Pimping the History web?
3 July 2006
If you're doing high quality history (or related commentary, technology, criticism, publishing) online, should you also host advertising?
I don't think so. I believe advertising detracts in a number of ways, and doesn't return enough to compensate.
I'm referring to the ubiquitous Google , , , and other and "" programs, vendors, and so forth, found on sites related to digital history.
Hawking your own book(s), by the way, doesn't count! Nor am I knocking making money on the web for its own sake. God love Capitalism.
14 of the 38 blogs I read most often - listed at right - have one or more features on them. More then one-third. This seems like a high proportion for blogs without overt commercial purpose. Is there value here I'm missing?
Lots of history websites use these strategies, too. Some of them look like simple honey pots - sites designed specifically to drive advert revenue, some are well-meaning amateurs*, but others purport to be serious resources, yet water down their credibility with advertising.
Carnival! Carnival!
28 June 2006
A belated thanks to history hacker William Turkel for posting a , this one among them. I'm humbled by the company. There were a number I hadn't seen before: all the more to keep up with, I guess. A pleasant burden. I've updated my blog links to add several for routine viewing.
Dr Turkel says we don't have enough for a - but how about if we stretch to include and ; , , and ; 's and ; hints to not to mention articles, '' or news items on the , academic , , , , learning with , etc.
OK, so these don't technically make a blog carnival ...
I'm having too much fun pulling the string on one of my guys: Moses Luce of the 4th Michigan. I mentioned him in an earlier about his alma mater, Hillsdale College. I got a great email from Hillsdale's archivist, Linda Moore, with some quotes, a new photo, and a pointer to the college newspaper.
Hillsdale has digitized and the Hillsdale Herald for the years 1878 to 1896. These are searchable, but displayed as page images (photos of the printed papers) - a digital historian's dream. I've felt like a kid in a candy store.
As a prominent alumnus, Luce is referenced and discussed dozens of times in those years. Social gossip, event records, family history, and biographical information are all here. Tidbits from the paper have also suggested other avenues of reseach for confirmation or clarification. Great stuff.
I'll be using this material to update our soon.
Meanwhile, I have a mystery - take a look and see what you think ...
Geek Speak
21 June 2006
I am pleased to see Laurie's "This Week in the Blogs" survey on CWi. Thanks to for putting the word out. It's great to see how an outside reader sees what we do. It'll probably help new readers find us, too.
In the Laurie notes that, in on the JFK Library digitizing records, I used
some geek-talk , as in "...proprietary software platforms or storage formats, but trust that core data will be available to the end users in standard web-friendly formats like .txt, .xml, .pdf, .jpg."
Such things are important even for those of us who are not as geeky as we ought to be.
I apologize for the jargon. I'll watch out for that in future.
To translate the snippet quoted above:
I am worried that the JFK Library will create digital records that can be read only by people using EMC products, but expect they would also make the information available to the public in standard formats all of our browsers can read.
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While I'm at it ... the CWi on Link Central says of behind AotW that we
get into some very interesting, albeit scholarly, issues.
"Scholarly" usually means stiff, pedantic, even dry and uninteresting. It also suggests a subject of interest only to academics. I am a life-long student, and I try to be careful with History, but don't want to come across as scholarly. Nor would I want to portray doing History on the web in those terms.
I'll work on that, too.
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