The History of History on the Internet

     Digital archives are useful, but ultimately unreliable, and according to Cohen should be incorporated into future archiving.  Using technology as a teaching tool has promise, but can actually be more confusing, as Brown suggests.  Brennan and Kelly’s case study demonstrates how the difficulty of a site’s technology can hinder its usefulness as a historical depository.  Between these three readings, one thing is clear: the internet is the future of historical inquiry.

     While books will always be useful, and traditional archives will always be necessary, digital forums have provided not only larger storage space for material that would not make it into the space-conscious traditional archive, but also a space for open communication and the spontaneous collection of oral histories.  The internet has provided a wonderful resource that is both full of opportunities and pitfalls.  This is why public historians have to beware.  The temptation of nearly unlimited archive space threatens the carefully constructed parameters of previous research methods, and it also makes the digital materials precariously dependent on servers and constantly updating technology.  There are few 8-track players left.  What about when the floppy drive and compact disc drives are no longer viable one hundred years from now?  There are even concerns that compact discs are breaking down and some from twenty years ago are no longer readable, either due to physical damage or different HTML formats.

     Digital archiving from the public is also valuable but overwhelming.  Archives of post-9/11 will contribute to research of this event years from now, just as the archives of the Pearl Harbor attack have serve researchers today.  Yet, the websites archived that day, and the subsequent websites set up to collect memories in photos, videos, and stories are a jumbled mass of information not easily organized.  In Brown’s article teaching devices and their organization figure prominently, and can impede research just as much as encourage it, as Brennan and Kelly found.  Overall, I support the move towards digital communication and archiving, but only so far as it is a supplement to traditional sources.  After all, aren't we all using some of that technology to communicate our thoughts about public history right now?!

Historical Accuracy?... In Hollywood?... Yeah right....

     The relationship of history and Hollywood, as Glassberg mentions, is complicated and much more based in profit than accuracy.  Toplin critiques the critics of cinematic history, wanting to place the fictionalization of characters and timelines in the context of cinema as a genre.  Davis argues that history told through film should also be told through a book in order to remain closer to the factual information, and allow readers to know the holes in the historical record, and plausible conjectures in accordance with contemporary society.  Frisch also deals with a war documentary, like Glassberg, but Vietnam was still alive in living memory, unlike the Civil War.  All of these readings have both positive and negative things to say about the adaptations of history in the media.

     I thoroughly enjoyed Glassberg’s look at the letters Burns received about his Civil War documentary.  The interesting divide between the letter writers consists of a regional difference along gender lines.  The fact that most women who wrote to him were from the North, and most of the men from the South is an interesting way to look at how America reacted to this representation of the Civil War.  The largest criticism seemed to be the glossing over of slavery, including the reasons for actually fighting the Civil War.

     The overly critical historians whom are dissatisfied with historical representations in film should consider the points that Toplin and Davis make about the limitations of film and providing history to a general audience.  Simplifying timelines, and focusing more on character development than events are necessities for translating history to the screen.  Unfortunately this means that romanticized affairs and misrepresentations of village life create collateral damage of actual relationships and social strata from that time period.  For some reason, movie directors seemed to think that the public cannot handle accurate interpretations of “foreign,” bygone eras, and will not be able to figure out the motivations of a wife claiming an imposter as a husband unless they injected feelings of love.

     While I admit that I do not give the general public much credit when it comes to understanding cultures from the past, maybe movie directors should give their audience a chance.  Although documentaries are not as lucrative as box-office movies, movies do not have to sacrifice exciting story lines in order to portray historical characters in a complicated, and realistic light.  Whether dealing with war, or with legal history, there are considerations that have to be made when critiquing historical films due to the medium of communication.

Personal vs. Public: The Challenges of Oral History and Public Memory

     Oral history and public memory are similar endeavors, but with very different trajectories.  Oral history depends on the individual, and their experiences.  Memory projects focus on the collective experience of a community, however, which minimalizes the experience of the individual, which also means glossing over differing experiences.  The book has an incredible range of international experiences, really opening up public historians to the way oral history has developed around the world. 

     The book has three sections, but I found the second section on “Recreating Identity and Community” the most interesting.  Particularly the chapter on Apartheid South Africa, and how memory has helped in healing.  Yet now post-Apartheid oral histories have to take a more individual approach in order to differentiate their experiences.  The political contention present in a country as torn as South Africa during and after Apartheid was a wonderful example of how public memory takes on a political agenda, and higher purpose than just memory collection: the coalescing of a community trying to come together after severe social dislocation.  Oral history did contribute to the public memory, but went into larger narratives of one voice.  Oral history in post-Apartheid has the opportunity to use these memories in a more analytic way.  Although reconciliation is not complete, these collections of memory no longer have to serve the one-voice purpose.

     Public historians often rely on oral histories for interpreting contemporary experiences and translating those stories into history for public consumption.  This type of public memory comes form the individual, but memory studies have gone beyond the stories to a collective experience that should be representative of certain social and cultural events or periods.  This difference between detailed and broad shows the complications of the individual oral history approach, and the generalized pursuit of public memory.

Don't Throw ANYTHING Away!

     Archive Stories is both interesting and intimidating.  Made up of three parts, this book has fifteen stories of historians and their encounters with archival research.  Dealing with both domestic and foreign archives, these stories illuminate some of the challenges faced by researchers, and how archivists control quite a bit of the access most believe to be the foundation of “objective” research.  The materials are not just there to be discovered – some documents are privileged, and some are even destroyed if an archivist does not believe they have enough importance to warrant storage space and organization.

     The chapter I found the most intriguing was Kathryn J. Oberdeck’s “Archives of the Unbuilt Environment: Documents and Discourses of Imagined Space in Twentieth-Century Kohler, Wisconsin.”  The tensions between the planned community that Kohler put together with urban planners in order to control the sprawling industrial village before it got too out of hand, and the actual community that emerged can only be seen by comparing the intent with the actual result.  That would be comparing the plans (and there were many of them) to the actual built environment.  Today, the community serves as a golf resort... quite a bit different from the original intent of housing industrial workers who built the expensive faucets for Kohler.  Oberdeck lamented how archivists put the papers related to planned environments at a low priority due to the greater emphasis on papers that proved the existence of buildings that had actually been built.  Understandably, archivists had assumed that papers on an imagined community would not be as applicable to history as documentation of what actually happened. 

     This book serves as a guide for anyone interested in visiting or using an archive.  There is even a chapter that addresses digital archives, but the main focus is on physical, domestic archives and the experiences historians have had in both positive and negative ways.  Oberdeck’s chapter was the most challenging to me, since I agreed with the archivists at first, until Oberdeck demonstrates that yes, documentation of planned communities, even if they physically manifest into something else, are important to historical research when coming from a more abstract methodology.  Historians need these documents to get at how idealistic urban planning actually played out in a realistic economic, and social environment.  So according to Oberdeck, do not throw anything out!  Even if you think it is unimportant, future historians may find intriguing ways to reevaluate history through these seemingly “useless” documents.  Now, this may cause a huge back up in document storage, but how can you make accurate and objective value judgments on history?