Go Ahead and Touch the Artifacts

I saw a documentary on TVO a few weeks ago about exhibits put on by the British Museum. The documentary was a couple years old, but one of the exhibits in particular was rather intriguing to me. It was a traveling show of stone tools that was at the time set up in Norwich Castle. The oldest of these tools was 1.8 million years old.

So far, all pretty standard.

What was different, however, was that Jill Cook, the woman in charge of the exhibit, had decided to allow visitors to handle some of the artifacts. Even young children were encouraged to pick up the million year old objects.

Granted - stones are a bit more resilient than old documents or tapestries, but the idea is the same. Cook thought that the minor damage caused by oils in the skin from a few weeks of being handled was worth it for the engagement that such an exhibit provided viewers.

It was amazing to see the uncertain looks on people's faces as they picked up the tools. Many of them looked as if they felt they were doing something wrong and treated the objects with the utmost care. As far as I know, none of them were dropped or damaged.

So go ahead. Touch the artifacts. Connect with them.

Putting a History Essay Online

A colleague of mine, Tim Compeau, wrote a few months ago about an essay of his that he reformatted for the web as part of a Digital History internship. For Tim, it was his first website.

I decided to follow in his footsteps and try to do the same myself. I also had never even attempted to write any HTML. But, armed only with w3schools.com's online HTML and CSS tutorials, and some patient Google searching when I got stuck, I was able to learn enough HTML and CSS to hand-code my first web page. It was a 7 part process, every bit of it free.

1) I chose the paper I wanted to encode: in my case, it was my undergraduate thesis: The United Irishmen's Allies.

2) I read Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig's, "Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web" (available totally free, online).

3) I added all the necessary HTML tags so that the browser could read my paper. (free at W3 Schools.com)

4) I snazzed it up a bit with some CSS, so that my page wasn't merely a wall of text. (free at W3 Schools.com)

5) I uploaded my pages to my webspace (available totally free, if you are a UWO student)

6) I had W3C Markup Validation Service check my code to make sure it was written properly so that various kinds of browsers would all be able to read it. (available totally free and instantly online - all you need is to provide the site with the URL address of your page).

7) I put a link to my website on my blog so that Google and the other search engines out there can find it!

You can take a look at what I came up with Here.

It took me about 50 hours of fiddling with HTML and CSS to put the equivalent of a 50 page paper online. But I'm confident it will be easier in the future, now that I've taken the time to learn how it all works. It's still got a few bugs (especially if you're viewing it with Internet Explorer), but it was definitely a worthwhile exercise.

Formatting your Family History: Referencing

This post follows up on my previous two posts regarding family history: “Put Your Family History in Context” and “Formatting your Family History: Images and Documents.” This time, I will look at the different style-guides used for referencing where you got your information to help you decide which one is right for your own family history.

If you don’t reference where you got your information from, your reader has no way to tell if your research is correct, nor can they find the same evidence you found if they were working on a project that needed to use one of your documents in their own research. While it’s true that most general readers prefer no references, since they sometimes get in the way of the narrative, I’d certainly encourage anyone writing their family history to use them. After all, you’ve carefully researched your history, why not lend credibility to your efforts by laying all of your evidence out for people to see?

There are many different referencing systems used throughout scholarly writing that you could use in writing your family history. The most popular of these for humanities writers - as I would argue, family historians are, are the Modern Language Association (MLA) style-guide and the Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago). The major difference between them is that MLA calls for the author to put its references in the body of the text, and Chicago puts the reference either at the bottom of the page (footnote) or at the end of the book/chapter (endnote). First, let’s have a look at MLA.

MLA style has advantages and disadvantages. Many people like the fact that the reader doesn’t have to turn the page, or even look to the bottom of the page to find out the author’s source. It’s time consuming to flip pages just to check a reference. Also, aesthetically, many people dislike how footnotes can sometimes take over a page. I’m sure everyone who has read academic history has come across many books where the footnotes are longer than the work itself, which can be distracting and cluttered. MLA also has the advantage of being nearly invisible, if you’re a talented writer. For example:

“The record of Great Grandpa John’s marriage on May 18, 1894 is held in marriage registers in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England.”

