The Rocky 'Knol'

When I was an undergrad, my professors strictly forbade us to use such “unreliable” and “nonacademic” sources such as Google and Wikipedia. We were to only use academically reliable secondary and primary sources such as the library and archives; the only digital resources allowed were such databases as JSTOR (online storage for academic journals). But as they say, the world is changing. Google has now announced that they will be venturing further into academic credibility. Their first foray was their beta Google Scholar, a search engine that brings up articles, books, etc. that relate to particular search words. Now they are launching a campaign that ousts Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, which anyone can edit/add to, by upping the ante to only accepting submissions by accredited specialists of each particular topic.
According to a BBC news article, Google has started to invite authors to write about their respected specialities on a new site that will be called ‘Knol.’ Since Google is the leader in Internet ranking, the Knol site will be the first hit on any subject that is searched and that finds a match in their encyclopedic site (which says something else about who controls the information on the Internet). Google offers this site as an open invitation to find out more about their brain child and gives people a chance to offer their opinions on it:
"KnolStuff.com is a brand new social networking community for Google's Open Encyclopedia. This is not Google's site but a Community to discuss and learn about "Knol" and take advantage of what Google is soon offering."

So what does this imply for the academic world? What will be considered a "reliable" source? Many post-structuralist profs already encourage their students to question what makes a source reliable or unreliable and what it means to be an "expert." What kind of screening process will Google have to consider? Wikipedia took a very casual attitude towards the information placed on their site as it is intended to be a public forum for anyone's opinion or view on a particular topic. Google might have a rocky road ahead to prove their validity as an academic resource. However, I think this is an excellent step in the organisation of the abundance of information that is available and provides an excellent venue for professionals to bring their expertise on a particular subject to a wider audience.

Week 12 Assignment

Alan Cooper wrote an article called "Your Program's Posture" that classified software programs into four main categories based on how they interact with the user: sovereign, transient, daemonic and parasitic. Our assignment this week for our Digital History class is to "make a list of all of the software that you interact with during a typical historical research process and classify it according to Cooper’s scheme."
I am not a computer person, so the programs I use to write a research paper are pretty standard. I use a library catalogue to search for books and the electronic journal storage, such as JSTOR, and electronic finding aids for archival sources to search for primary and secondary sources. None of these quite fit into Cooper's categories, although the recently discovered Zotero program might be considered a "transient" program as it is a tool that appears at the bottom of the screen and can disappear again when you no longer need it. I use Microsoft Word to write my paper or Microsoft PowerPoint to create a presentation of my research, both of which I believe would be considered sovereign programs as both dominate the page and are continuously used. I can not think of parasitic or daemonic programs that are running that I am aware of, though as I said, I know very little about what happens 'behind the scenes' as it were.

Software usability issues enter into the historians craft when they are trying to communicate that history to the public in digital form. Most people are able to use programs such as Word to hand in a research paper. Less people know how to programme a website to display the results of that research. What could be improved, if digital is (as it seems to be) the way of the future, is to create "humanities-friendly" programs. There are templates and easy, helpful guides to programs like PowerPoint, why can there not be more formulated programs for the not-so-computer-savvy historian? I recognize the importance of developing newer, faster, more interesting programs, but I also think that more time needs to be spent developing programs for ease of use, so that there are more sovereign programs available for humanity-type research to be displayed on the internet.

People's History

The focus of our Public History Masters program is basically how to bring academic history to the public. This means learning about the different theories and approaches to history in public forums such as museums, archives, and historic centres. This is learning about history and then taking it a step further and communicating it. Historical facts are less important than the ways in which history communicates, which is somewhat counter-intuitive to traditional academic historians. We have noticed in the program that very few people, including others in the history field, know what public history is even though the work of it surrounds people everyday. Treena Hein's article, "History for the people" in November's University Affairs magazine remarks on the new shift in attention public history is receiving as a valid and necessary component of historical education. What history is being told is the central question historians, curators, archivists, and historical interpreters need to be asking themselves. This article describes an important process in the recognition of the need for such programs as public history that takes academia and makes it applicable and useful by bringing it to the public. It is essential for people to have access to their history. By keeping it locked up in the ivory tower, history becomes self-serving and known to only a few.