Digital Humanities Comic 'Big Data + Old History'

You used to submit an abstract to a conference to share your findings. Now you ‘Dance your Thesis’ or compete to convince a world-class cartoonist to animate your research and turn it into a video. The modes of disseminating research have broadened in the past decade, with students in particular being offered a range of new contests designed to get them thinking creatively about engaging the public with academic research.

Jorge Cham, the internationally renowned animator behind ‘PhD Comics’, asked students ‘can you describe your thesis in two minutes?’ Cham then chose the best descriptions and turned them into animated cartoons. I'm very pleased to announce my entry was one of the winners, and the animated video of my thesis has just been released:

My two-minute talk focused on how distant reading has been central to my PhD research. There's only so much detail you can fit into a two minute talk, but I hope has been able to introduce the idea of distant reading to a much wider audience and that some of them might take the step to learn more. It's been a great experience, and I'd like to thank Jorge and his team for creating this opportunity. And since getting selected as one of the winners was partially down to voting from the public, I'd also like to thank everyone who took a moment last year to vote for my entry. The response has been wonderful. So thanks again.

I hope you enjoy the result.

An Analysis of Twitter and Facebook Use by the Archival Community

I have recently published an article in Archivaria, the journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) that looks at how Archives around the English-speaking world have used Facebook and Twitter as a form of social outreach.

I hope this work will be of interest to those outside the archival community and amongst those who may not have access to Archivaria, so I have decided to share a copy freely in PDF format.

Crymble, Adam. "An Analysis of Twitter and Facebook Use by the Archival Community" Archivaria 70 (Fall 2010): 125-151 [PDF]


Abstract: This paper discusses how the archival community is using social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook as outreach tools. The study analyzes the usage patterns of 195 individual and institutional users over a thirty- two-day period during the summer of 2009. By focusing on the 2,926 outbound links posted to the services during the period, the author shows that use is dramatically different between the three test groups: archival organizations using Facebook, archival organizations using Twitter, and archivists using Twitter. The study shows that archival organizations overwhelmingly use the services to promote content they have created themselves, whereas archivists promote information they find useful. In all cases, more frequent posting did not correlate to a larger audience. By examining how others have applied social networking, archivists and archival organizations can determine a social media outreach platform that is suitable to their institutional needs. This study may serve as a starting point toward a greater understanding of outreach in the digital age.

"Discover Canada" Open Editing Call

The Canadian government recently released a new document, "Discover Canada" (pdf) that is the basis of the citizenship test for new Canadians. It contains a fairly significant section on Canadian history and, as you might expect, many Canadian historians who weren't consulted on the project have opinions about shortfalls in the document.

Yesterday, Andrew Smith posted a blog entry that suggested:

"maybe we should investigate using a Wikipedia-type process to write a real guide for new citizens. A more widely distributed process would be the best way of coming up with a statement of consensus values in modern-day Canada."

So, I’ve created a wiki and added the text from the “Canada’s History” section of the document. I encourage anyone interested in Canadian history to feel free to edit it as you see fit. Once everyone has had an opportunity to add their input, I will pass along the result to the Canadian government as a recommendation for improving the guide.

The wiki is located at: http://discover-canada.wikispot.org/

You can add to, subtract from, or make any changes you like.

It’s one thing to disagree with a government policy and another to do something about it, so here’s our chance as historians to have our say.

Academic and Public Historians: Working together?

Sean Kheraj, a postdoctoral student at the University of British Columbia recently defended his doctoral thesis on the environmental history of Vancouver's famous Stanley Park. In most people's books, that' makes him an expert on the field.

Sean was recently asked to write a review of the Vancouver Museum's exhibit, "The Unnatural History of Stanley Park." The experience, which Kheraj likened to "witnessing the physical manifestation of my dissertation as a museum display," was a challenge for him. Every detail that the museum had gotten wrong popped out. But, rather than posting a negative review, Kheraj reflected on the role many academic historians could be playing as consultants in instances that they choose not to.

It's something that came up a lot last year in our UWO Public History discussions, but perhaps not something that regularly enters the consciousness of many academic historians.

You can read the review at http://niche.uwo.ca/foresthistory/resources/exhibits