Posted by: hmoir on: November 17, 2008
Holly M.
Posted by: hmoir on: November 17, 2008
Holly M.
Posted by: hmoir on: November 17, 2008
The next few blog posts will include my mock-ups so far. I have scaled them back and made them more minimalist because they looked cluttered. I also feel the form and function are now a better fit with each other, and the site is more user-friendly and easy-to-use. I have to have each mock-up in a separate post because otherwise wordpress keeps crashing on my computer!
Holly
Posted by: hmoir on: November 16, 2008
I just thought I would post some initial Design Guidelines that may or may not be useful to people; I thought it was at least worth a try to post this, for what it’s worth. My BA is in Art History and I just felt like sometimes having a list of concepts is a welcome relief, especially when one has been staring at the same mock-up for entirely too long—sometimes a bit of structure helps to organize the world and our place in it, and to better conceptualize how to realize the artistic and design goals of our respective digital history resources. Anyway, hope this helps a bit…
7 Elements of Design:
1) Line
2) Shape (2D) and Mass (3D)
3) Light and Value
4) Color
5)Texture
6) Space
7) Time and Motion
5 Principles of Design:
1) Unity and Variety
2) Balance
3) Emphasis and Subordination
4) Scale and Proportion
5) Rhythm
Also important: Context, Form, and Function
Where is it?
How does it look? Why does it look this way?
What purposes does it serve? Does style relate to content?
Periodization: Do you want to invoke a specific Art Historical time period or art movement with your digital history resource, implicitly or explicitly? Why? Is this appropriate?
I can also answer questions in class if any of this needs to be clarified……
I will try to add more to this later in the day. Also there is excellent information on-line. I will try to find my notes from a later semester, from another professor whose notes I had in mind when writing this–as she was from Texas and took a different approach to things…
Holly
Posted by: hmoir on: November 16, 2008
Here are my comments for my group members: Giny, Andrea, and Curtis. I hope I am being helpful. I really hate advising other people, especially when they are all adults!
For Giny:
I was looking to see if you had any mock-ups and I couldn’t find any to comment on, hope that is okay for now. I will keep checking back on Google reader as I think we are supposed to comment on the people within our small group.
As an Art History undergrad, I completely agree with you about the power of images, particularly when paired with other potent cultural forces such as the news establishment and the science-industry complex. I agree with such cliché statements as, a picture’s worth 1,000 words, particularly in a science-news type environment in which people are busy and want to get their news quickly then move on to their daily tasks.
I hope you do not have copyright issues with your site. I think you plan on using NASA and other government-owned imagery, which is perfect as it is in the public domain, however, these images will consist of dry (to non-experts, and that is your stated audience) photos and pen and ink drawings, rather than the images that the masses might find more fascinating, such as the now famous (and very visually manipulative) image of the forlorn polar bear sitting on an ice floe in the middle of melting oblivion. I would love for you to use images like the polar bear photo for your website, but I worry that you would have copyright issues…….how do you think you will resolve this tension between the more interesting images being the ones that are also most protected by copyright?
Would you try to upload one new image plus analysis for every day of the week or every other day or some other schedule? In other words, how will you handle the audience desire for novelty and constantly changing images? After an initial start-up period, will you accept images and analysis submitted by informed observers and visitors to the site? Will you have a vetting process for this submitted material?
Also, how did you arrive at your decision to use message boards rather than an email address? I am sure it’s the right decision, I was just wondering as to your specific justification for your site–do you think message boards are suited to a more science or news-oriented type audience? Do you think the visitors to my site, the Victorian Consumerism Virtual Museum, would prefer a message board to an email address? I think they would be more comfortable with the latter, mostly because my audience is composed of older people who aren’t as comfortable with technology, and people perceive emails to be the more user-friendly technology as compared with message boards.
I am looking forward to your final project!
For Andrea:
I really like your mock-up a lot. I like the choice of colors and the use of color and relevant images. I like the size and color of the text. I like the overall layout. My undergrad degree is in Art History and I feel you have followed many of the principles of design such as unity, variety, rhythm, and placement. As to your question, I prefer to keep the links where there are at the right-hand side, but as we have so many people in our class, doubtless there will be at least one person who disagrees with me! But I agree with placing the links there; I would keep them oriented as they are now, and maybe work further on some mock-ups for interior pages. Well done, I am looking forward to your presentation and final project!
P.S. Should you have either a Contact Us or About link on your homepage so people know you are affiliated with GMU or a grad student or something so the site has more credibility with people who don’t know you? I really like your pretend text; I know I have been doing too much schoolwork and I’m overtired, but I laughed out loud at your text. You are much more original than the other placeholder text, “Lorem ipsum…”
Also, since you are dealing with a broad public audience, you might want to clarify the link “Research” and how it differs from “Bibliography”–is it that the former is your research and the latter is research by other people? Or is the former Primary Sources and the latter Secondary Sources? I know I am being nitpicky, but I was just trying to anticipate what problems the masses might have with the site–it seems that one really has to spell things out for some people, they aren’t good with subtlety
For Curtis:
I want to preface my comments by saying I am just trying to help and please don’t be offended; I really don’t like having to offer changes to other people’s work, particularly with the artistic aspects as those are completely subjective, however the professor has asked us to comment, so I’ll give you my thoughts, for what they are worth…
I liked your use of PowerPoint and the way you limited yourself to a certain color palette and made interior pages look similar to the homepage via the use of repeated elements such as the pale blue text box. However, I found it distracting that the boxes and the text inside are not the exact same size on every interior page, but this is easy enough to fix. I liked your use of images and I wish that you had used more–perhaps this is a time issue and when you have more time you will incorporate more images, including images of free persons of color. I know such images are hard to come by, but as that is the name of your site, I think it would benefit immeasurably. I really hope you aren’t encountering copyright problems, as it seems like building a website is hard enough without those types of impediments.
Also, I feel that the site is perhaps too text-heavy, unless you want to specify on the homepage that this site is for grad students and college and university faculty. Unless you are aiming for this specialized audience, then I think you have too much text. Not that I am underestimating the masses, just that there are certain expectations we bring to the digital realm, and visitors do not expect to encounter long blocks of text. Perhaps these blocks can be split up into smaller sections, then each carted off to its own interior page. Perhaps the text could also be in a larger font and/or a more interesting, historical-looking font.
Lastly, while I admire your goal to create a logo and I think this adds unity to the site, I think that the logo needs some work–I’m sure you had only put this one up as a prototype, as I’m not sure how much time people have had to work on such small details of their mock-ups yet. Anyway, I think the logo is too small and the wavy effect seems ahistorical. I would try for a logo in which all the letters are the same size or a very similar size. I would also make the logo much bigger, more prominent, and change the color choice to something more historical-looking, perhaps shades of beige and grey that look like the pages of an old newspaper or the like. If possible, I might include a daguerreotype (or whichever technology was used back then) or at the least a silhouette that includes the bust portrait of one woman and one man to give a sense that this site is about real people who lived in Virginia not that long ago, not about dry historical facts.
