Final Reflection

      Over the past semester, I have been a part of the group working with J. Murrey Atkins Library collection on Charlotte Architecture.  Together with Jacquelyn McGuire, Melissa Barnett, and Christine Wilkie, we have worked towards creating a website that highlights three specific architects featured by the library's archives: Martin Boyer, Louis Asbury, and Charles C. Hook.  I chose to utilize the Mary Boyer collection of postcards in hopes of incorporating their vision of early twentieth century Charlotte into our website in a way that would enhance the site's theme: Building My Charlotte.  While initially this project seemed a bit daunting, the past months have proved that through our group's consistent work ethic, communication, and coherent vision, we were more than capable of creating an informative, interpretive, and aesthetically engaging site that will hopefully attract and educate web-goers of all types.  

            Early on, Jacquelyn, Melissa, Christine and I decided to focus on specific architects and highlight their stylistic contributions to the Queen City.  While we could have chosen four architects—one for each group member, thus facilitating task assignments and work distribution—we were particularly drawn to the Mary Boyer collection of postcards located within Special Collections.  I was especially fascinated by their artistic representation of Charlotte, of their views of a city long-gone yet still very much present.  As a newcomer to Charlotte, I was particularly delighted to comb through the old postcard images and then research the featured buildings and streetscapes.  Were these buildings still around?  What does this street look like today?  Additionally, finding postcards that featured buildings designed by our group’s chosen architects was especially intriguing.  After skimming through the postcards, I then had to figure out a way to cohesively incorporate them into the overall meaning of our project. 

            Initially, we decided that the postcards could serve to illuminate areas of Charlotte before the erection of Asbury, Boyer, and Hook’s designs.  This “before and after” concept would emphasize the change that these architects brought to commercial and residential areas of Charlotte’s community.  Then we began to discuss the prevalence of postcards that featured one of our architects’ buildings, wondering how exactly to utilize these images.  How prominent a role should these postcards play?  Can they serve a purpose other than merely displaying artistic renderings of Charlotte?  These discussions led me to seek a new path of research, one that would eventually inspire a different facet of our website.

              While my group mates continued thorough research on their chosen architect, I began to think more broadly about postcards.  I researched their history and soon discovered that the concept of what we recognize today as a postcard dates back to the 1860s.  These cards in turn evolved from calling cards, or visiting cards.  These cards simplistically yet creatively conveyed a sense of presence, intimacy, and identity to its recipient.  Applying this research to the Mary Boyer collection, I began to read the messages on the backside of the images, learning about the people who visited Charlotte, where they came from, and what they thought about the Queen City.  Yet as fascinating as this information was, I still needed to find a way to incorporate these concepts into the website cohesively.  Further research led me to the work of John A.  Jakle, who stated that postcards are “instructive as to what places once had been.  More importantly, they were instructive as to how places had been represented.”[1]  For the purposes of our website, Mary Boyer's collection allows us to see Charlotte before the Louis Asburys and Martin Boyers and Charles Hooks implemented their own vision of the city.  Returning to the original “before and after” concept, I decided to utilize the postcards in this collection to offer insight into those who visited Charlotte and how Charlotte was sent throughout the country.  In this way, we would be able to expand on our website’s vision slightly.  Not only would we pursue the ways that three architects designed their Charlotte, but we would also represent how that vision was disseminated, historically and today.

            With very diverse schedules, our group maintained contact via email throughout the majority of the semester, ensuring that each member was completing tasks assigned by our group contract in a timely fashion, and also aiding one another through research snags.  The final few weeks proved to be the most productive.  Once each member had completed significant research and was nearing completion of her collection, we scheduled a meeting to storyboard exhibit ideas and themes.  From here we decided to discuss each architects’ contributions to the community—whether through residential, cultural, municipal, or educational designs—, their role in bringing new styles to the Charlotte landscape, and the ways in which Charlotte has changed over the years.  We actively incorporated feedback from Dr. Cox and classmates to hone and reconfigure various aspects of our exhibits.  Through information gained from Professor Heather McCullough’s Omeka workshop, and from many hours of trial and error, our group worked together to understand the technological layout of Omeka. 