The preceding sentence contains all the citation information you’d need for an MLA style reference. It tells the reader what type of document was used (marriage registers), where in the document the information can be found (May 18, 1894), and where it is held (St. Paul’s Cathedral, London England).

However, more commonly, MLA tends to be invasive for the reader, much like my last sentence. Whereas most readers can choose to ignore the superscript little number that’s connected with an end note, it’s much more difficult to ignore the parentheses that MLA often demands:

“Great Grandpa John’s marriage in 1894 was held in St. Paul’s Cathedral, in London England (St. Paul’s Records). He married our Great Grandmother Mary, who had moved to London in 1890 from Manchester (Mary’s Letters, June 14, 1890). She had met our Great Grandpa John while attending the opera (John’s Diary, August 19, 1893).”

These constant citations are important if anyone wanted to check your references in the future, but for the reader they make the narrative rather choppy and difficult to enjoy.

This is where Chicago Manual of Style has its advantages. As mentioned above, the reader can easily choose to ignore your footnotes or endnotes, but if they desire, they know that the information of where you got your resource is readily available. To my knowledge, all academic historical publications use a referencing system based on the Chicago Manual of Style, largely because it is so flexible. Footnotes or endnotes give the author the freedom to add extra information that would otherwise stifle the fluidity of the narrative that could be important to ensure readers can understand your history, and when using lots of sources that are tucked away in Archives or Museums all over the world, Chicago style makes it clear exactly where each document is held. The above paragraph written using MLA style would look something like this in Chicago Manual of Style:

“Great Grandpa John’s marriage in 1894 was held in St. Paul’s Cathedral, in London England.[1] He married our Great Grandmother Mary, who had moved to London in 1890 from Manchester.[2] She had met our Great Grandpa John while attending the opera.[3]”

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[1] “Marriage of John Smith to Mary Jones, May 18, 1894” St. Paul’s Cathedral, Marriage Register. (London, England, 1894).

[2] Mary Jones. “June 14, 1890,” Letter from Mary Jones to Sylvia Cooper. Courtesy: Greater Manchester County Record Office.

[3] John Smith. “August 19, 1893” Diary of John Smith. Courtesy: Public Record Office. Mary also wrote about the occasion in a letter to her friend Sylvia, the same day. Mary Jones. "August 19, 1893" Letter from Mary Jones to Sylvia Cooper. Courtesy: Greater Manchester County Record Office.

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To the untrained eye, the footnotes can be a mass of confusion. However, if you don’t care about the reference, it’s easy to skip over it and just focus on the narrative. Your references may never get looked at by your readers, but they do leave a trail of your research in case you or anyone else in your family ever wished to pick up where you left off and continue the search for your family’s history.

Ultimately, it is your family history and its your hard work that will get it written. It’s up to you if you decide to use MLA, Chicago or no reference system at all. It’s also up to you if you take any of my advice about “Putting your Family History in Context” or about when and where to include “Images and Documents” in your book. But, by keeping in mind the needs and desires of your readers, you will be able to produce something that is worthy of your hard work; something that will be easier and more enjoyable to read and something that will act as a tribute to the family in whose name you wrote.

Formatting your Family History: Images and Documents

This post builds upon my previous post regarding Putting your Family History in Context. I’ve learned over the years that not everyone thinks the same way I do, which makes for some frustrating moments as I try to explain a concept in a way that makes perfect sense to me, but seems disjointed and hastily put together to someone else. The same goes for a family history. If you’ve put it together the way you think it should be, without thinking of the way other people might prefer to intake the information, you’re going to disappoint a lot of your readers who might then be tempted to stop reading all together. And that’s a waste of all your hard work.

You’ve done all your research and written up an engaging account, but how to present it?

