Personal Reflection on Digital History Project

Our project focused on the development  of  music history within Charlotte. The aim of our project focused on sorting through various primary and secondary sources within the Robert Spangler Carolina Room music archive collection.  One of the most difficulty aspect of the project was developing a framework to interpret and present  the wealth of archival information  at our disposal. It was a daunting task to narrow down our focus. Focusing our project on music venues became a very useful frame work to articulate and present the bounty of information from the myriad of secondary and primary resources gather from libraries and other community sources.   Using the group contract as an outline to guide the research process the group was able to meet many of its objectives.  The group members were able to develop a cursory narrative of their individual sections with supporting archival data.  However, one road block the group discovered was the limiting  types of Omeka plug-ins the group could use. Under the Omeka’s base line policy agreement, many of the most useful and aesthetically pleasing plug-ins the group initially proposed could not be use.  The plug-ins like Neatline which allows you to create stunning presentation of your research material in a very visual appealing timeline and the Geolocation are fee based, and were not use by the group. I found charging for plug-ins very surprising since the software designers of Omeka  tool are part of the open source movement, which advocates for the free use and accessibility of technology.

 
While conducting research on my individual section about the African American contribution to the rich history of music within Charlotte, I have discovered some very interesting facts.  Driving pass the Excelsior Club for years, I never knew the richness of its contribution to the black community.  The Excelsior Club which is now a historical landmark is the oldest  black social night club in Charlotte. Opening in 1944 it would become a significant venue for shaping black political thought and a platform for  various musical artist and bands.  Famous national black artist such as Nat  King Cole,  Louis Armstrong  and local native Wilbert Harrison performed at the Excelsior Club.  As it was noted in a 1985 Charlotte Observer article entitle Preserving the Excelsior, gave an accurate description of the function of this club within the black community   “ the Excelsior Club was a  place where African American sealed deals, talked politics and felt safe in a segregated world.” Local radio personality legend such as Eugene Potts of WGIV got his start by broadcasting from the Excelsior Club. Finding one of Charlotte’s most obscure nightclubs the Hi Fi Supper club which was a hub for developing black music artist and cultural life was a very revealing discovery.  The Hi Fi as it is commonly referred to by locals tend to have a younger more working class audience where as the Excelsior Club catered more towards the  elites and affluent members of the black community.  Through my research a rare photo of the Hi Fi club which is cited on Charlotte Public Library website special collection image archive  and  within one of the most definitive  picture books about the Charlotte black community, the  Black America Series: Charlotte, North Carolina cites this club as the venue  when actuality it is the Park Center.  Discovering the latter fact was disappointing since finding any photos or any printed publications of the Hi Fi venue is extremely  rare. 

This research also cemented my understanding of the vast contribution of local black radio stations during the era of racial segregation.  In 1947 WGIV  became the first black radio station in Charlotte.  WGIV was a vital musical venue to launch local artist careers and help shape the political discourse within the black community.  Pioneering WGIV historical influence was Eugene Potts the first black disc jockey hired by the station.    Eugene Potts was considered part of the Original 13, which is a term referring  to the first thirteen disc jockeys hired fulltime on radio stations throughout the South.    He was considered the master mind behind the earlier success of the radio station and paved the way for many of the future disc jockey's who would later become success stories within Charlotte, NC such as  Rockin Ray Gooding of WBTV.  Another note worthy musical personality whose career was launched at WGIV was Chattie Leeper better known as Chatty Hatty.  Known as the queen with the golden voice in the 1950’s  Chatty Hatty became the first female disc jockey at WGIV.  Breaking both racial and gender barriers, she was also the first female disc jockey in North Carolina. 

I experienced several pitfalls while conducting this research. Number one locating Charlotte Observer articles on microfilm between the years 1930 to 1984 was a problem because this collection is not digitize. The only searchable indexes are from 1892 to 1922 and 1985 to until the present date.  In addition one of the key articles I needed for my project which I found using Atkins Library online digitize search index for the Charlotte Observer, was completely missing on microfilm.  Not being able to find this article became a good problem to have because I was able to tap into an under utilize resource, the Charlotte Observer Library. Visiting the Charlotte Observer Library and obtaining assistance from their archivist with troublesome articles I could not find was an excellent experience.  Secondly, missing an opportunity to interview Chatty Hatty, a central figure in Charlotte music history was a major disappointment.  After spending a month setting up this interview, I waited thirty minutes two weeks ago in a restaurant located off of Beatties Ford Road only to find out she could not make it because she had a bad case of the flu.  Hopefully, in the near future I can reschedule this interview because she is one of the last living black disc jockey of her era who played a significant role in shaping the cultural fabric of the black music scene in Charlotte. Thirdly, since there is such a minute amount of research on local black clubs  and radio stations  locating any external images of the building structures was near in possible to find except for the Excelsior Club. 

