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Community Land Trust or CLT is a way to own land and build homes that are based on community freedom and fairness. This began as a small idea around 50 years ago and has since then grown into a larger movement that is changing how communities grow and land is owned. By understanding how these CLT’s works gives information on alternative methods in owning land and how some land businesses operate as this information can also be useful in preserving history. Cauvin’s book suggests how historians can work with the gathering and digitizing historical records as the book contains suggestions that could be useful, especially when it comes to more community-based projects like CLT’s. Looking into economical and social policies from the past gives the chance to understand how community development and land tenure may affect people in the long run. The ideas of community involvement and connection are a key feature of CLT and similar to what Cauvin’s call for working together. As historians write and preserve the past of CLT’s can make it easier for people to share their experiences while getting involved. While keeping the historical records safe, it at the same time gives the people of the community a sense of control and ownership. By looking into CLT’s and learning from Cauvin’s to learn how important past context are in sharing community projects today. Having different methods of ownership and management of land that are based upon previous research and involvement of the community it is possible to work towards a more fair and longer lasting method of development.  

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The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook is the collaboration between the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) and the National Council on Public History (NCPH). The idea behind the handbook is to give fairness, variety, and inclusion into historical projects. The goal of the handbook is to make history useful and accessible for a wider audience rather than just for historians, making the handbook a useful resource that non-historians and groups can use when working with history. The idea behind the publishing is to get more people involved in historical projects and give them tips and advice when working with history. The handbook is written by historians and experts in the field that widens the view, gives information, critical thinking, and real-life examples from their own work within history. The handbook is made to be simple to navigate around and understand, with alphabetical listing, overview of different topics and suggestions for further readings on subjects. Rather than being a traditional publication in book format the handbook is digital and can be constantly updated with new information rather than waiting to have enough information before being published the traditional way. While the first edition of the handbook had 100 entries future publications will have more because of changes in the field and new practitioners getting involved, and because the handbook is a constant project many can get involved in it and participate or give suggestions for entries or improving the handbook. To put is simply, the Inclusive Historian’s Handbook is a guide for historians and non-historians working with history and helps with broadening the view of public history.

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Preserving some historical sites can be more complicated than at first, though, and even sometimes reflects racial inequalities. Neglect, financial difficulties, and land are all factors that can hinder attempts at preserving historical sights. Other factors can also be priorities, as Confederate burial sites are prioritized above African American cemeteries.

Through research, many interactions with the local population, and fighting for their protection, this is how public historians play an integral part in the preservation of burial sitesᅳworking with stakeholders in order to establish conservation and interpretation plans, increase public awareness of how historically significant these sites are, and contribute to the documentation of historical narratives related to the sites. At the same time, community-based remembrance and preservation are built through the upkeep and development of burial sites by members of the local community, historical societies, organizations through the church, and professional caretakers. Through these programs, the shared ownership of cultural assets and rehabilitation of sites and communities that have previously been abandoned is created, giving the stakeholders the ability to participate directly in the preservation. Innovative methods of recording and preserving the history of deceased communities are improved with technology and digital history. Ground radar and VR applications are just some ways researchers can map out burial grounds. At the same time, digital platforms also promote the exchange of historical information and access to archives.

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Shared authority is the concept of gathering historical information, narratives, or experiences from non-active historians. The process involves historians gathering information from people who experienced or viewed certain events to share their part of the story. While this is an excellent way to gather history, it cannot be accessible simultaneously as the teller's memory can be different from what happened due to time. However, the interviewer can mitigate this by using specific questions to steer the conversation for more accurate information. Also, check the info afterward to ensure it is consistent with official documentation. Shared inquiry deals with the collaboration between the historian and the one telling the story. In public history, working together to write down the correct history is essential. One of the reasons behind this comes from the historian and teller, who can have completely different reasons to learn more about the history in question. While the teller may want to share their experiences of a specific event to preserve their memories, the historian can see it as a new viewpoint on the event. Thus, the meaningful experience for the teller becomes just information for the historian. This is why historians need to adapt to changes in how they work with the public, especially when it comes to public history.