Sometimes it’s best to follow the crowd. The format of books, and more importantly, history books, has slowly evolved over the past few hundred years. There’s a reason that most history books you pick up are formatted so similarly: because time and reader experience has shown that these formats are most effective at getting information across to readers.

Some of the most important questions you should ask yourself when deciding how to format your family history should be related to format. You should think carefully about 1) how best to present photos or reproductions of documents (images), and 2) how you are going to tell your reader where you got your information (sourcing).

This post will discuss how to present photos or reproductions of documents.

It has become increasingly easy to get high quality reproductions of documents and photos that you can include in your family history. A two-hundred year old signature of a relative in a church register can be scanned, as can old family photos. But, where should they go in the book? You have a few fairly solid options for this: you can place them in an appendix, or you can place them on the page of the narrative that discusses the image.

I know many people dislike appendices precisely because most people won’t bother to flip to the back to look at it, or if they do, it won’t be until they have finished reading the narrative entirely. However, appendices have benefits as well. If you have a lot of documents or images, sometimes it’s best to keep them all together – especially if they tend to be full page size. This makes it easier for the reader to digest all the images at once and they don’t have to flip through all the pages, looking for them. If the number of images you have, stacked in a pile, rival the thickness of your narrative, consider placing them in an appendix. This will give your family history a much more professional, clean look.

If, however, you have a spattering of interesting, small images, perhaps just your Great-great-grandfather John’s signature, consider placing it in the body of the text in the spot where you make reference to what information you have about John. As long as you keep your images sparse, small and close to the relevant point in the narrative, you will enhance the story you are telling. This will give your family history a much more intimate feel for the reader.

What you should try to avoid is a seemingly haphazard array of documents and photos stuck into the book in a manner that the reader has trouble understanding why you are showing them this at this particular spot. If you want to include a full page reproduced document, but you don’t have room near the point in the narrative where you discuss this document, place it as an appendix - anything more than a couple lines away from the relevant narrative point and you're going to confuse your reader. If you have room and you feel it enhances the story, place it in the text. Choose carefully, and your reader will thank you.

*Note: random pictures of ducks in your blog post do not enhance your message. Neither do poorly formatted images in books.

Put your Family History in Context

I’ve become increasingly interested in my family history of late, and it’s become abundantly clear to me that I’m not alone. Even within my own family tree, there are multiple people researching independently and cooperatively over the internet. And people all over the world are doing the same, tracing their own family histories.

However, after all those years of researching are done, you’ve got to write it all up and leave the best possible record of your work, and of your family. But, this isn’t easy. Many people out there aren’t the best writers and in an effort to stick to the facts, the family history that you treasure often comes out dry and boring to another reader – even to your children. Part of the problem might have to do with your methods.

Most people who are writing family histories tend to want to single out their family. You dig through archives and church records and you find your most distant relative. Let’s say, John from Suffolk county, England, born in 1765. But, you probably don’t know very much about John, beyond his name and where he lived. So you start your family history something like this:

“The first known member of our family was named John. He lived in Suffolk County, England and was born in 1765. We know this because his name is written in a Church register.”

Typically, this is followed by who John married, what children he begot, and then proceeds to the more recent family history for which more information is available.

It can be frustrating, faced with only one little signature in a church register, and seemingly nothing else to go by to find out who your ancestor was. However, John didn’t think of himself as a man who left a single record for future generations, he thought of himself as a part of a community, living in an even wider community. So, when faced with this shortage of information, put your family in context.

You know John lived in Suffolk in the late eighteenth century. What else happened there during that time? Was there a war that affected the people of Suffolk? A religious movement? A political battle? Who was the local lord? What was he like? Who was the minister at John’s church? Can you find a copy of a sermon given by that minister? What did the people of Suffolk want out of life? What was the landscape like? How did they differ from other Englishmen? What did they tend to eat for dinner?