Studies always show that humans are drawn to photos and other images of humans, particularly faces, so to include 2 representative portraits will make history come alive to the visitor and also will visually draw the eye to your homepage. Then, you could overlay the FPC logo over the 2 portraits, or perhaps under them, and use this text-and-image combination as the logo on all the pages throughout your site. I am going to sketch out for you what I mean by this, as I’m not sure I’m explaining it very well; I will have images for you in class on Monday.
Again, these are just suggestions, and please don’t be offended by any of my comments!
Holly
Posted by: hmoir on: November 16, 2008
I thought I would start with some reactions to other blogs, as I felt like this week was one of the weeks in which the blogs helped me the most in understanding the readings and how to apply them to our class.
Regarding the Thomas and Ayers site, I agree with Hillary that I was expecting a lot MORE, particularly of images and even videos of historic recreations, reenactments etc—something that would justify having it as a “digital project,” I couldn’t agree more with Hillary: “The Thomas and Ayers site was really interesting, though as someone else noted, I was expecting more images when I would click on each icon, and was slightly disappointed each time I got more text. And I think the only reason I really expected that is because this is a digital project, so I assumed there would be a more obvious reason it was on the Web and not in analog form somehow (so, that it would feel different from an analog format, which I don’t think it does). After all, if this were a book/journal article, the majority of the information presented here could be digested just as easily…but I guess I’m not yet seeing why having it as “an experiment in digital scholarship” is necessary.” Well put! It sounds a bit harsh, but I would contest whether the website really qualifies as an “experiment” or as “digital scholarship” at all! Hillary was also clever to point out that “It also made me think more and more about how to justify my own site, to ask myself if it’s actually necessary, and why. Which I imagine is part of the point here.”—that’s a very good point! It hadn’t occurred to me that the site could serve as a counterexample of what not to do with our websites. I had assumed it was assigned because it was a mainstream example of an attempt at digital history that actually made it into the pages of a rarefied publication like the American Historical Review. But I think I agree with Hillary that the point of the assignment was likely to point out how even well-meaning and intelligent scholars can create a site that is essentially redundant and does not provide any meaningful experiences that the book itself wouldn’t provide.
I also really agree with Tracy on Moretti “Give Moretti a break — he doesn’t solve *every* problem, he just takes a few steps toward solving a few of them. Can’t really ask for more. If not completely satisfied, come up with a better (or complementary) solution.” I thought that was a very balanced way to approach his text, which I will admit is quite experimental. I realize that people have different learning styles, but I think that having read books like Moretti’s book is important for all of us to be exposed to many different ways to conceptualize the world and our approaches to scholarship and how we present our research findings.
I actually really liked the Moretti book; I think I started with appropriate expectations, meaning I expected it to be very odd, in large part because the NY Times book review called it “heretical,” which is quite a strong statement. Other reviewers called Moretti an “iconoclast,” which I suppose he could be for literary studies, but can’t every field benefit from a good iconoclast periodically? Although Moretti’s content is fascinating, it took me a while to come to terms with his style, as it approaches stream-of-consciousness narrative, and in certain passages I was very frustrated with him, and have written in the margins snarky comments like, “clearly, he speaks English as a second or third language.” There is certainly a fine line between genius and absurdity, and between the sublime and the ridiculous, and I feel that Moretti has a healthy dose of all of those qualities. I found the book to be very theoretical and conceptual, but many passages were quite profound, so it was worth slogging through some imperfect passages just to get to the gems. I felt that compared to the Afterword by Alberto Piazza, the way in which Moretti expresses himself isn’t that confusing. Moretti definitely has a work-in-progress type style reminiscent of the transcript of proceedings at a conference; I think his ideas would have made more sense to more people had they been shared in scholarly conversation, rather than in written format, partly because we have certain expectations for a published book and these can adversely and unfairly impact our impression of a scholar, especially if the scholar is like Moretti and would do better to be speaking than writing.
He also carries on other discussions and dialogues with the reader and other scholars in the footnotes, which is informative if distracting—I guess we can’t all be staid historians who write books with perfect narrative flow! I find it a bit confusing that Moretti places key statements in parentheses, but these are not supplementary or peripheral but rather I found these ideas to be integral to the main text, so perhaps Moretti does not understand the idea of parenthesis, or perhaps he was in a rush to prepare this text? I found that the chapters made much more sense when I read all the notes in a chapter prior to reading the chapter itself. But this is certainly a strange and wonderful book. It reminds me quite a bit of Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler—I think that Weschler and Moretti might be kindred spirits, as is the subject of Weschler’s book, a man named Mr. Wilson who lives today in Los Angeles and runs a “museum” full of wonders both real and pretend. The museum, and the book about it, both concern themselves with the nature of truth and of reality, and of epistemology and ontology—both themes of Moretti’s book, at least implicitly, as well.
As one who hesitantly identifies as relativist and postmodernist, I am intrigued by Moretti’s idea that the literary canon for each genre can be subsumed within a global and holistic paradigm as a result of employing Moretti’s techniques, and that the formerly ossified canon can be made anew and perhaps in the process, made better and more representative of each genre. I would think this possibility also appeals to those who don’t follow postmodern philosophy, including those scholars who identify themselves as vaguely democratic. I dare say that many, if not all, of us in this class are quite democratic in our approach to history, and I venture this guess in part because we have all attended GMU and not an Ivy-League or other prestigious school. Anyway, the point of this digression is to suggest that in this class, we all appear to have democratic tendencies, and perhaps for readers who could not make sense of Moretti’s book, then they can be satisfied at least with my admittedly oversimplified and essentialist definition of the book as: a text that advocates a more democratic (as well as more digital and more visual) approach to scholarship—and therefore perhaps the book does not deserve to be written off simply as the ramblings of an odd Italian Marxist. I find it very appealing, Moretti’s idea that such concepts as the literacy canon for a certain genre can be described partly by forces, graphs, maps, diagrams, trees, or some larger systemic visualizations. Despite the text being quite episodic—do I sense the influence of an editor who wanted short chapters?—Moretti manages to include both breadth and depth of scholarship, and his text is panoramic at times, at least within certain parameters. So, all in all, I found it to be a good book, and anyway perhaps the issue of “good” is beside the point and all that matters really is that we all learned a great deal from it.
In terms of Moretti’s discussion of Braudel and the longue duree, I’m not sure that passage would have made much sense to me had I not read and discussed a Braudel book for a previous class; however, Moretti would not be amiss to assume a scholarly audience so perhaps he takes it for granted that most of his readers have encountered Braudel and the Annales school at one time or another. Moretti discusses the tripartite division of history, or any field, into event, cycle, or longue duree, and he characterizes the event as all flow and no structure, and the longue duree as all structure and no flow, thus he sees the cycle as liminal, constituting both flow and structure (14). I think I agree with his point, and it is very clever, although I would have appreciated a concrete example, for instance with the French Revolution, in order to be more clear about how to apply his paradigms. That said, I agree with him that literary genres can be viewed as temporary structures within each of these three divisions: event, cycle, long view.