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The book RADICAL ROOTS explores the intricacies of radical public history and shows how different social movements and educational philosophies have influenced the changes in public history. Arguing that radical public history is a product of interdisciplinary origins and changes and evolves because of dynamic social networks rather than following a linear narrative. Some radical public history contributes to education, oral history, and folklore. Acknowledging criticism and challenges involving racism, bias of gender, and elitism. To self-reflect and be responsible for addressing these issues. While simultaneously presenting radical public history as a constant process that challenges a dominant narrative. The overarching argument is a commitment to inclusivity and social justice that continues to influence the presentation of history in a changing and dynamic way. While covering the preservation efforts of two cases involving the Lincoln Heights Rosenwald School and the Bush Street. Going into how grassroots initiatives play a part in the modern preservation of history that highlights and places community-driven narrative above economic consideration. Although the economic argument goes above preservation, grassroots focus on local needs and community history. The historical preservation reclaims the narrative and cultural meaning of local history and connects the locals to their history.

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Dr. Scot French’s lecture has a captivating insight in the developmental and inception road of Eatonville, FL. One intriguing part of the presentation is the establishment of the local school system and its important role in shaping the community of Eatonville. In the core of Eatonville’s educational foundation is a unique narrative with tales of initiatives and opportunity. The school system’s use of resourcefulness because of its emergence as an organic response to Eatonville’s needs rather than a meticulously laid plan. Most notable the 20 acres, later 40 that was for a new university underscores the community’s commitment to education. The courses and curriculum reflected a need for practical learning and traditional academic subjects. Emphasized teaching students tangible skills for work and well-rounded education in literature, highlighting Eatonvilles holistic approach to learning. The educational focus of Eatonville shows how it was seen as a means to an end, but rather as a foundation for the community’s identity and progress. The educational system that elevated the community’s educational journey from an institution to a sign of aspiration and empowerment of Eatonville. 

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Annotated Bibliography 

      The History Harvest is relevant to 21st-century public history because it captures the history of everyday people’s historical values and preserves them for future generations. Items passed through the family and held sentimental value are saved for future studies. The most crucial factor in collecting these relics of the past is to keep them from coming destruction or becoming lost to history. Digitally archiving items, interviews, documentation, etc., enables future family members or researchers to find history from earlier times and stories from people of our time who will no longer be around in the future. 

History Harvest, Department of History, University of Nebraska at Lincoln

(Could not access)

William G. Thomas, Patrick D. Jones, and Andrew Witmer, “History Harvest: What Happens When Students Collect and Digitize the People’s History?” AHA Perspectives on  

History, January 2013. https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2013/history-harvests

A detailed report on the process students use during History Harvest to catalog, digitize and archive the different items, stories, and documentation being presented to them. 

Sara Georgini, “Spring at the History Harvest,” The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History, March 6, 2013. 

A brief history of the History Harvest and how it was first conceived of previous projects like The Valley of the Shadow Project.  Shows what led to the creation of the project and the ideas behind it. 

“‘Each Item Tells a Human Story’ at History Harvest,” Orlando Sentinel, March 3, 2013.

Available via course link.

Newspaper article that describes the History Harvest project to a broader audience. Some who brought items for archival might have learned of the project from this new article. Depicting some of the processes and highlights that stories are a significant part that people can get archived. 

“Engaging Communities to Preserve: The History Harvest as a Collaboration Model for 

Digital Preservation,” The Signal – Digital Preservation,” Library of Congress, Sept. 

4, 2013.  https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2013/09/engaging-communities-to-preserve-the-history-harvest-as-a-collaboration-model-for-digital-preservation/

Description of blogger who learned about the scanning procedure used by the project to scan items for archival. 

 “Uniting Invisible Histories” (2015), Michigan State University https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2UKakQZqFIUYllJTVJjWG9nZDg/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-o_aYJCwyLYWpmtvWCPA2vw

A detailed proposal that will give access to the digital archives from History Harvest and make them available through a web platform. 

“Connie L. Lester and Finding Regional History,” Reframing Digital Humanities: Conversations with Digital Humanists, ed. Julian Chambliss. Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Libraries Open Educational Resources, 2018.