In conclusion, the scope of this research was restrictive to the time period between 1930-1960. Future research should investigate the development of black music venues from 1970’s to the present, examining within the black community significant radio personalities, and other culture musical forces impact on Charlotte music history. Also, historians should examine the influence of other venues outside of clubs and radio stations that shapes the musical landscape within Charlotte and the surrounding metro area. In reference to my own developing research interest, this project has been a great benefit.  My initial research interests entering into the public history program concentrate on developing expertise in African American history, antebellum slavery and Charlotte history.  Completing this research project has motivated me to explore more in detail some of the unanswered questions pose by my research.  I am seriously pondering investigating either the WGIV radio station or the Excelsior Club as  a thesis topic.  All in all, this project gave me some significant insight into the complex issues around completing a digital history project.  Also this project sharpen my understanding on  techniques used to infuse historical information with various multimedia technologies.

 

Express Your Self : Writing For the Web and Print

Traveling along the developing landscape of digital history exposes one to a whole new set of methods, digital editing techniques and the importance of understanding your viewing audience.  The factor which helps balance  the presentation of your work with all the fancy web layouts and having genuine well documented digital presentation of your research is the writing quality and uniqueness of your writing. Writing for the web can be similar to traditional academic writing but with some unique twist.

 Writing for the web requires one to have a keen grasp of the expectations and goals of the myriad of viewers of one's site. Writers for web publications need to present their finding in very concise sentences with catchy phrases and the ability to quickly convey the main points you want readers to know. According to Yahoo Style Guide, "Instant gratification, the ability to find what they want on a webpage fast" is fundamentally imperative for writing for the web. Compared to academic writing for classroom or research purposes which stresses elaboration and elongate analysis of information, writing for web seems to be more simple in many respects. Creating writing for the web requires one to have an understanding of the nonlinear hypertext ability of readers to follow your writing in very nontraditional ways. In the printed world, writers tend to write for readers who will follow the logic of their work in a sequential manner starting with the introduction and gradually reading up to the conclusion. But in the realm of cyberspace, readers have the ability to jump with a click of the mouse to the middle or ending of one's writing at a drop of a dime. Writers need to understand this factor and make the adjustment in their writing style, if they want to be successful in online publishing of quality work that hold their audience attention and keep users coming back to their site.

Writing for the web seems to have many more outlets for armature writers and future historians. Some of these outlets such as blogs tend to allow the writer much more intellectual freedom in expressing ideas and receiving a plethora of feedback from a wider range of individuals ( laymen, students and scholars). In contrast to the printed world, where the big publication houses, journal review boards and other academic outlets have the tendency to be confined to a very select few of gifted writers  with very rigid rules for accepting your work.

Developing your writing skills for digital publication necessitates breaking away from the traditional cognitive ways of perceiving the writing process. Freedom and exposure to a wider audience, one can reap if they  explore the very fruitful benefits and rewarding opportunities available to you when you chose writing for digital publications and other online mediums.

Searching for Information In the Digital Age

Research methods and ways of communicating information has rapidly increased with the emerging social media technologies such as Twitter and Facebook. Along with the ability to communicate information by means of social technology, the data gathering phase of research has dramatic advanced with the ever evolving technological related developments in search engine tools. The recent collection of articles for this week reading assignment shedded some light on a few of the innovative data mining techniques and software development within this new digital era. For example in the article entitled “From Bable to Knowledge”, discusses ways to comb through massive digital collections. Using programs such as Application Programming Interfaces (API’s), researchers are empowered with the ability to find patterns in data by having the ability to “ query databases directly from server to server without using web interfaces”. The technology which undergird the operation of the myriad of API’s software such as Syllabus Finder allows teachers to investigate common ideals, concepts and references that can be used to develop their courses. As well as understanding data techniques to extract information from huge historical digital archives, researchers should understand the ways in which search engines search for topics and the rank order of keywords in search outputs. The article on Digital History Hacks (2005-08) covered the topic of exploring innovative ways in which digital historians are clearly getting information on individual search behavior by analyzing keyword listings with different types of concordance software. Knowing about the concordance process can assist one in developing better search strategies and key words and tags to draw people to your website.

