Project Proposal: History through 18th Century Clothing
Review of other sites
To effectively build this project, it is necessary to understand how other similar sites were built. The following reviews include one for the overall concept, one for the clothing primer, two for the immersive world, and one site for the document database. Within the reviews notes indicate lessons taken from the site that apply to the project.
Overall concept—DoHistory
DoHistory (http://www.dohistory.org) leads the visitor through the process of understanding what ordinary people’s lives were like in the past. “It is an experimental, interactive case study” which draws on the book and film A Midwife’s Tale to explore tools available to historians in chronicling lives of the past.
Based on A Midwife’s Tale, the site draws on the current, sound scholarship of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, as well as an array of primary source material. The site incorporates interactive tools as well as traditional web presentation of primary sources, including graphics of the original diary and typed transcription. It also presents the story of making the film A Midwife’s Tale, as well as a collection of resources for visitors to begin pursuing their own research. It was created primarily for those who wanted to know more: more about Ulrich’s experience, more about Laurie Kahn-Leavitt’s experience, and more about “doing” history.
It is a refreshingly in-depth web site, with careful interweaving of the various components through hypertext. The navigation and layout make it easy to move around the site without getting lost. One of the few aesthetic details that would benefit from slight tweaking are the rollovers present on the home page: the text that appears to further explicate the link is too crowded, and difficult to read.
One of the interactive tools for exploring history, “One Rape. Two Stories. ”, shows the developer’s perceptiveness about visitor’s likely web behavior. Instructed at the beginning to follow one story all the way through, then look at the other story, I nonetheless jumped between the two stories at will. At the conclusion, after asking the visitors what they think, the developers nudge visitors to return to the beginning and follow one path in order to understand better the information available: “If you are like most people, you probably jumped back and forth between Martha's story and the official story. If that's the case, try reading just the official history . . . and then just Martha's story.” It will be important to consider what portions of the project site may need similar guidance provided to the students.
One of the few minor disappointments with the site is at the top of “Teaching with this Web Site,” where there is an outdated announcement for a workshop. In the peculiar manner of the web, that one outdated statement detracts from the rest of the excellent material presented on the page, simply because users have different expectations about a web site’s currency of information than a printed information packet. This issue points to the need to be certain when designing the structure of the project site to be extremely careful about where semester-specific information is placed, so that no outdated content sneaks by from one term to the next. While one of the design requirements is to have course information integrated with the other sections, these two apparently contradictory requirements can be satisfied by using technology such as server side includes. Another minor disappointment is that I wish I could see the map of Hallowell with the detail of JT Imaging technology, found at the Center for History and New Media site (http://chnm.gmu.edu). It will be important to provide detail rich images for the students; a technology such as JT Imaging or Viewpoint will be necessary to achieve this goal. If a reasonable technology can be found that will provide the same level of detail and also allow students to “walk around” the objects, that would be preferable.
Overall, the site is an excellent combination of information and technology. It provides more than just paper or film alone could provide, taking advantage of the unique qualities of new media to further visitor’s exploration of history. It also fosters and encourages a sense of wonder and excitement about “doing” history.
Clothing primer—Colonial Williamsburg
Colonial Williamsburg (http://www.history.org/history/clothing/index.cfm) combines some of the “look & see” approach of art museums with scholarly articles and educational games for children. The site has six main sections: introduction, women’s clothing, men’s clothing, milliner shop, costume design, and children’s clothing. Since the site reflects what visitors would see at Colonial Williamsburg, there are sections which address African-American clothing and tradesmen’s clothing, as well as the more familiar descriptions of the fancy clothing of the gentry class found at other sites. Aside from some organizational quirks (children’s clothing might be better situated with women’s and men’s clothing rather than after the costume design center), navigational issues (the introduction puts the viewer in a linear structure with no idea how long it is, and no way to navigate it other than ‘previous’ and ‘next’), and minor typographical errors (found in the anatomy of a man’s suit), it is generally well thought-out and put together.