A detailed interview of Dr. Connie Lester on digital humanities and the importance of the project to preserve history, including the development of the project, its origins, and the future possibilities for the project as a whole. 

French, Scot. “Recovering the Past, Discovering the Future: Archive, Community, and Scholarship,” Keynote Address, Society of Florida Archivists Annual Meeting, May 11, 2022.

(Could not access public talk / PP) 

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Preservation of Eatonville

Eatonville, located in Maitland, was a self-governed town and an independent community of African Americans. Eatonville had a different beginning than the regular town. Lewis Lawrence, who had a large part in its creation, he wanted to improve the living conditions of African American workers that which served as a foundation for the town’s creation. One way this happened was that restrictive covenants were under employment to protect the community, and this prevented the town from disintegrating. Some of the many factors contributed to the town’s survival, such as careful and deliberate planning and its location to neighboring towns. The town had its own protective racial identity, white investors that provided patronage to the town, and the community that lived there self-promoted the town as an African American community to prosper. Eatonville survived the passage of time and was prevented from being abandoned. It still faces contemporary challenges, investments, and economic development as the town wants to preserve the history that defines it. For over forty years, various strategies have been used to protect the town, including maintaining its historical identity as a self-governed African American community. Eatonville stands as a culturally significant place for African American communities that face challenges to preserve its history and continue to use tactics to ensure that the historical town remains in the future.

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History in the Saving

by

Emil Rasen

 

     The idea of this project is to highlight how important hard drives and saving is for digital history. The project is planned to be split into two parts in order to understand how hard drives/saving have evolved and how digital projects have used it the last 20 years. While the first part of the project will focus on the history of hard drives and their development into the system that is available today, the second part of the project focuses of the use of hard drives. To demonstrate the use of hard drives The Valley of the Shadow Project will be used as the focus point of this part. How the Shadow Project used hard drives and storage and how important it became to the project itself. By showing the history of hard drives makes it easier to understand how they work and how important their involvement in digital history have been will round up the whole project. By focusing on these two parts will keep the project relatively small while keeping focus on the important aspects of the system as a whole.

 

Sources:

Computer History Museum. “Timeline of Computer History.” Computer History. 21st November, 2022. https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/memory-storage/  

George Mason University. “Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web.” Center of History and New Media. 20th November, 2022. https://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/introduction/index.html

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Scarcity of Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era.” The American Historical Review 108, no. 3 (June 2003): 735-762. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/529596

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The importance of hard drives

The project I decided to work on is the importance of digital storage and why it is important for digital history. Digital history can't exist without storage to save the data on and this is why hard drives and storage is important. Be it physical or cloud storing the data need to be saved in order to preserve it. While storage may often be overlooked by historians who write digital history, they need somewhere to store the data the same way someone writes their memoars on ink and paper. My project will cover the history of storage and hard drives from their first uses and how far they have come in the last 70 years.

The timeline from the project presentation showing important milestones for computers and storage of information. While physicaly storing data has become less common today and Cloud storing has become more common the data saved on the Clouds are still saved on physical hard drives somewhere.

Data storage saves histoical data and can keep it safe because of the many advantages it has compared to printing. Digital projects can be copied as many times as needed and saved on several servers preventing the data from being lost if the physical storage gets destroyed. While the posibility that the digital history becomes outdated and don't work on newer systems the project can be stored and updated to work on newer systems and software.

Hard drives, Cloud, storing data has been around since the rise of digital history. A safe area to save and store projects and information and will still be around in the future as technology evolves. This is why storage is important to digital history. It saves the information, allows the projects to be created, sharing the information and saving it fromm being lost to the pages of time. New technology will be created for storage, new ways to store the information but the idea of saving the data will still be there.

https://knightsucfedu39751-my.sharepoint.com/personal/emilrasen_knights_ucf_edu/Documents/Presentation.pptx

