section debate whether the war could be considered an actual “invasion” by the British and who the actual victor of the war was. I believe it is possible that the lengthy arguments found on the War of 1812 page are derived from the diversity of nationalities among participating commentators. It is quite apparent that many of those participating in the discussion and editing on the page are British and Canadian in nationality. I hypothesize that the differing cultural and educational backgrounds of those born outside of the United States give them an opposing viewpoint of the war which helps to drive the debate over the article.

A comparison of the Library of Congress’s American Memory database and the Historical Voices website

            For my comparative review I chose to look at th Library of Congress’s American Memory Database and the Historical Voices digital library. Both of these sites attempt to collect and catalog sources and writings pertaining to their respective subjects, American history and audio recordings. Although the scope of the “American Memory” website dwarfs that of the “Historical Voices” site, both strive to achieve similar goals through the use of partial government funding.

            When first visiting the “American Memory” Database I was initially struck by the professional appearance of the site and the vast amount of resources easily accessible through well organized links. It is clear that a great deal of time, money, and planning went into the creation of this website. Resources available existed in a wide range of formats including primary source documents such as photographs, letters, recordings, and videos as well as essays on a variety of well known and obscure subjects. Using the site I was quickly able to bring up early film footage of the New York Subway system in 1906 and from there was able to find links that directed me to essays and videos which explained and displayed the use of film in the Spanish American War. In addition to providing easy navigation the site also manages to condense information into a widely accessible format. Timelines are included in many of the collections and essays are kept reasonably brief in what I assume is an attempt to draw public interest from outside the academic community.

             In contrast to the Library of Congress’s site “Historical Voices” provides a smaller, less accessible database. It currently does not provide an active search feature for using keywords to find resources. Its “galleries” page is comprised of 7 links to outside sites some of which provide inaccessible recordings. While trying to access recordings of speeches made by Woodrow Wilson through “History and Politics Out Loud”, one of the sites linked from “Historical Voices”, I found that they were contained in unusable YouTube links where the videos had been removed by their users. Along with the limited scope of outside sites provided there are also essays and instructions on how to properly upload historical recordings into data files on the internet as well as lessons for teachers to use in their classrooms that make use of audio recordings. Overall the site has an incomplete look and feel, yet it does offer some uniquely interesting resources such as a link to a large collection of Studs Terkel interviews.

            In its current state the Library of Congress’s American Memory Database presents a much more complete collection of resources than that of the Historical Voices website. However, it does appear that the Historical Voices site is a work in progress and it does offer some valuable primary source recordings by important figures of the 20^th century. For those looking to analyze broader American subjects outside of speeches and interviews the American Memory site offers an intuitive and comprehensive experience.

The Historian in the Digital Age

The internet has significantly changed the way scholars conduct research. The field of history is no exception from this. As William J Turkel points out in his blog post, “Going Digital” there are many special considerations that must be made when conducting historical research online. Whereas traditional historical research often requires a considerable investment of time and resources, including travel to archives and libraries, online research allows instant access to a vastly diverse collection of sources and publications. Despite the clear advantage online research provides in access it also requires users to be proficient in certain technical skills and often provides inherently different types of data than would be found through traditional research.

Going digital requires a certain level of savvy from researches who must be able to discern between relevant, professional sources and amateur findings. Although this skill is also required in traditional research, a scholar is far more likely to find a bevy of substantially credible information in a historical archive than on an internet search. One of Turkel’s main points is that the key to online research includes learning to properly manipulate online search engines and understanding the structure of the internet in terms of links and web 2.0 applications.

Doing digital history provides a different experience from traditional history yet it should not be taken as an entirely separate entity. In order to be successful a scholar must be able to see the advantages of both the traditional and digital worlds and engage in both. Digital research provides unprecedented access to limitless information yet hands on research in archives and libraries provides a greater level of professionalism and expertise than is usually provided over the internet. Programs such as Zotero also streamline and ease the research process by storing sources and automating certain tasks such as citation. Digital research should not be seen as a unique form of history but rather an invaluable tool for providing and performing research.

Intellectual Blogging

In his article, “Professors, Start your Blogs” Dan Cohen points out many of the various advantages that blogging can provide for professors looking to reach out to students and others online in an academic context. He points out that blogs have been stereo-typically cast as purely recreational outlets for the young and vapid and encourages the pessimistic to reexamine blogging as an academic tool.

As humanity proceeds further into the 21’st century it becomes more and more clear that the internet is continuously affecting, if not entirely revolutionizing, many aspects of communication and interaction. I believe that Cohen has successfully touched upon the importance of blogging in relation to the modern academic community. Direct communication between students and professors and between different experts within fields has been a touchstone of the educational experience for thousands of years. Blogging effectively creates a direct dialogue between different communities of students and experts around the globe. This level of interaction was impossible in the pre-digital age where the slow and selective process of publication and dissemination of research was the only way in which a wide audience could be reached by an individual.

The world of blogging creates a rather democratic environment in which anyone or any organization can quickly produce content in a widely accessible manner. By connecting researchers and students of the same field, such as history, from around the globe blogging is the perfect tool for encouraging debate and critique. A post written on a blog will surely lack the rigorous requirements of depth and evidence that a published academic paper holds but it is not meant to achieve the same purpose. A blog acts almost as an online classroom or public forum where active discussion can take place and ideas can be formed as well as posted. A blog may not provide the same level of discourse that a classroom filled with top scholars of history would, but its convenience makes it a realistic alternative that provides ample opportunity for any interested scholar or amateur to provide ideas and receive feedback.