The most fun and delight comes from an eighteenth-century paper doll. Visitors step through a narration of how a young (gentry) girl would get dressed, and then can test their memory by playing with a virtual paper doll, dragging pieces across the screen and placing them on the doll. The pieces will only ‘stick’ to the doll if they are chosen in the proper order. This engaging game captures the attention of young and young-at-heart alike. It is an example of something that could not be accomplished effectively in a non-electronic method.
The project site will incorporate this variety of formats in the clothing primer, and will include more substantive information in the lecture modules. Rather than simply showing a scrapbook of reproduction clothing worn by interpreters, sections of the primer that discuss the differences of clothing among the gentry, middling sort, commoners, and slave/indentured servant, will contain substantive discussions about the differences in the clothing, and the reasons for those differences. Additionally, the primer will include detail rich images of the clothing.
Immersive world—Theban Mapping Project and Magic, Illusion, and Detection in Turn of the Century America, Fall 2000
The 3D tomb that is part of the Theban Mapping Project (http://www.thebanmappingproject.com) and Magic, Illusion, and Detection in Turn of the Century America, Fall 2000 (http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/syl.html) are two very different types of immersive worlds. They each draw the viewer in to experience a different place. The one is created using a high-tech laser mapping software to create a 3D world that viewers in essence walk through with an expert in the field; the other uses a more accessible combination of JavaScript and meta tags and users at times wander, at times are taken, through the site.
The 3D tour of a tomb included in the Theban Mapping Project runs as an animation along a time line, combining commentary by a leading expert with a wire-frame rendition of the tomb and “hot spots” that lead to high resolution images of certain highlights of the tomb. The tour pauses while the user examines these high resolution images (as a side note, the technology for these detail rich images is not quite as good as either JT Imaging or Viewpoint, though it is quite good, and certainly better than Eyespy), and the user chooses to resume the tour when ready to do so. The screen is divided into sections for the tour, the main portion shows the 3D animation of the tomb, and a side portion shows the tour's progress in relation to a map of the overall tomb, so that the user has an excellent sense of where they are at all times.
The world that users enter with Magic, Illusion, and Detection, is a shadowy, mysterious, and somewhat eerie one, appropriate to the theme of illusion and detection. While users explore the site, they are drawn into a world where they have some control, yet not the total control that web users have come to expect. The site, by redirecting the user to certain pages, is able to have characters appear, disappear, and force the user to follow certain paths at certain times. The story arc involves the user, helping the user to connect information that is presented along the way, thereby aiding the user to understand the culture and history of turn of the century America.
Document database—BNA reference libraries on the web
While there are history related sites available on the web that are document databases, the BNA reference libraries (no URLs available for non-subscribers) are closer to the desired goal for this particular document database. The rich tagging of the data in these libraries allows users to perform advanced search functions. The technology used to enable these features is SGML/XML and Folio SiteDirector, the web version of Folio publishing software. The advanced search features include the ability to perform fielded searches, either within a specific collection of documents, or across collections of documents.
In an telephone interview Sandra Duverneuil, former Senior Editor for Medicare and Medicaid Library, discussed the major issues related to creating a site of this kind. For the Medicare and Medicaid Library the primary difficulty was file formats. The source materials collected for the library changed formats from time to time, which caused difficulties in converting the material for use in the site. Since the project site's document database will be using documents that already exist, this should not be an issue for this project.
Other difficulties included proper training for those who are coding the documents. The document database is only as good as the coding that goes into it, and so it is essential that the people doing the coding know exactly what they should be doing, and why. Explaining why helps to ensure that the coding standards are followed in a workflow where the person doing the coding may not see the effects of their work on the end product. Another critical component for effective searches is to have a standardized list of key words for meta tagging. This standardization helps to ensure the best possible, most comprehensive, search results of relevant documents. Finally, issues such as spelling variations could cause problems with searches. The Folio software has a feature which allows the creator to generate a thesaurus, so that variant spellings of words and synonyms can be found with one search. This feature is an excellent solution to the problem of spelling variations in the primary source documents, where it would be undesirable to standardize the spelling.