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blog post 8th november

Digital history is a relative new tool that can be used to explore and create new ways to teach and learn about history to a new and interested audience, but despite the relatively new format is still has some lingering pasts that still haunt it to this day. While digital project are being created and run by historians some can see problems with a large majority of these historians are male and the belief that this will not bring proper research and presentation for the projects can be a problem for some. One example of this is shown in The Valley of the Shadow project although the project has included many females who have contributed and worked on the project, the Virginia Center for Digital History (VCDH) only has had one female in the position of director for the project out of seventeen previous directors. While some can see this as a potential problem for the project others can merely wave it of like nothing, but what remains is if this can impact the project in any major way. In the end it is the project itself that is the important part and the information it contains and should the creation of the project be the decisive factor for the future of the project. The same way a painter creates a painting, should the painting be judged and criticized because of the painter or should the painting be the criticism of the painter. The project itself is what matters as it is what will be remember in the future, seen and learned from by future historians. Should the project be judged because of the information and the final product that it is or should it be judged from its own creation history instead?[1]       

New ways of presenting history is available through digital history to present known history in a new light it often cover well known and documented fields of history, but with a new viewpoint and light. Take the slave trade as an example. Through digital history the voyages of different ships can be seen on a interactive map with additional information about the ship, crew and voyage across the Atlantic ocean. This presents a new opportunity for non historians to learn, while the information has been published before it came in the form of numbers and names in a book, a format that can easily discourage any non historians from further reading. While remaining information that is available to all instead of having the history locked behind a purchase of a book or travel and finding the information in a library. Further possibilities become available as technology and other projects merge together to create even bigger databases of information. While information becomes greater with more discoveries and technology makes it easier to be presented there are still problems when the information is lost to the pages of time, archives lost, information never written or simply lost never to be recovered. This creates the importance to extrapolate from the missing/incomplete information. To create the picture around the missing information in order to extrapolate what is missing, while there is a high chance that the information is incorrect it becomes the best guess of what the incomplete information is. Sometimes that is what becomes of it, just guesses, never to be fully revealed and remain a mystery for the full truth.

Leon, Sharon M. “Complicating a “Great Man” Narrative of Digital History in the United States.” In Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities, edited by Elizabeth Losh & Jacqueline Wernimont, 344-366. University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

Graham, Shawn, Ian Milligan and Scott Weingart. Exploring Big Digital Data: The Historian's Macroscope, 1st edition. Imperial College Press.

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Digital history blog nr. 9 (1st November 2022)

             Rather than going through the whole book and picking out the details and information that would be the most useful to write about, it is easier to pick and choose a few good point in the book. As the book is large in itself and can become overwhelming despite it being written with the idea of easy understanding in mind. While some readers can understand books it can be a challenge for other readers to make a clear picture in their heads and it is because of this that the easy to understand examples used in this book is greatly appreciated. To take a relative complicated topic and explain it in an easy to understand fashion. At the same time these easy to understand methods can be used to create patterns with information, to gather the information in numbers or other raw data and comprising them together to see a greater picture. Through this one can create visual representations of information that can be of use for other projects or contribute to other goals. By writing in a sty

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Blog nr. 8

Digital History Blog. #8 

    “The Fallen of World War II” is an interactive documentary that counts the fallen soldiers from the beginning to the end of the second world war. While the documentary comes in two formats where one is a simple video the other format is interactive and allows viewers to find specific death counts of different battles and the nation the dead belonged to. The project is headed by Neil Halloran who stands behind most of the work for the project, but also gets help for sound and technical feedback. The project creates a figure for the dead that few can visualize and shows a more terrifying figure to how many actually died during the war. The figures represented in the project are only of soldiers who died and this helps to clarify between casualties since the term casualties are used for both dead/wounded/unable to fight. But one major problem for the project is that it had an enormous amount of civilian casualties that was higher than the soldiers who died. Another thing is that some consider Japan’s aggressive expansion into the Republic of China and the Raping of Nanjing as the beginning of the war, the project does not take this into consideration because it begins from the invasion of Poland in 1939. Despite this the project gives a great overall view and understanding of just how many soldiers died during the war and they take into account the soldiers that died either in battle or in POW camps. 