Questions like these can bring to light new information about John and his neighbours that can bring him to life. The brief and boring factual account becomes:

“The first known member of our family was named John. He lived in Suffolk County, England and was born in 1765. We know very little about John, but we do know quite a lot about the county he lived in. At the time of John’s birth, it was known as a center of weaving, and produced mainly for the European export market. Most rural families were in some way connected to this cottage industry, and it is quite possible John’s family was too. Around the time John turned twenty-five, Napoleon blocked this export trade and the people of Suffolk fell on hard economic times…

The major religion in Suffolk at the time was still the Anglican church, however compared to many regions of England, Suffolk had a very high dissenting population, mainly Quakers and Methodists. We know from the name of Church John attended, that he was one of these Quakers. Quakers at this time were known for their strong belief in…”

This context lets us feel like we know John just a little bit better. Even though we don’t know exactly what he did, thought or said, we know what his home might have been like. And you’re not doing him a disservice by lumping him in with his neighbours, you’re giving him life on the pages of your family manuscript that a one-time record of his signature does not.

Our ancestors thought of themselves as a part of a broader community. So there’s no harm in representing them as such. And hey, with a little context, you might even write a history that someone else might want to read it.

Visualization of UWO library's historical holdings

I decided to create a visualization using IBM's program, "Many Eyes." This site allows users to input any kind of data you could imagine, and then graph or chart it in one of fifteen different ways.

I chose to look at the number of books on history that the University of Western Ontario library had on each country. To get this data I did a subject search for each country and "history" in the library catalogue and recorded the data. The result is this many eyes map (minus Colombia, Scotland and the USSR. I misspelled it "Columbia" and therefore got no results - my apologies to all those Colombians out there, and unfortunately Scotland and the USSR do not fit into the Many Eyes map so I elected to leave this data out).

It's interesting to see what countries get the most historical resources. Some results are surprising (123 books on Australia, but nothing resembling an Australian history course taught at the school) and some not (1,261 on Canada)

The Open-Stack Archive: Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver

I was recently out west in Vancouver and while I was there I went and visited the Museum of Anthropology located on the campus of the University of British Columbia. The museum is most famous for its west coast native art, including large totem poles and wood carvings done by west coast native groups. The art is truly beautiful and impressive, however it was the access to the collection that I found astounding. The curators had realized that the amount of space required to put everything out in the open was well beyond what they had. So, they developed what they call “Visible Storage” units, which allow visitors to inspect over 13 000 artifacts at will. Almost half of their massive collection of artifacts is accessible through this system.

The museum also contains traditional displays of well-lit pieces out in the open, or in display cases, however most of the smaller artifacts are at first invisible to the eye. That’s because they are in the “Visible Storage.” These “Visible Storage” units are essentially a series of chests with sliding drawers. In each drawer is a collection of artifacts of similar provenance. One drawer might contain pipes used by the Kwakwaka'wakw people, another, shoes worn by the Haida. Unlike so many museums I have been to in the past, the Museum of Anthropology was packed with these treasure chests, which lined many of the walls. Each was sheltered from careless visitors by a protective sheet of plexi-glass, and visitors are encouraged to look at as much or as little as they desire.

My girlfriend and I chose which drawers to open based on how unlikely we thought it was that the average person would choose that drawer. We looked at quite a few of the drawers close to the floor, in an attempt to get a less traveled tour of the collection. As a researcher, I don’t think I could have asked for more in terms of accessibility. The concept of open stacks so familiar to goers of libraries has been brought into the world of material culture by this museum. An open stack archive, that both protects and provides the option of browsing.

I have become accustomed to expecting upwards of 90% of a museum collection to be hidden in some underground vault, for lack of display space. It was so refreshing to see it all out there at the Museum of Anthropology. The museum was promoting research of its collection by making it accessible. It was peaking curiosity by tempting me to open various drawers to see what was inside – not unlike a kid at Christmas, and it was allowing me, the visitor to decide how much I wanted to see during my visit.

Kudos to the Museum of Anthropology for such a great idea.

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Reference:

Artwork is by Bill Reid. Photograph by Adam Crymble.