|
|
|
|
|
Posted by Monty Solomon on May 26, 2008, 9:51 pm
If you were Registered and logged in, you could reply and use other advanced thread options
Everyone's a historian now
How the Internet - and you - will make history deeper, richer, and
more accurate.
By Stephen Mihm | May 25, 2008
The Boston Globe
UNTIL RECENTLY, IF you were a historian and you wanted to write a
fresh account of, say, the Battle of Leyte Gulf in World War II,
research was a pretty straightforward business. You would pack your
bags and head to the National Archives, and spend months looking for
something new in the official combat reports.
Today, however, you might first do something very different: Get
online and pull up any of the unofficial websites of the ships that
participated in the battle - the USS Pennsylvania, for example, or
the USS Washington. Lovingly maintained by former crew members and
their descendants, these sites are sprawling, loosely organized
repositories of photographs, personal recollections, transcribed log
books, and miniature biographies of virtually every person who served
on board the ship. Some of these sites even include contact
information for surviving crew members and their relatives - perfect
for tracking down new diaries, photographs, and letters.
Online gathering spots like these represent a potentially radical
change to historical research, a craft that has changed little for
decades, if not centuries. By aggregating the grass-roots knowledge
and recollections of hundreds, even thousands of people,
"crowdsourcing," as it's increasingly called, may transform a
discipline that has long been defined and limited by the labors of a
single historian toiling in the dusty archives.
Some venerable research institutions are already starting to harness
the power of crowds in an organized way. The Library of Congress
recently launched a project on the photo-sharing site Flickr that
invites visitors to identify and analyze photographs in its
collection, while the National Archives, working in partnership with
a for-profit company, is inviting people to do the same to online
versions of its documents. And a growing number of projects are
taking the logical next step, creating "raw archives" of photographs
and documents for momentous events: Sept. 11, for example, or
Hurricane Katrina.
...
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/25/everyones_a_historian_now/
|
| Similar Threads | Posted | | Cingular Wireless Customers Help Make Television History | April 5, 2006, 11:58 pm |
| Sprint and Google Expand Relationship to Enable Richer Mobile Experience and More Choices for Sprint Customers [Telecom] | May 7, 2008, 9:55 am |
| Internet-History.org | November 11, 2005, 4:48 pm |
| Internet History Re-Opening Soon | December 24, 2005, 3:32 pm |
| More on Internet and Patent History | April 3, 2007, 11:51 pm |
| Re: More on Internet and Patent History | April 5, 2007, 10:37 am |
| Re: More on Internet and Patent History | April 5, 2007, 6:52 pm |
| Re: More on Internet and Patent History | April 11, 2007, 4:20 pm |
| Internet Explorer 7 Will Flush Its History | January 18, 2006, 2:51 pm |
| Re: Internet Explorer 7 Will Flush Its History | January 19, 2006, 5:24 pm |
|
|
Home Cabling Guide
Finally, an instantly downloadable book that saves you thousands in home improvement dollars!
Enjoy living in 21st century technology-advanced home while increasing its selling value and competitive advantage
on the real estate market. Whether your cabling is for home office or high-tech
leisure, you can wire your home yourself or learn "wirish" to speak with your cabling contractors in their language!
Learn More
|
![Everyone's a historian now / How the Internet - and you - will make history deeper, richer, and more accurate. [Telecom]](/images/header.jpg)
NewsGroups 
Yahoo! 
Google 
Windows Live 
del.icio.us 
digg 
Netscape 
XML site map