The WayBackMachine

Take a groovy trip into the past, transcend time and space, delight at the poor web design of days long gone.

The WayBackMachine

The WayBackMachine is an amazing tool which allows users to view snapshots of webpages in past formats. This is an incredible resource for any historian because it allows one to track the advances made in webpage design and structure; through its utilization people interested in web trends can track developments in web infrastructure.

Google.com - Nov 11, 1998

Google.com July 29, 2011

 Since access to the internet has become widespread, webpage design has had the opportunity to develop through trial and error; as a result, conventions have developed such as the way we denote buttons and hyperlink organization. Flash and HTML formats have also changed the way we browse: from simple link clicking navigation to interactive three dimensional menus - websites have come a long way.

Online indexes in particular have moved forward. One of the most important developments in net usability is the simplification of webpage navigation. While many of the things we take for granted like organized panes of information (similar to newspapers) and 3-dimensional clickable buttons did not always exist and they took a lot of time to become convention.

For the purposes of this blog I've decided to look at American Memory - the american history index maintained at the Library of Congress' webpage. This website has developed much since its introduction.

July 20, 1999

Throughout its own history, this index of history has undergone some major changes. If you look at the first panel, from 1999, you see some counter-intuitive measures probably thought to be engaging. The tiles in the middle of the page run on Java and constantly change to reveal new pictures. It offers the ability to view the captions from the tiles; however, this comes at the expense of ease of use: the enter button at the top left is not noticeable. In viewing this page my first thought was "this website no more than a photo captioning index." This turned out not to be true, but I would imagine I am not the first person to be misled. 

April 20, 2003

The second panel depicts the website in 2003, as you can see the design has improved and many of the features are much easier to locate. While the page has made advances it is still cluttered. The left side of the page (where my eyes are drawn first) contains only two links that I personally would click: "This Day in History" and "What's New," while the others (FAQ and How To View) are completely frivolous; I will not be clicking those. Fortunately, both the "Search" and the "Collection Finder" are grouped together and they are relatively easy to find. This page shows tons of potential and with a little reorganization could truly shine. 

June 20, 2012

Finally, the third panel shows the fully developed webpage. The search bar in the top right simplifies my search, but the real benefit is the instantly visible index of collections which are sorted by topic. This is the purpose of the website and now its acquisition takes no effort. This website has truly benefited from its time on the internet. The highlights feature on the right side of the screen is very enticing and I think this website has been organized in the best possible manner. 

Week 1, Digital History and Problems

Humans have been developing a way to store and transmit data for thousands of years; some of the most impressive strides in globalization have been made within the last thirty years. I will assume you have never attempted to update your Facebook with a hammer and chisel.

Pre digitization, print was the best way to reach a large audience. Unfortunately, for the normal person, mass distribution of the printed word was limited to those with access to a printing press and access to distribution.

Transmitting information over large geographic areas was a conundrum prior to internet connectivity. One could send letters or try to release a newspaper but geographic and linguistic barriers barred communication. A master of smoke signals may have been the closest thing to a social media master before the widespread use of print; and still only a select few had access to mass communication. Radio and later television then stood as vehicles for mass communication, but even those were only available to a small portion of the population. It wasn't until the explosion of the internet in the eighties and nineties that the average Joe had access to global communication. 

As a prospective historian it's important that I understand the implication of a growing body of digital information. Thanks to Daniel Cohen and Roy Rozenweig I have some good direction on interpreting digital sources. Their book, Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, outlines many of the advantageous features of the internet; they have shown the true value of the internet is in its flexibility. As a medium, the internet is truly only limited by data acquisition speeds and one's ability to code. The internet offers a platform for anything from the arts to sciences to be presented in creative and entertaining ways. Considering that the internet is truly limitless in its capacity, storage space is cheap. Nobody is restricted from its utilization as a communication tool. 

Thanks to websites such as Yahoo and Google searching internet resources has become easy and fast; the flexibility of the internet is represented in the different indexing methods employed by search engines. On the one hand, Yahoo represents search results in an index which sorts websites based on content; this appears useful in the context of scholarship, however, the man hours taken to archive every website on the internet into Yahoo's index is unimaginable. For just this reason, Yahoo ignores many websites in its indexing system. On the other hand, Google uses blunt force to search for strings of text within web pages and presents them in order of popularity. This is a powerful tool and gives on access to almost the entirety of the internet with minimal searching. Unfortunately, when one searches a string like "Digital History" they are met with "About 75,300,000 results." A number that is truly impossible to sift through.

Stuart Fox's article "Digital Age Presents New Problems For Historians" focuses on just this problem. "Through Twitter, Facebook and email, a child in 2010 will, over their life, produce a body of writing that dwarfs the collected output of even the most prolific Founding Fathers such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. This volume will shift the problems of historical research from the archeological recovery of rare texts and letters to the process of sifting through vast fields of digital information that weave through legal gray areas of corporate and private ownership." 

Growing challenges facing historians include legal grey areas and, just as Fox stated, an unreasonable amount of information. Fox also does a good job of representing the advantages to historians; the ability of historians to write social histories have been greatly enhanced . Socially based history will become as easy to represent as the traditional "Great-Man" view of history.