I was pleased with Moretti’s path-breaking ideas as they apply to the practice of scholarship, but also to the whole ossified structure of academia. I think that his ideas are useful at a specific level, where they can be applied to practices, and at a general level, where they can be thought-experiments for changing the approaches of academia, which is important as academia is becoming less and less relevant to the public and to everyday life. I agree completely with Moretti when he writes, “And problems without a solution are exactly what we need in a field like ours, where we are used to asking only those questions for which we already have an answer” (26)—in this way, Moretti helps us avoid teleology and the hardened thinking that has set in among many fields of academia. I concur with the character quoted in the text, “I have noticed…that we put many people off teaching because we have an answer for everything. Could we not…draw up a list of questions that appear to us completely unsolved?” (26). This is a very clever point and I could not agree more; there could not be a better way to attract new blood into academia, although I fear that for much of academia, this idea of recruiting could not be farther from their wishes to maintain academia as some type of cabal.
Moretti takes care throughout the book to insist that such forms as graphs, maps, and trees, are not necessarily ends in themselves, but means to a greater end such as discovering unnoticed facets of literary works and unknown works within a given genre. I thought it was very important for Moretti to note that an image such as a map does not offer an explanation for a text, but rather makes us aware of a lacuna, “Not, of course, that the map is already an explanation; but at least it shows us that there is something that needs to be explained” (39). I think this is an important caveat, and one which might help readers who formerly felt uneasy with Moretti’s paradigm, if only they realized that maps and the like are more tools than they are the end result of his proposed literary scholarship. He continues later in the same vein, “Not that the map itself is an explanation, of course: but at least, it offers a model of the narrative universe which rearranges its components in a non-trivial way, and may bring some hidden patterns to the surface” (53-4). He is so balanced in such statements and his promises are contingent—I may be a nontraditional person, but the high occurrence of statements like these make me think that Moretti is much too tame to deserve such labels as “iconoclast.”
I thought that the book was very well-organized and the chapters, if not always the paragraphs, were nicely arranged. Moretti writes 4 major chapters, with the first as an introduction and the others covering, respectively, graphs, maps, and trees. He characterizes these as, respectively, quantitative, spatial (including geography), and morphological (including evolutionary studies). I am just proud of myself that I read a book that discusses Stephen Jay Gould (69, 70, 78)—I feel very highbrow now. Also regarding trees, Moretti writes in that chapter a quote from Richard Dawkins, “There are many ways of being alive…but many more ways of being dead” (77)—I think this applies to how one lives life but also more specifically to Moretti’s example of just how many literary genres “died out” over the years. I also agree with Moretti’s related point that just because certain genres were not popular with the market when they were first released, does not mean they are not worthy of study. Thus I concur with his argument in favor of his trees of genres, that they will restore the history of genres other than the top 1 percent or so, “these trees take the lost 99 percent of the archive and reintegrate it into the fabric of literary history” (77). This reminds me of a point we have made in class, that in general with any archive, much of it is essentially “lost” in that it is inaccessible or sorted into a category or search term that is not useful, or the like. So in this way many of Moretti’s most interesting ideas apply not just to literary studies, but to history and the practices of digital history and new media. For example, I believe that by digitizing all the records of archives and by carefully crowd-sourcing such tasks as sorting, then we are fulfilling the author’s dream to restore 99 percent (or a similar high number) of the archive, as I’m sure that prior to an archive being converted to new media, perhaps it is only 1 percent or 3 percent or 5 percent utilized. Thus another argument in favor of digital history and new media, not that we needed another one, of course.
In conclusion, Moretti ably employs each of his models as a way to explore aspects of literary studies: the graphs to explore genres, the maps to portray time and geography within books, and the evolutionary trees to elucidate stylistic changes when comparing books within and across genres. He is certainly a brilliant theorist and convinced me of his points, although his analysis is not always easy-to-follow. I want to reaffirm my agreement that his models are just that, models and modes of understanding, and not ends in themselves. Moretti cites another theorist as stating “theories are nets…and only he who casts will catch” (91)—I could not agree more, as this implies that essentially we have nothing to lose, so why not immediately apply his theories to literary studies and even to history? If we fail, we will have at least tried something new and learned from the experience, and if we succeed, then we will have opened broad new pathways to and vistas of knowledge.
Lastly as regards the book, it is important to note that Moretti, despite all his theorizing, does not insist on one conceptual rubric or “single explanatory framework” (92) thus perhaps those readers who bristled at his work as some attempt at literary string theory or a unifying theory, will realize that in fact Moretti admits he only offers some models, not all the possible modes, available for creating and accessing new knowledge, and for structuring extant knowledge. Finally, concerning the Afterword by Alberto Piazza, which focuses on trees much more than graphs and maps, I concur with Piazza’s point that Moretti’s conjectures provide “an incentive to refine the means of reading our evolution” (113)—by this I am not sure if he means the broader historical evolution of human civilization, or the specific biological evolution of homo sapiens, but I would like to advocate for the former, and add that Moretti’s ideas can help us reformulate our approaches both to the history of civilization, and to the creation and systemization of knowledge. Epistemology (how we know what we think we know, or the theory of knowledge) and ontology (how we know we exist, or the theory of being) are two fields with which I am fascinated, and thus I was glad to read this book and discover Moretti’s views, which relate to these and to other important intellectual themes, such as how to structure knowledge.
Holly
Posted by: hmoir on: November 3, 2008
I found the article “Googling the Victorians” by Patrick Leary to be fascinating on at least two levels. First, the essay was interesting on the level of the story of Letitia Elizabeth Landon “L.E.L.,” which read like a detective novel. And secondly, the piece was intriguing on the level of the greater developments within digital history, including the practice of Googling and other searches enabled by the shift in scholarship to a greater emphasis on electronic media and electronic tools. Leary uses the case of L.E.L. and the manner in which a biographer and a descendant of the woman found each other online, as one example to illuminate the ways in which digital scholarship has changed how we relate to history, how we research and write about history, and how we go about our tasks as historians. Leary shows that the emergence and adoption of electronic and digital aids has signaled a “profound shift” (2) in our relationship to the past. As Leary puts it, “Fortuitous electronic connections, and the information that circulates through them, are emerging as hallmarks of humanities scholarship in the digital age” (2). Throughout, Leary’s article echoes Rosenzweig’s article “Scarcity or Abundance,” including in the idea that digital scholarship will likely bring about a shortage of certain types of ideas and interactions, and yet a wealth of other types of ideas and interactions. I feel Leary sounds especially like Rosenzweig when he conceptualizes the most consequential effects of the internet and digitized scholarship: “the extraordinary power, speed, and ubiquity” of digital media (3) are what he sees as most significant, and I agree.
He ably illustrates with interesting anecdotes some examples of how digital finding aids and other tools have changed scholarship, including, in his case, the study of Victorian history. He shows that less time, money, and effort are required to chase down obscure references from Punch magazine; Leary reveals how he came to understand a Punch cartoon caption thoroughly, and also to be able to situate it in historical context and consider other, related uses of the phrase. Although clearly a fan of digital scholarship, Leary is careful to be balanced throughout the article, and he makes a point of stating both pros and cons for changes to the practice of history. For instance he shows on page 5 both that digital searching cannot substitute for old-fashioned scholarship in one sense, and yet it has vastly superseded traditional searching in other senses, including in the respect that one can match up exact words and phrases from arcane references taken out-of-context and find the references within digitized books that one simply never would have found—one can only manually skim so many books in one lifetime, after all. On page 6, Leary hints at what I have referred to in past blogs as ADD-style reading, in which the reader browses for instances of a word or phrase but otherwise very perfunctorily skims the text. He does not seem overly worried about this type of reading, at least in this article, as he is focused on changes affecting scholars, and he claims that what will make the biggest difference in the future is “not simply the ubiquity of the internet…or ingrained reliance upon it, but the sheer scale of what is coming online” (6). I’m not sure if I agree with his point that scale is most significant, or his assertion of a sort of anxiety hierarchy as regards changes wrought by digital scholarship—I think all the changes are potentially equally troubling, not just, as Leary asserts, the problem of scale.