    The project does not give much direct help with other projects involving soldiers in POW camps and their death numbers, it gives help with creating a time-table for when a lot of them passed away in camps. Based on the nation they fought for one can more easily pin-point when many soldiers died when comparing the project to other sources for more accurate data. The interest that this project brings comes in the form of POW deaths during the war since a future project currently in the making is about camps that housed POW’s and the number of them that died while imprisoned greatly helps to compare data with other records to bring an accurate estimation.  

    Despite the many great features the project has it still suffers from some drawbacks that can’t fully be overlooked. One is the requirements to use the interactive properties of the project as one needs a relatively good computer to run it smoothly, using it on a weak computer will lead to lag and drop in frames ruining the immersion. It is possible to run it without the interactive compartment, but then one loses the ability to view the detailed numbers of specific battles and times. A minor problem comes from the project being optimized for computers as using the interaction on a phone or tablet becomes a little more difficult and clunky, but with a little bit of patience this obstacle can be overcome. The last major drawback with the project is that it only counts military deaths and this is only half of the total deaths that happened during the war, one way could be to make a separate project that focuses on the civilian deaths created in the same manner as this project. The last major drawback with this project is the lack of sources for the estimations, it would be of great benefit to the viewer if the option to see where the sources for specific deaths came from in the interaction sections of the documentary. Scroll over a battle and get the death count and at the same time the sources that were used to get to those exact numbers. 

    “The Fallen of World War II” is a great documentary that creates visualization of the deaths of the war. Often those reading about the death number only read a number, but this creates a visual on how great those numbers actually were. One might forget it a little when viewing the documentary that each figure represents a thousand lives each and then suddenly it has a thousand of those figures really puts things into perspective, rather than a simple pie graph that just underperforms in the shock value of the documentary. The project achieves its goals of showing the military deaths of the war in an easy way that those who don’t study history can digest and easily understand and for that it is a worthy project.

Word count: 745

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Digital History, 4th October

The History Manifesto - Chapter 1 

    The History Manifesto tries to use historical knowledge from the past to predict the future. By studying the past one can know what the future has to offer. While this idea sounds like an advantage and a must-have knowledge to gain an upper-hand in future events since some might know what is going to happen. Although this is more of a romantic view of the future. While studying history to find similarities with current events has been around for many years, the times have changed a lot in just the past centuries alone to make it difficult so predict the future accurately. Sources of nations power, alliances, technology and other improvements that didn’t exist or if it did it was on a smaller scale contradicts in a way to read old documents to learn of the future. 

This makes reading this weeks reading a lot more difficult to agree with and easier to disagree with. Although the argument becomes clear while reading the chapter it is still difficult to agree with it as the future is difficult to predict despite the enormous amount of information and knowledge one possesses. One never know what will happen 100% until it happens no matter the preparations for it. Although there can be some other exceptions to prevent events from happening in the future. One example of this would be the current conflict in Ukraine. By not getting directly involved in the conflict it prevents a larger conflict from escalating, using The Great War as an example when everyone was pulled into a small conflict that turned bigger than predicted. This is using previous conflict as an example what to avoid to not create greater conflicts.

                 While the chapter uses examples of historians who have been experts in their fields and how they contributed to help others it is somewhat lost on the reader if they have little to no previous reading experience or knowledge of these historians. It help when additional information are given to some historians to better understand their contribution, but for most of the historians mentioned the lack of additional information about them made it feel like they were of little importance in the broader picture. Despite some of the flaws and drawbacks with the use of historians to mention some who studied in their fields, some of the other examples used in the chapter worked well. Such as the examples of historians who have previous been in high positions of power and continues to contribute with their new knowledge as historians.

                 While having strong arguments and information to back up the arguments the chapter felt like being led by the nose to agree with the chapter. The reading felt like it was trying to make it impossible to disagree with the writing although ironically it made it easier to disagree with it. The feeling of being forced to agree with the writing while reading gave a feeling of wanting to disagree as a default from the beginning. Rather than reading the chapter from a neutral standpoint and judging the content and writing from a point that is not leaning to any side became difficult even before the halfway point in the chapter. It felt like being forced to pick a side rather than being offered a side, this made the reading less enjoyable the further into the chapter one read.