 

Digital searching has increase historians ability to sift through enormous amounts of information. With an information overflow of data,  historians we still need to incorporate traditional historical methodology techniques to organize material and to present information in a meaningful yet scholarly way.

Notes

Daniel Cohen, From Babel to Knowledge: Data Mining Large Digital Collections, available at http://dlib.org/dlib/march06/cohen/03cohen.html. Acessed October 22, 2012.

Patrick Leary, Googling the Victorians, available at www.victorianresearch.org/googling.pdf. Accessed October 22, 2012.

William Turkel, Digial History Hacks: Methodology for the infinite archive, http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com/2006/10searching-for-history.html. Accessed October 22, 2012.

 

Twitter Impact on Education

The rise in social media is having a significant impact on the discipline of education and its many related subfields such as history. The institution of higher education seems to be having a renaissance in student engagement with teachers who incorporate elements of social media tools. The recent article I read focused on the use of twitter as an agent to promote learning within classrooms in higher education. The researchers argued that Twitter has the ability  to sustain students interest in subject matters and create more active involvement in their own learning process.  According to this article, live tweeting can  help facilitate more concentrate efforts to listen  and pay closer attention to classroom subject matters and enhance  one’s ability to gather information. Teachers love this ability of Twitter because more student engagement  tend to lead to better discussions during class lectures,  besides it encourages students to become more receptive to information which tends to produces more positive educational  outcomes such as good grades for students.   Furthermore, the article  discussed that most teachers under utilize Twitter by placing too much emphasis of its usage as an effective tool for enhancing inclass room discussions.   Thus, the main argument within this article suggest one of the most effective usage of twitter is its ability to enhance active, informal out-side class learning.   Interesting to note when I read this article was the evolving terminology of Twitter and other social media tools use which seems at time pretty asinine. This article introduce me to the word “Twibes”,  which  is when a entire classes  forms  Twitter groups and spread information in real time”.

Twitter and other social media tools are here to stay. Intellectuals who are still asleep in the use of social media as a means to enhance traditional teaching methods will become dinosaurs as more students become aware of the linkage of these tools as means to increase learning and better their grades. As the author suggest one day  “…students will demand that faculty members communicate digitally, via instant messaging, Twitter and other technologies”. When that day arrives professors will either adapt or fall victims of the new paradigms in learning, that new social media tools such as twitter  are forcing on field of higher education.

 

Notes

Eva Kassens-Noor. Twitter as a teaching practice to enhance active and informal learning in higher education: The case of sustainable tweets. Active Learning in Higher Education 2012 13:9 . Access  October 18,2012http://ehis.ebscohost.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/eds/detail?sid=611bfb34-5caf-4eb7-a674-1b46461ec40b%40sessionmgr14&vid=3&hid=4.

The Evolving World of Digital History: Implications for Historians and their Practices

Transforming the intellectual landscape of historians is the rapid emerging and ever evolving technological developments within the field of history. The  wave of new social media,  increase access to research databases and  new ways of publishing traditional historic material are creating rapid changes in how historians practice and think about history.  Reviewing the articles on the American Historical Association  (http://www.historians.org/index.cfm) website gave me a very concise overview of the plethora of issues and changes facing historians in the digital age.

            Key highlights which were  interesting to me focused on teaching methods. Examining  David Voelker article  gave one insights into ways in which  new teaching pedagogies are being shape by technology.  David Voelker in “Blogging for your Students” suggest digital history practices are allowing him to have more interactive classroom  discussions and more efficiently guide reading assignments.   Using blogs as a reading prompt seems to be an effective way to engage students to think critically and make them become more active readers.  I can personally understand the value using blogs to facilitate  reading comprehension development within historical subject areas because the input from professors and reading prompts can help you navigate through difficult reading material. I know when I took a history class on Slavery, my professor blog which had some definitions of important terms made the reading assignment easier for me to understand.    Besides, assisting scholars with coming up with innovative teaching methods to enhance their impact on students learning digital history is impacting scholars on a personal, intellectual level.