Each group member contributed equally in enabling the success of our project.  Everyone was included in the creative process that decided on which exhibits to create and how each one would tie into the theme of our site.  Jacquelyn worked on the visual theme and color settings for the site, provided descriptions for each section of the exhibits “Architecture and Community” and “Introducing New Designs,” created the Martin Boyer Collection and incorporated these items into all four exhibits.  Melissa created the Louis Asbury Collection and incorporated these items into all four exhibits, and templated many of the sections and pages for each exhibit during meetings to ensure that we would implement the ideas discussed.  Christine created the C.C. Hook Collection and incorporated these items into all four exhibits, and prompted the idea for our “Reviving Historic Spaces” section of the “Charlotte: Then and Now” exhibit.  I created the Mary Boyer Postcards Collection, the “Early Twentieth Century” and “Queen City Today” sections of the “Charlotte: Then and Now” exhibit, wrote the descriptions for the “Charlotte: Then and Now” sections, designed our custom logo, and compiled the resources page. 

Overall, each group member supported the main objective of our site, which is to demonstrate how Louis Asbury, Martin Boyer, and Charles C. Hook contributed architecturally to Charlotte.  Postcards from the early twentieth century and photographs taken today were utilized to create a context into which these architects and their designs could be placed.  In some instances, these architects’ designs implemented unique, innovative styles and functions into the community of Charlotte.  Their designs can be seen throughout all areas of the Queen City—residential spaces, municipal and commercial districts, and cultural centers.  I believe our site represents a visual and textually supportive vision of Asbury, Boyer, and Hook’s Charlotte.

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^[1] John A. Jakle, Postcards of the Night: Views of American Cities (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2003), 8.

Taking a Closer Look at Writer's Diet

In a very much delayed response to last month's blog, one will find below the results of two "tests" taken on the Writer's Diet.  The first test analysed a sample of writing from a historiographical review, while the second test looked at a previous blog.

Results from test one.

Fit and Trim results from test one.

Needs toning results from test two.

Results from test two.

Writing is Writing... Or Is It?

While there were many interesting articles in Yahoo's style guide section, I found a few that were of specific interest.  The article entitled, "Why you need to proofread", caught my eye.  One of my biggest pet peeves is to find grammatical errors in a text.  I just cannot imagine allowing this type of error detract from the work put into the content of the piece.  I also agreed with the article's statement that, "You want to provide a superior user experience that attracts a loyal audience to your website."  No matter how great the content, oftentimes--particularly in writing for the web--presentation can be critical in attracting readers initially and then encouraging them to return to the cite for additional information.  Poor grammar in public writing is like wear cut-offs to a job interview: it just don't look good.

The article, "Replace superfluous phrases" has some really great examples of ways to be more direct and efficient in website writing. I will find these particularly helpful as I am often guilty of a superfluous writing style. Going along with that sentiment, I am also a victim of passive writing.  "Start strong, stay strong" emphasizes the importance of active (versus passive) writing style, a strength of not just web-writing but any time of writing.  Tight, precise, active prose encourages a reader to stick with the story and also enhances comprehension.  

Another aspect of writing for the web which I had not thought too much about but agree with completely is expressed in "Shape your text for online reading".  This article proclaims that, "Online reading is an experience that’s different from reading text in print. A big part of that difference is physical: For most people, online reading takes longer—or feels as though it does. A computer screen displays text at a lower resolution, with less detail and sharpness than a printed page, so letters are fuzzier. And many people feel that their eyes tire faster reading text on a screen (especially a smaller screen) than reading type on paper."  I know that many people prefer to print a lengthy article rather than read from the screen.  While most (like myself) simply prefer the ability to scrawl on said article, many people do have an issue with reading text on the computer screen for any length of time.  I once heard that a good web page should not be longer than one "scroll-down."  This rule keeps information tight, precise, and recognizes the possibly short attention span of the reader.  