Leary’s section on e-books and digitized books mirrors our discussion last week in many ways, as he believes that these changes will continue to make huge impacts on academia and the reading public. He hopes that both for-profit and non-profit ventures continue to digitize books and post them online, and he sees that digitizing books can serve a democratizing function for scholarship in that now texts other than the canonical 19th century texts can be submitted to scrutiny. In fact, due to the guidelines of copyright law and other 20th and 21st century issues, Leary posits that sources from the 19th century may become more easily accessible to more people, more cheaply than most sources covering later centuries (8). Leary sounds excited that such digitized texts will democratize not just content and subject scope, but also the audiences of texts, as amateurs, dilettantes, and the general public can access books which previously only existed in a few hard copies in some obscure university library storage room or the like. Leary also sounds like Daniel Bell in “The Bookless Future” when he insists that just because physical, printed books are not perfect for certain uses, such as e-searching, does not mean that they will become extinct, “One need not posit the imminent disappearance of the codex or of the library to see that electronically accessible and searchable texts serve a variety of purposes…” (9)—thus traditionalists need not fear! Leary’s section The Way We Read Now returns to the topic of ADD-style reading, which he sees as producing an “inherent disaggregation of texts” and a “cherry-picking approach” to reading and scholarship (10). Yet ultimately, for professional scholars at least, Leary posits that both intensive and extensive reading will continue to be important skills and will continue to be valued and to be practiced.
I agree with Leary’s views that, although useful, digital scholarship is far from perfect and much remains to be done (12). His concept of the “offline penumbra” is useful if slightly oddly-termed (13); he fears this will be the future state of works that have not been digitized and thus will be neglected by all but the most dedicated specialists if/when the world moves into a more thoroughly digitized realm than at present. Leary uses the term “digital divide” in a different way from other authors; while others have used it to mean the divide between those who have Internet access and those who do not, Leary employs the term to mean those texts which are digitized and accessible versus those which are not—still a profitable use of the term, although perhaps slightly confusing for some readers used to the term in a different context. I think he is absolutely correct in positing a shift in epistemology, ontology, and scholarly ethics in the future based on digital practices; he asserts that the digital realm “will affect the ways in which we think, teach, and write about [history]” 13. I agree with his sentiment—I think one cannot argue that these changes will take place, and are perhaps already underway.
Leary offers the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (14) as an example of a scholarly product in the digital realm that highlights the advantages of the medium, such as easy multimedia displays, accessibility, and instant updates and changes to the information, as well as group editing. The way he describes the ODNB sounds reminiscent of Wikipedia (although Wikipedia does not, of course, have as tony a pedigree). He states that ODNB is: “the most extensive work of collaborative humanities scholarship ever published…a widely collaborative ongoing…database, a text continually revised and rewritten among descendants from all over the world and scholars from many fields” (15). Does this sound like Wikipedia? Why doesn’t Leary mention Wikipedia? Being a Victorianist should not exclude Leary from the leagues of Wikipedia converts, as surely there must be many good articles in Wikipedia on Victorian topics?
Regarding more on Preservation and comments on chapter 8 I hadn’t written about yet, I found chapter 8 on “Preserving Digital History” in the book Digital History to be both reassuring and disturbing. Reassuring in the sense that were I to preserve a text or a website, the book sets out clear steps to follow and makes the process seem manageable, yet disturbing in the sense that I really don’t preserve anything other than by pressing “Save” and maybe having hard-copies of term papers floating around on various levels of my house. It was also alarming to be reminded that, while in some ways digital media are preferable to analog media, so they can also be worse to deal with. For instance, traditional media “often remain intelligible following modest deterioration, whereas digital sources…frequently become unstable at the first sign of corruption” (222). In other words, digital media are worse in the sense that that they and/or the hardware and software needed to access them are often preserved in an all-or-nothing way, yet traditional media can often be read or accessed even if they are quite damaged, as is the case with partial inspirations remaining on weathered sculptures and the like. It is all quite frightening! If a few bits go awry, presumably my hard drive could be lost completely and forever, not just a partial record, but no record at all……..I just keep repeating to myself the message of page 225, which suggested that one must value the tenets of preservation more than focus on the overwhelming thought of constant technological change.
I have decided it is best to take the steps recommended for preservation of digital materials, including the first steps of having backups: backups must be in more than one place and updated frequently (236). Yet this is easier said than done, especially for technophobes. Another important, related point made in chapter 8 is that “digitization is not preservation” (243). I think it is a common enough mistake that people assume that to digitize a document and save it as a pdf or post it to a website, means that it cannot be lost, but unfortunately this is not the case, and in fact even experts still grapple with this issue. In this respect, I agree with the authors’ point that even expert “solutions” at present are far-from-perfect, “even cutting-edge programs…are closer to repositories than true archives, which by definition ensure that valued objects are available in perpetuity…” Another alarming point is that, on this issue, even the specialists don’t have much of a clue, “The main problem facing digitization as a preservation medium is we have not yet figured out how to preserve digital objects…” (243). This is very upsetting! Is anyone else worried by the context of this quote or the seemingly casual tone in which it is expressed?!
Near the end of chapter 8, the writers suggest 5 (4 that are viable) avenues of preservation and data continuity, and they seem very reasonable. These 5 avenues are 1) better media, or formats that will last longer and be more reliable than existing media, 2) refreshing bits, or the process of constantly backing up data as well as transferring to new computers often, 3) migration, or moving a file from one format to another to stay up-to-date, 4) emulation, or attempting to create on current hardware and/or software the digital environment used to read and create the original file, and 5) “truly a last resort” digital archaeology, in which one picks up only fragments of the past (all from pages 244-5). For my purposes, I hope the experts will endeavor to improve paths 1-4, and I will try to stay abreast of major changes that could affect me. At present in terms of steps I can take, I suppose I can look for better media and start to backup my files, and even undertake migration of files in obsolete formats, yet this last step isn’t necessary right now, as the only files I have in obsolete forms that I know of are music files on cassette tapes, and I do not listen to those songs anymore. Yet it is important to know about migration for future personal uses and even professional uses, should my job entail keeping track of data (which increasingly most careers do require). I think that with my lack of technical skill, I will not be attempting emulation anytime soon, although again it is imperative that I am aware of this option should it be needed in the future. And lastly, I hope against hope that I will not ever need to practice “digital archaeology!” I hope not to lose files and be left with fragments of files, and the optimist in me likes to think that were I ever to “lose” files, there is a techie somewhere who could “find” them, lurking in hidden alleys within my hard drive, but I know this is not the best preservation strategy……..