            The emergence of digital history allows scholars more collaborative way to interact with other scholars and to reach new audiences. As discussed in “ H- Net: Digital Discussion for Historians”  H-Net  (http://www.h-net.org/) is a convenient way for historians  to post and exchange ideas,  to moderate discussions groups and  to list scholarly references.  In my personal examination of this site, I was overwhelm by the amount of topics and discussion groups.  Freeing scholars from the traditional modes of publication (print journals and books) I think is one of the most profound impacts of digital history innovations for the individual history scholar. Many more historians can participate in the public discourse of history related subjects.  Digital history allows historians the ability to publish directly to the web using outlets such as blogs, wiki’s and the growing amount of online historic journal sites. These methods allow more scholars to participate in the publishing process and  bypass some of the stifling and political referee journal publications with all there rigid rules and self selected editors.  The freeing of the scholar from the academic plantation of traditional publishing and tenure methods, I think is one of the most important and rewarding elements of coming from the new field of digital history.   

 

Notes

 

An Editor note, History and the Changing Landscape of Information, http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0705/0705tec1.cfm. Accessed October 11. 2012.

Matthew Gilmore,  H-Net: Digital Discussion for Historians, available at http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0705/0705tec1.cfm. Accessed October 11, 2012.

David Voleker, Bloging for Students, available at http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0705/0705tec7.cfm. Acessed October 11, 2012.

 

My New Insight into Wikipedia

This was a very interesting assignment. I personally use Wikipedia mostly to obtain a cursory understanding of concepts and definitions.  Using Wikipedia  as a primary source for history or related subjects, I rarely do. On this assignment,  I examined some of my favorite psychologist and historians biographies. I was struck so little information was posted on them. John Henry Clark, a notable and well cited historian within the field of Africana Studies had only a blur of information. The contributors snap shots of his life were over simplistic and took some intellectual cheap shots as to his academic credentials, which was the first time I have seen that cited in reference  to his life.  The question of accuracy of facts cited on Wikipedia is reinforced when you  see such slanderous facts incorporated into bios of famous people. The discussion tab which is an unique feature of Wikipedia had a plethora of different views about this historian.    It was reinforcing to see other post question the accuracy of this wiki.   Besides some of the obvious errors, I found on people who I am very familiar with like Naim Akbar, a prominent  psychologist who has written several articles and books about the psychological and behavior functioning of Africans scatted throughout the  Western Diaspora, I was struck by the information not included on certain historical subjects and individual bios such as his.  The discussion tab gave me a unique perspective on the developing  body of work on some of my favorite history subjects and historians. Even though I might not agree with some of the information I found on some sites, I think historians should help shape the discourse on subjects within the discussion tab and refer the general  consumer of historical information to reliable sources. The discussion tab is a good way to help patrol and shape the discourse on some of your favorite subjects.    

The Glue that Binds Us: Developing a Digial History Contract

The first thing I realized after completing our contract is it allowed me to truly understand some of the minute things which help separate a historian and the layman who attempts to create historical websites. The ability to thoughtfully plan out your project and incorporate historical methodology in the collection and narration of the project was clearly reinforced during my experience with creating the digital history contract.  Also the process of creating this contract personally helped give me some focus after debating and sharing ideas with colleagues. Unlike many undergraduate group projects which I dreaded with a passion, I like the fact that the contract clearly holds each individual accountable and defines their responsibility in a clearly objective fashion.

My early research on this project is leading me to discover some very interesting and exciting facts about Charlotte music history. Finding one of Charlotte’s most obscure nightclubs which was a hub for developing Black music artist and cultural life has been an exciting discovery. Also my tentative collection of African American musicians, deejays and the impact of WGIV radio station within the black community will contribute significantly to the growing body of knowledge on this subject. Potential problems I foresee on this project, are securing some of the interviews with local artist.  Already, I have experienced one major disappointment when I discovered one of  the major custodians of knowledge within Black music circles I had on my list to interview, died recently.  Other barriers I might encounter on this project are securing some photographs of historic Black clubs that are no longer in existence.