                 Despite the feelings of being forced to agree with the writing the chapter was a good starting point for the book as it gave an informed introduction to the rest of the reading and getting to know what is further ahead in the book. Ironically the chapter itself felt like studying history and trying to predict the future in itself just by reading. One could have assumed that the rest of the chapters would be similar to the first chapter which ironically brings out the point of the chapter and applies it to readers that don’t read well between the lines.

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Online Argument

            Digital history differs from the traditional form of history by being a digital medium rather than one printed with ink on paper and published. Naturally when something new enters an old field there will be opposition from those who prefer the old ways, but one factor separates the digital historians from the traditional book historians are arguments. Although the lack or difference in arguments from digital historians can be one side of the coin, another is the large benefit of digitalizing archives and putting them on the world wide web a.k.a the internet. By scanning and putting archival records online opens many new possibilities for reader and historians to find information that was locked away from them via location. If an archive contains vital information that someone need in their research/project etc. They had to travel to that archive in order to find what they need or if they are lucky could have copies sent to them, but only if they were lucky enough to have access to that service. With digitalization they can access the archives online without extensive travel to find the information they are looking for. While the digitizing improves online archives it has more benefits for historians through online publishing of their work. But with some controversy, as public archives are open to the public it means that it was by design made for the public rather than the scholarly communities. New works that can be published online can be aimed more to the general public and since authors have to adapt their work for the target audience, they are aiming for their work will be a lot different than if they were writing for other scholars.

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Blog nr.2

The Past and Future of Digital History

                Digital history and computer are still relatively new when compared to the vast amount of historical information available to scholars and those who read history. While the process of turning ink and paper into digital numbers on a screen began during the 1960s and continue to this day it is only scratching the possibilities of what digital history has to offer. The internet didn’t come around until the early 1990s, but in the three decades since then a vast amount of historical information is already available through sharing and removing limitations. To preserve history in digital form helps history from being erased because of the sands of time. Before computers libraries would turn newspapers into film rolls to preserve them. Not the advanced computing as you only needed a light and a projector to view the newspaper in this format, but it was still an early example of digital history, but it still had one limitation that is still present to this day, limitation. You had to go to the library that owned the rolls to read them, while the internet offers the possibility to read from your home. A lot of information is kept away even if the archives are online. Certain archives of information are still closed off behind a digital vault and protected with a key that can be special permission from the owners of the archives or you must insert money to view the archives. Although this limitation appears to by a major problem for sharing information it isn’t an obstacle that is impossible to jump over.  

                With the introduction of digital history information is spreading around with some simple clicks from a keyboard and the information is available to everyone at any time. A problem with the internet unlike what archives had before been that once something is available online it will never disappear. If a scholar writes an article online, but later removes it for a reason then that article is only removed from their source. An unknown number of copies of that article still exists because people have copies of it, linked it or any other form so it is always around on the internet. This can also be a positive thing for historians if example an archive was available for free would suddenly block access to their records, there will still be copies of them elsewhere if scholars have made pdf copies for their own projects. The most important this to remember regarding the internet is that once something is online, it will always be available online. You just need to know where to look to find it.

                One major drawback from the open access to information that is the internet is that it becomes more difficult to separate hearsay from peer reviewed information. This trend is commonly seen on social media where people can read or listen to what they believe is valid sources and become misleading. This can also become a problem for archives as it has become easier to create false sources than it was before. Old archives collected a lot of valid sources that they kept and going through those sources a scholar knew they were reading peer reviewed information, but since it is easy to put information on the internet without peer review while claiming to be a valid source. To be more careful while reading and go the extra length to research the article to confirm if it is a valid source or not. One example of this would be the information giant Wikipedia. Anyone can edit the pages of an article so it is not a valid source to be used for research or historical purposes, although one benefit is that footnotes in an article can be used to find credible sources rather than the article. While the site is invalid as a source, it can still be a tool for scholars as they can look up the article they need and go straight to the footnote for sources to begin their own research into the subject.

While information becomes more available to historians as more information becomes available on the internet, the possible false information becomes more difficult to separate from the valid sources. This is a problem that is only growing and can lead to problems forward in time, even today there is false information spread around that claims something or says something is false despite years of research probing otherwise.

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Testing

Testing