Holly
Posted by: hmoir on: November 3, 2008
I have to admit I was quite dreading reading the document from the ACLS, but although is quite dry I found it to be well-written and informative. As a non-expert, I especially appreciated the way the report is written in plain diction and uncomplicated syntax, and the way the document is carefully arranged so that the reader knows what to expect of each section. I couldn’t find any points with which I disagreed, and I really hope that many people outside of the Digital History and New Media fields will at some point turn their attention to this document, as it explains the vital need for MORE of everything relating to digital and new media, or cyberinfrastructure, and their connections to the humanities. I feel the report describes this need and is persuasive, in a very understated and scholarly way, so the document describes the state of the field both to insiders and, perhaps more importantly, to outsiders—it is to this demographic that I hope the document will appeal most, in the sense that there are many people who are unaware or unconvinced of the advantages to incorporating digital and new media in the humanities. I would say that these advantages could even be viewed not just as desirable, but as necessary if the humanities are to further their stated goals, including the promotion of learning and of the public sphere, the preservation of the past, and a continued sense of relevance to the everyday person. Although the report gives a sense of the vast numbers of people, for example, who go online for information, the essay could place greater emphasis on this mass appeal, or at least this would be necessary if the document were to be disseminated for public use, as opposed to for generally scholarly readers: government, public and private, for-profit and non-profit, and/or NGO-type audience.
In analyzing the document I found it to be very well-formulated, the goals and conclusions of each section were clearly stated. The goals of the contributors to the report were as follows: “The ACLS Commission was charged with three tasks:
1. To describe and analyze the current state of humanities and social science cyberinfrastructure, 2. To articulate the requirements and potential contributions of the humanities and social sciences in developing a cyberinfrastructure for information, teaching, and research, and 3. To recommend areas of emphasis and coordination for the various agencies and institutions, public and private, that contribute to the development of this infrastructure.” These three major tasks loosely correspond to each of the three chapters of the document, although they are also addressed in other chapters.
The Introduction covers such issues as: What is cyberinfrastructure? What do we mean when we refer to the humanities and social sciences? And what are the distinctive needs and contributions of these disciplines in cyberinfrastructure? I am very appreciative that the authors of the report chose clarity over fancy prose, and decided to state explicitly the answers to issues which may seem obvious to some, yet not all, readers. I don’t think for the readers of this blog that I have to define such terms as the humanities; however, it may be useful to indicate, briefly, what is meant by cyberinfrastructure—in a somewhat governmental attempt to be all-inclusive, the term is a bit of a mouthful, but it serves the purposes of the report well enough. For a very detailed description of the term, refer to page 6 in the document; but for now just know that the word refers to the infrastructure of scholarship in the digital realms. Or as the essay states, “if infrastructure is required for an industrial economy, then we could say that cyberinfrastructure is required for a knowledge economy.” In explaining the title, the report states that “the online world is a new cultural commonwealth in which knowledge, learning, and discovery can flourish. Our aim, therefore, is to show how best to achieve this cultural commonwealth for the betterment of all.”
I think this use of the term “commonwealth” is very deliberate, and the committee must have discussed many options before settling on this final term, which both in denotation and connotation reflects the goals of the project, and also serves as excellent PR for a report that advocates greater use of new media in the humanities—a cause of which many readers may be skeptical. Hence the committee clearly chose a persuasive and even quite manipulative term with historical and humanistic referents. To refer to new media as a “cultural commonwealth” accessible to all is much more convincing to cynics than simply a term such as “new media” or “online world,” as it suggests such concepts as universality and mass appeal, as well as a gentle embrace of the future, but one that does not reject the past—I think it is important for audiences in the humanities, especially in academia, to be courted with delicate language such as this, since to title the report otherwise and emphasize the relative newness of these changes and the rapid pace of technological change, would simply scare off many academics immediately, at least those who study the humanities.
I agree with the chapter layout and thought it made perfect sense. It seems to me that Chapter 1 discusses the advantages of new media and related online realms, Chapter 2 talks about the disadvantages, and Chapter 3 discusses possible paths by which to proceed. Or as the document states: “Chapter 1 makes the case for the transformative potential of an improved cyberinfrastructure with respect to the preservation and availability of our cultural heritage. Chapter 2 explores the constraints that must be overcome in creating such a cyberinfrastructure. Chapter 3 provides a framework for action.” Chapter 3 also states 5 explicit goals for an “effective cyberinfrastructure,
namely, that it should
1. be accessible as a public good;
2. be sustainable;
3. provide interoperability;
4. facilitate collaboration;
5. support experimentation.”
I find these aims to be completely reasonable; they appear to be common sense and I cannot think why anyone would dispute these goals. It only saddens me that such things still need to be said, when ideally it would be the case that people realized the need for new media, online realms, etc, and that the report wouldn’t have to argue so hard on behalf of these sorely needed changes to the humanities.
Some of the most interesting discussion for me and for my specific research interests occurred in the section entitled “What Are the Distinctive Needs and Contributions of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Cyberinfrastructure?” Bear with me if I quote too much here, but I am fascinated by the discussion of the NEH in this report, as my Senior Thesis Paper as an undergrad concerned Public Art made since the 1965 legislation that founded the NEH. As the report explains, “In the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965—the legislation that created the National Endowment for the Humanities—two of the leading arguments presented for the act are: (3) An advanced civilization must not limit its efforts to science and technology alone, but must give full value and support to the other great branches of scholarly and cultural activity in order to achieve a better understanding of the past, a better analysis of the present, and a better view of the future. (4) Democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens. It must therefore foster and support a form of education, and access to the arts and the humanities, designed to make people of all backgrounds and wherever located masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants.” I just thought this shows very interesting wording for legislation—not many laws are this intriguing—and the wording of the law is prescient, as I feel it applies completely to our situation in 2008, with new media, the internet, and related areas.
The two arguments quoted above basically state that we must not fund only science and tech, and that knowledge should be available to all types of people and the masses can learn to actively shape the world they live in, rather than passively responding to it. Clearly, the authors of this ACLS report have quoted the 1965 act so extensively because they feel it gives historical and legal weight to their arguments in favor of greater “cyberinfrastructure”—these are goals that the U.S. has been pursuing since President Johnson’s Great Society and, in fact, before that. I think it is important for the writers to emphasize that just because the vehicles of knowledge may change, the goals remain the same—this helps appeal to audiences who are unsure how to deal with change and who favor the theme of continuity across history, as opposed to change. It is significant that the authors suggest, in effect, that the use of the internet, new media, etc, is simply an alteration or amplification of existing historical trends in scholarship, rather than a transformation or revolution.
Surely this is the wisest approach to take toward the scholarly audience of the report, an audience composed of readers more likely to be reactionary or moderate, as opposed to radical, in their embrace of technological change. I think this relates back to Lev Manovich’s point about how technology influences culture, and culture influences technology: the authors of this report have taken pains to emphasize that the internet and new media are in the service of humanity and culture, rather than the other way around, as this latter condition is a situation about which older members of the population worry, not without due cause.