Tips to write by: be inclusive, construct clear writing, but maintain your voice and style.  

After reading through these articles, I decided to upload some text to the writing fitness link.  Most of my blogging writing either needs toning or is flabby.  But samples of papers I have written for class are consistently fit and trim.  To me, this makes sense, as blogging is normally a more casual form of writing.  Does this mean that it too cannot be fit and trim? Absolutely not.  And now that I am more aware of the difference in my writing, I can work towards an overall toning, with diet, exercise, and practice.

Data, Data everywhere... but what do we do with it?

For this week's reflection, I am going to focus on Daniel Cohen's "From Babel to Knowledge," and Digital History Hacks: Methodology for the Infinite Archive, "Searching for History."  First of all, I was a little slow on the uptake when each article was discussing APIs, programming interfaces, H-bots, algorithms--but that's not new.  However, when I did process what Cohen was talking about, I was amazed by what computer programmers are able to accomplish.  The ability to set up search engines to "mine data" and then use that to better construct a website and its efficiency in being available to a greater online audience is quite fascinating.  Before reading the blog "Searching for history," I hadn't given much thought to queries made on search engines.  (I also now know that "clearing history" does not erase the data from existence.  Sigh.  So many things to learn still.)  But the uses of this data are never ending.  Aside from creating programs to search for syllabi, or understanding how people use history, data mining and analysis must support a wide variety of online sites.  

I am currently listening to my all-time favorite Pandora station, Neil Young radio.  And I imagine that Pandora uses some type of data collection that indexes various songs, yet gives them multiple categories (similar to the ingredients of the cocktails index).  In this way, Pandora can be adaptive when you choose to "like" a particular song, or "dislike" another.  The program must then begin to add more songs which match up with that favored song's "ingredients," and vice versa with disliked songs.  

Going back to Cohen's article, I was intrigued by the notion of H-Bot.  Its ability to answer factual queries through data mining, supports the idea that this would free up professors and students to focus on more analytical ventures of topics, not having to get hung up on specific factual details.  This can be related directly to our discussion of Wikipedia a few weeks ago.  This site promotes only factual information, not subjective analysis.  Disregarding its frequent fallacies, this site is in actuality in league with these H-Bot programs, and can help pave the road for more extensive and expansive analysis once the facts have been quickly ascertained.

Go on, get down with your "Old Man"/"Heart of Gold" self...

Twitter for Education (?)

For this week's reflection, I found an article discussing the use of Twitter in education in Romania.  But if they had not mentioned that they were writing from across the ocean, I would have never known.  "Can We Use Twitter for Educational Activities," by Gabriela Grosseck and Carmen Holotescu first gives a brief description of Twitter and then discusses the pros and cons of utilizing this media tool both in and out of the classroom.  I agree and disagree with some of their points about the positive aspects of using twitter in the classroom.  As far as exploring collaborative writing, I would agree that twitter promotes writing as a fun activity, while fostering (to an extent) editing skills.  But as far as developing literacy skills, I cast a wary glance.  It seems counterintuitive, seeing as the 140 character limit prompts the tweeter (?) to use every known abbreviation known to mankind, while making up a few along the way.  So in this sense, encouraging students to use this abbreviated language is not necessarily a good idea. The authors do include this in the bad points section, but I feel that the literacy concept of twitter is much more flawed than the authors suggest. 

However, sharing ideas instantaneously, allowing shy students to have a stronger voice in class, including absent students in the discussion (what up, Jennifer), are really great assets.  On a professional academic level, Grosseck and Carmen also suggest that Twitter enables greater project management and even promotes collaboration across schools, states, and continents!  I am also intrigued by the notion of metacognition: a process of reflecting on your learning.  In this sense, twitter could potential serve a similar purpose as blogging, yet in a more immediate, concise way.  Bloggers really have no limit to their journal; twitter would force one to sum up their thoughts on a topic, which is critical in many aspects of learning--what is the point, what is the bigger meaning, what are you trying to say/prove?