I feel the document can be analyzed with recourse to concepts from political science, and particularly study of the U.S. government. The article seems to set forth what it hopes will become SOPs, and there is the clear tension between theory versus practice, and legislation/guidelines versus implementation. In this way, the document is similar to government-speak. Its very well-organized, echt-institutional tone is a bit dry but gets its point across. I think it was good to start with numbers of computer owners, numbers of people online etc, then compare to European initiatives, and admit that not everything is online, and that there are other barriers: “But many barriers stand between us and a future in which we might realize something approaching the unification of the cultural record. Some of these barriers are technical, but the more formidable ones are human and societal—whether legal, organizational, disciplinary, political, or economic. Humanists and social scientists, being experts in human culture and social problems, should be well trained to address these challenges, but they will need to begin with their own organizations, disciplines, politics, and reward systems.” I agree completely with this point. I think this is one of the most significant arguments of the report: the fact that roadblocks are as much cultural as they are technical, and therefore people of different ages and different knowledge levels can all help greatly with this shift toward a digital future, regardless of whether they have any technical knowledge.
On the report’s view of the ossified culture of academia, I couldn’t agree more: “Dickie Selfe (director of Michigan Technological University’s Center for Computer-Assisted Language Instruction) observed that the “challenge of cyberinfrastructure is primarily a challenge to our own academic cultures. This report is an opportunity to admit to that challenge and to commit to cultural change.” The university is an ancient institution, so it is not surprising that its culture is conservative, especially in the humanities”—I love this quote! I was quite surprised that the authors were bold enough to print this, especially as the rest of the document is so very understated. Does anyone think this is offensive to academia? I don’t think it is, but I am concerned some readers might take offense—although, of course, the authors are completely correct in their assertion that academia is largely a fossilized dinosaur (outside of new realms such as Cultural Studies and New Media).
Regarding the report’s view of open access, I also couldn’t agree more. The report states: “we should act to support the system of scholarly communication as a public good”—I agree! Also, concerning figures, I think the data serve to make the point well. The report’s funding figures for cyberinfrastructure are: Recommended $1 billion, actual $123 million—pathetic! The low level of actual funding is clearly a failure of our commitment to society and to learning. In addition, the report makes the point that Australia and the UK and Europe in general are much better in this regard of funding the arts and humanities, and I agree, they have always been better with cultural funding going back at least to the LBJ era, which I studied quite extensively for my Senior Thesis Paper as an undergrad. I remember reading many sources from that era onward, detailing the immense funding gaps when comparing U.S. to European funding of the arts and culture.
Another important point the report makes is “Private sources are important but cannot and should not substitute for federal and other government-funding,” I agree. I think that funding should come mainly from public sources, with private sources only as a supplement, not as necessary. I think it is appalling that such projects have to rely so heavily on private funding. For example in the book Digital History, the authors discuss how the excellent website My History is America’s History was shuttered after a few years online due to failure of public and private funding (p. 220-1)—I find this is be a sad and unnecessary loss, and it could have been prevented if only there had been more consistent amounts of government funding.
Chapter 3 is the most useful chapter in terms of giving ideas that are actually applicable at present, whereas the other chapters are more theoretical. Chapter 3 states that cyberinfrastructure should ideally be: 1) a public good, 2) sustainable, 3) interoperable, 4) collaborative, and 5) experimental. I agree with these goals and think that they are reasonable and well-thought-out guidelines that address the areas of most urgent need.
So to implement these goals, the report states we need to: invest, develop appropriate policies, promote cooperation including between public and private sectors, foster development of leadership, encourage digital scholarship (many of these points echo what T Mills Kelly writes in his blog “edwired,” including issues such as digital scholarship counting toward tenure requirements), create national centers to support digital scholarship, require open standards and useful tools (as mentioned in class, in areas such as this issue of open standards the University Counsel can be seen as quite a formidable opponent…), and create extensive and reusable digital collections. I agree with all these points. The only question I have is of the wording “reusable;” I thought that was a bit vague and the report would benefit if the authors would clarify this a bit.
A really intriguing point that I came across was the report’s insistence that funding must be secured for projects that may be perceived as esoteric or not mainstream, such as history collections from non-whites and other minority groups. I feel that the other points made by the document are expected, but this one is quite unexpected (yet welcome). I would never have thought to include that in the document, but of course the authors are right, a major downside of using capitalism to fund historical research and preservation is that it will tend to produce a very lop-sided and one-dimensional view of history, which will tend to privilege the white male above all else and downplay challenges to the status quo. So this is another very pernicious effect of the funding shortage I mentioned above—that multiple viewpoints will be sacrificed and, if not recorded, potentially lost forever. As the report puts it: “In public and nonprofit digitization efforts, priority must be placed on those collections that commerce is unlikely to fund. They will probably be collections held by institutions that are content-rich and technology-poor, such as historically black colleges and universities, which are custodians of vast and important collections documenting the lives and heritage of African Americans”—this is a very good point, and the authors clearly put a lot of thought into this document.
In conclusion, it seems clear to me that each college, university, museum, NGO, government agency, etc needs on staff at least one person whose SOLE duty is to serve as digital humanities expert, this would help to resolve many of the problems addressed in the ACLS report and to prevent additional difficulties from occurring in the future. It also occurs to me that much of the urgency of the report reminds me (in tone, not in substance) of the uproar during Cold War that U.S. was falling horribly behind the Russians in math and science—with the obvious exception being that the Cold War case was largely a false alarm, whereas these concerns with cyberinfrastructure are not a false alarm but in fact are very real! It is imperative that the changes suggested by the report are made ASAP. Much of the information in the report seems to be obvious and I was surprised that such data needed to be collected. This state of affairs recalls a quote from writer Amin Maloouf (writing on a different topic), that he hoped in the future, his grandson would look back on his books and think, this had to be said in my grandfather’s time, but now it is simply common sense—I sincerely desire that this will be the case with digital scholarship, cyberinfrastructure, and related digital realms—hopefully sooner rather than later. Concerning the YouTube video from Peter Norvig, I was not able to glean any information from it that I had not already learned this semster. I will attempt to make more sense of it before class, but at present I am quite confused. And on an aesthetic note, that man’s shirt is just unacceptable.
Lastly, regarding my personal preservation techniques, this may be a bit out-of-character as I am a very careful person, but I don’t have a preservation technique other than I press “Save” a lot when typing! I know this is an appalling habit, and I will work to overcome it. I feel really bad, except re-reading parts of chapter 8 from Digital History made me feel a bit better, as it seems I am not alone in this unwise practice. For now I keep reading this passage to (slightly) assuage my guilt, “For some reason, although lots of people talk about backing up, fewer people than you might imagine are doing it. We may curse the complexity of computer technology and feel annoyed that computer scientists haven’t solved many of the problems that plague us, but with respect to backing up, we have seen the enemy, and it is us” (236). I think that sums things up nicely, although I will endeavor to be more active in efforts to preserve my work in future, and particularly my digital work…………..
Holly
Posted by: hmoir on: October 27, 2008
For my purposes, the need for Digitization is minimal and will be conducted by me, and as to Preservation concerns, I’m not sure how important my website is to preserve for posterity!
I wanted to think about how this week’s theme of Digitization, Digital Collections, and Digital Preservation applies to my proposed website. As my website will be a Victorian Consumerism Virtual Museum, I do not think I will need to digitize any texts, as my site will consist mainly of images of objects with brief captions created and typed by me—I won’t be digitizing any texts from experts, as I want my site to be accessible and fun, not too scholarly. I will of course be creating a Digital Collection of images, and also the lessons on Digital Preservation are very useful for me, as I will have to preserve my site if I want its lifespan to extend beyond various changes in the web that are sure to occur soon! However, I am not too sure if my site is very important or if it fits the guidelines discussed in Digital History on page 226 concerning what types of information and New Media resources are worthwhile to go to the trouble of preserving.
NINCH Guide: I looked over the following chapters from the Guide:
V. Digitization and Encoding of Text
VI. Capture and Management of Images
VII. Audio/Video Capture and Management
VIII. Quality Control and Assurance
XIV. Preservation
The discussion was very helpful for our theme for this week, and the tone was accessible. These sections of the guide contained much useful information. I REALLY appreciated that the text did not dumb-down the material, but did make it accessible to non-experts. The definitions of terms located in Boxes set off from the text were really helpful, and the hyperlinks throughout the text helped, so I could immediately go to the site referenced for more information on the topic being discussed. I really thought this guide was excellent: clear, well-organized, extensive without being too lengthy, and in-depth without being esoteric. I placed a bookmark on the homepage for the Guide, and I will certainly be referring to it as I work on my Final Project for this semester, and for the next semester of Clio Wired, as well.
As always, I found the text in Digital History to be helpful and clearly-written. Cohen and Rosenzweig always manage a good balance between overview and details—they manage to tread the middle road, which I appreciate very much. They are able to give a sense of the scope of the issues involved without being overly in-depth, as well as to elaborate on issues that needed more explanation. In chapter 3, I enjoyed learning about digitization and felt the authors told me only what I need to know at this point without overwhelming me with too much detail about very technical aspects. I think I read this earlier in the semester and this is part of the reason people looked taken aback when I suggested in previous classes that digitization is very cheap abroad (page 105)—I hope the reason students looked shocked is because they hadn’t read chapter 3 yet, and not because they think I agree with what seem to be “digital sweatshops” in less-developed parts of countries such as the Philippines, India, and China—it’s just that I wanted to bring up the idea as a topic for discussion. As with any type of labor, the outsourcing of digital labor is sad and it makes me very upset to think that people are not well-treated or paid a fair wage.
I am super-impressed by enthusiast Jim Zwick, who scanned and digitized 10,000s of documents for his Anti-Imperialism website (page 107). That really is a labor of love and he really is/was contributing to the community of scholars. He seems to have been an admirable figure and I was very sad to learn he passed away this past January.
In chapter 8, I appreciated the authors’ explanation that digital resources can be fragile, and I never felt that the authors were talking down to the reader, even though these types of facts must seem obvious to them. I thought that the concrete example of data loss from the “My History is America’s History” website (page 221) really helped me to conceptualize just what can be lost when careful steps aren’t taken to ensure the survival of digital materials. But it is important to remember that not everything is worth being preserved. I really liked the rubric offered by the writers to give a sense of how to determine whether something needs to be preserved: “Is the information unique? How significant is the source and context of the records? How significant are the records for research (current and projected in the future)?” (page 226).
I felt that chapter 8 fit perfectly with Rosenzweig’s article “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era.” The article was engagingly written and fun to read (Bert is Evil!), and discusses in a very balanced way the pros and cons of digital history, and specifically the disadvantages involved with preserving forms of digital history for future generations. I concur with Rosenzweig that ideally the federal government would take the lead in organizing efforts to preserve the digital record, and that current efforts seem to be haphazard and not coordinated with each other. Lastly I agree that “in the 21st century, we will be faced with re-creating the historical profession” (Rosenzweig 24), in large part because the demands of preserving digital history will mean that we have to broaden our conceptions of what it means to be a good historian who takes into account both the past and the future.
Back to discussing the book Digital History, I also agreed with the quote offered from Louis Pasteur about how to cope with change in an inconstant world; Pasteur stated, “Chance favors the prepared mind” and I agree with the quote as well as with Cohen and Rosenzweig’s conclusion, “the caprice of technological change as well as future efforts in digital preservation by smart librarians and computer scientists will likely reward the well-prepared website” (page 246).
I also agreed with the “Final Thoughts” from Cohen and Rosenzweig, which seemed very appropriate and also encouraged me to not feel so overwhelmed by the demands of Digital History. The authors note that, of course, in academia deliberation and pondering over a project are very important, yet with New Media it is also important to remember that issues such as timely updates and broad participation in the internet and New Media mean that there will be many digital products that aren’t exactly right—but I agree that in light of the specific demands of New Media and of the goal of academia to spread knowledge, that it is imperative that one not let the perfect be the enemy of the good!
Holly
Posted by: hmoir on: October 27, 2008
Digitization: Comparing E-Texts of Anna Karenin, Google Books versus Project Gutenberg, Results: Google Very Easy to Use with Fewer Options NOT FULL TEXT, versus Gutenberg Clear Format with More Options for Translations, Audio Books: FULL TEXT always preferable for me!
I have been ill with vertigo Sunday and Monday, so apologies if my blog seems odd today. I found the assignment for this week regarding digital books to be rather intriguing. I suppose it hadn’t occurred to me that all digital books are not created equal; as a bibliophile, I find that in general all hard-copy books are the same to me, as long as the text is legible and hasn’t been scratched out, then I am happy with the book. But now I realize that although there are many advantages to the digital format, there are also disadvantages, including the fact that many digital books might not be a perfect copy. However, it appears at present that the advantages to digital books either outweigh the disadvantages, or the pros and cons are approximately balanced. And of course as a grad student (and perhaps anyone in this economy), the price advantages of a free digital book over the price of a hard-copy book are much appreciated, so I went into this assignment expecting that digital books would be far from perfect, considering that they are free and that many of the sites used to access these books appear to be in the Beta phase.
I first visited Google Books because the professor had recommended going here first. I searched for my favorite work of fiction, Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy, and I quickly received a page of 12 results, 6 of which were copies of the text in English, and 6 of which were related texts, such as books of commentary on the novel. I liked the layout of the results page as it was clear and easy to use and deliberately modeled after the search results page of the Google search engine, which most people already know how to use, so this is a plus. I really appreciated the inclusion of images of the front covers next to each search result. I think most people would appreciate this feature, and especially me, as I was searching for the version recommended by my professor as an undergraduate, and I remember him saying that he didn’t like the other versions as much, as they didn’t balance the demands of clarity/precision of expression, with those of beauty of the language, as opposed to utility of the language—other versions were too literal in the translation and lost the spirit of the text in an attempt to mimic the letter of the text. Anyway, so I quickly found the edition I desired, that translated by Rosemary Edmonds; I selected that search result and was pleased to be able to read the first 12 pages in a Preview, I think this is a very useful and helpful option.
Next I visited the Internet Archive, where I had trouble finding the text. After being frustrated for 10-15 minutes, I decided to move on to a different site that I had used before, as I had never used the Internet Archive books section, and I was finding it difficult to use, and the fact that I was having trouble finding such a widely-read text made me skeptical of the quality of the site—this book should be easy to find! So I visited a site I remembered from my undergrad years called Project Gutenberg, hosted by ibiblio.org. Thankfully, this site was very easy-to-use and immediately I found the text, with the option to read a translation into French, Dutch, or English, which was not an option with Google books. I selected English, yet I found that the first version of the text was not the edition I was hoping for. It was the edition translated by Constance Garnett, although I appreciated the mention of an editor behind the digital version, as it said: e-text prepared by David Brannan. I think the inclusion of a name might make the reader more comfortable, as then someone specific is accountable for the e-book—it certainly made me more comfortable. I was then able to access a preview of the text, as in Google books. I went back to the original search page to try to find a copy in English of my favorite version of the book, the one translated by Rosemary Edmonds, but it turns out that the only version offered in English by Project Gutenberg is that translated by Constance Garnett, so I would have to settle for that.