Overall, I can see many positive attributes of twitter used in an educational setting as proposed by Grosseck and Carmen.  I also heartily agree with many of its flaws.  Yet this article, and the general discussion of twitter our class has had, has influenced me not to be so critical of social media as educational tools.

H-Net might be my new best friend...

After looking over several articles featured by the AHA, I was intrigued by two in particular.  The first discussed in detail the ins and outs of H-Net, an online resource I unfortunately just learned about in the past month.  Matthew Gilmore's H-Net: Digital Discussion for Historians really offered some great information on just how expansive H-net truly is.  The variety of categorizations for different topics is very appealing for users, as this would increase the probability of success when searching for a specific topic.  I think I will be utilizing this resource more in the future, particularly for the upcoming months and researching potential thesis topics.  I can use this site to read about what might already be out there in the research world, and maybe put some feelers out if an area is lacking in research.  Lately, I have been considering looking at illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade in the Antebellum period, particularly in Charleston and Wilmington, and this resource and its accessibility is perfect for exploring this topic and gaining some "professional folk wisdom" on the topic.

The idea of "professional folk wisdom," as discussed by Daniel J. Cohen in Zotero: Social and Semantic Computing for Historical Scholarship, really appealed to me after having worked in a variety of research settings, both academically and professionally.  Researching and reading about a topic can become overwhelming at times.  Surrounding yourself with professionals and other academics who have experience in the topic is essential in providing some guidance and direction.  Cohen notes that one can gain these little tidbits of knowledge from academics, professionals, endnotes, bibliographies, or even acknowledgements.  Originally I was not familiar with Zotero, but it seems to be somewhat similar to H-Net, yet much more expansive its in offered information and resources.  I do think that creating a bibliography can be a bit daunting and it is oftentimes difficult to sift through material that seems useful to your work from material that actually is useful.  Having the material at hand, along with connections to other professionals and academics from whom to glean those bits of folk wisdom is certainly showing me how much history and digital really can go hand in hand.

Wikipedia: Friend or Foe?

I must admit, I tried really hard to accept the supporting argument for Wikipedia during the Middlebury College debate, but I still have mixed feelings about wikipedia and its use in higher education.  I understand that it has the positive aspects of being an open forum and that there are volunteers who "patrol" the pages for factual errors.  I also must admit that I have gone to wikipedia on occasion for a quick bit of information--but I always go elsewhere to verify.  But using this site in any sort of academic sense to me is simply unacceptable.

My frustration stems largely from the fact that my own brother admitted that when he has free time at work he looks up some of his favorite historical subjects and proceeds to read page upon page on wikipedia.  I am really glad that he likes history, Wall Street exec that he is, but I feel obligated to stop this, even if he is not using this information in a paper or as part of research. I am horrified that he is soaking up potentially wrong information, and possibly spreading this misinformation in everyday conversation.  I might be overreacting, but facts are facts, and as the Middlebury College debate alerted me, Wikipedia does not deal in originial scholarship, just facts. (Which I also just learned is not protected by copyright...very interesting.)  But back to the point--I am a firm believer in squelching ignorance and misinformation where I can, and thus am not tolerant at all to any misleading articles on wikipedia.

For example, I looked at several history articles, examining their discussion sections as well.  Whether I was looking at an article covering a semi-controversial topic (Medgar Evers and his assassination in 1963), or a topic less immediate to the American population--Henry VIII--I found several instances in the discussion tab where a problem was identified, the author agreed to remove the information, yet when I went through the article, the misinformation was still there.  And I only looked at a few of the several thousand articles that exist on this site. 

Basically, I will be purchasing my brother some books for Christmas, or perhaps find a good site that digitizes a large selection of historical topics....