I then returned to Google books to search for the version translated by Constance Garnett so I could compare the exact same version across the two sites. When I clicked on the search result for that version, I had to log into my Google account, which for many people could be a deterrent to using this version, as I don’t see why one has to log in for this version but not for the Rosemary Edmonds version. But then I found the Constance Garnett version, which had been reissued as a Barnes and Noble Classics version. I had a bit of trouble with both sites when I wanted to progress from simply previewing the books to downloading the books; I don’t know if this is a design flaw or if I am just tired. I found it bizarre that I had to give a “nickname” to Google Books before I could download the full book, but probably most young people will not find this to be odd.
But once I finally found the same version on Google Books as on Gutenberg and downloaded the texts, things went well. The download on Google seemed to be quicker, perhaps because Google isn’t full text, but all in all the two experiences were about balanced. Counting the Introduction and the Supplementary material, including scans of the front and back covers of the book which were much appreciated, the Google Books version weighs in at 800 pages, as it consists of images of the Barnes and Noble Classics edition. The Gutenberg e-book consists only of text without the explanatory material offered by Google books, such as the Chronology, the new updated Introduction, and the Endnotes, but then again the Gutenberg e-book is full text while the Google book is not.
I read the first and last paragraphs of each chapter in each version of the book, and I could not find any typos or instances in which words had been transposed or the order of words misplaced—I have to say I was very surprised at this high degree of accuracy for both texts. I am not sure if this is always the case. My impression in that since this is such an old text that has been studied since it was first published in book format in 1878, that perhaps scholars had typed up all or part of the book as part of their work, even prior to the advent of e-books, so that electronic formats of the book have been around for a while, and have had time to go through multiple revisions and improve each time. I think I remember reading a version of the book on Project Gutenberg when I was in high school, so that would have been 2001-2002, and I think that was before the masses knew about e-books, although I could be incorrect. So I assume that Anna Karenin has been around in e-text longer than other books, I just have that feeling, and this longevity could have contributed to such an unblemished e-text. I think that from my browsing through Google Books and Project Gutenberg, the newer texts tend to have more errors, although they aren’t huge errors in general, and this seems especially true for the books that have been released this year, 2008.
So in sum, the first and last paragraphs of each chapter (they were mostly all there, even though Google Books is not a Full Text account, it appears that the missing pages are generally from within the chapters) all matched up and did not suffer from typographical or other transcription errors. Overall, I am very pleased with the entire experience of finding and downloading e-books on both sites (well at least e-books of the novel Anna Karenin). I am very pleasantly surprised by how well the process went. However, at first I was a bit puzzled that the books end slightly differently, and this should not be the case as they both claim to be translated by the same person, Constance Garnett. Then I realized the reason I was puzzled, Gutenberg is a Full Text account whereas Google Books is not, and in Google Books the last page of the text proper is 754, while pages 752-753 are missing from the text—this is insanely frustrating, and really ruins the text as a work of art and as a useful e-book—what is the point of an e-book if sections of the text are missing??? So in sum, I started out really happy with both sites, then I ended up very unhappy with Google Books, as many of the alleged e-books are NOT FULL TEXT and this is NO GOOD. Honestly, why bother to run Google Books website if the books aren’t all full text? I assume Google Books appeals to the non-scholarly audience—perhaps these people want to read a few pages to determine if they want to buy a copy of the book? I don’t really know; I don’t know why anyone would want a text with holes in it. Certainly for academia, there is no contest: Project Gutenberg is vastly preferable, and Google Books is not useful at all for me!
I want to include the final section of the text of Anna Karenin, as I adore this book, this is the final scene between Kitty and her husband Levin, where Levin finally realizes he does love his new son, and yet the birth of his first child has not changed him completely into a mild-mannered man, but rather he realizes he will always have a feisty personality, although his soul does feel changed…
Final Section of Text of Anna Karenin from Project Gutenberg:
“What is it? you’re not worried about anything?” she said,
looking intently at his face in the starlight.
But she could not have seen his face if a flash of lightning had
not hidden the stars and revealed it. In that flash she saw his
face distinctly, and seeing him calm and happy, she smiled at
him.
“She understands,” he thought; “she knows what I’m thinking
about. Shall I tell her or not? Yes, I’ll tell her.” But at the
moment he was about to speak, she began speaking.
“Kostya! do something for me,” she said; “go into the corner room
and see if they’ve made it all right for Sergey Ivanovitch. I
can’t very well. See if they’ve put the new wash stand in it.”
“Very well, I’ll go directly,” said Levin, standing up and
kissing her.
“No, I’d better not speak of it,” he thought, when she had gone
in before him. “It is a secret for me alone, of vital importance
for me, and not to be put into words.
“This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and
enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the
feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either.
Faith–or not faith–I don’t know what it is–but this feeling
has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken
firm root in my soul.
“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the
coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions
tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of
holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still
go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for
it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why
I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my
whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every
minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has
the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put
into it.”
Transcendent. This is considered one of the greatest novels ever written in world history.
Format: Regarding Format, the Format of Google Books I found to be slightly nicer than Project Gutenberg. Google Books consists of images of scanned pages from the book; I assume these have been compiled on a flat bed scanner. I think they are PDF’s which means I was not able to copy, cut, and paste text into my blog, and this was frustrating, although perhaps necessary as the Google copy is the scan of a version of the book produced by Barnes and Nobles Classics and reissued in the year 2003 with supplementary material, so that specific version of the book is under copyright to Barnes and Noble. Whereas the Project Gutenberg version is TXT file, not a PDF, so I was able to copy, cut, and paste text from this version, which was very nice and also very useful for all users, ranging from amateurs to academics—I think it is very important to be able to take perfect quotations from a text without having to re-type them manually into a term paper or the like, otherwise why would one use an e-book, unless one was able to search and to copy, cut, and paste from the text easily? The Gutenberg format is a bit stripped-down, but it serves the purpose well; it consists of full-screen pages of typed text in a very no-nonsense font which reminds me a bit of the font used when typing in commands into the ancient DOS operating system. But the font is sans-serif and easy-to-read, and the project has inserted gaps between each paragraph and between lines of dialogue, and this makes it easy-to-read, as does the fact the text does not extend fully from one side of the screen to the other, but rather has a nice right-hand margin which makes reading on screen much less arduous, and also is very useful if one prints out sections of the text, then one can add lengthy annotations and notes in the margin. In sum, all digitations are not equal, and all formats are not equal. Although the PDF format of Google Books is more aesthetically pleasing, Gutenberg is overall a much better experience because one can manipulate the document and because it consists of only Full-Text editions, and this Full-Text digitization is vastly preferable to a partial digitization like the one found on Google Books.
Holly
