Web site/app review: Historypin

Historypin is an online resource (www.historypin.com) presenting a wide array of user-submitted photographs, videos, audio clips, and stories and  in a geo-spatial format using Google Maps. Founded in 2010, the Historypin web site and mobile phone apps present materials principally organized by their relationship to specific locations. For example, photographs of an event taking place in my home town of DeKalb, Illinois would be available via a "pin" (link) appearing at DeKalb's location on a Google Map.

Photographs appear to be much more common than other types of materials.

A variety of individuals and institutions have submitted materials to Historypin. These include individuals posting items relating to weddings, birthday parties, reunions, etc., - as well as museums and archives submitting materials from their collections.

The Historypin interface allows users an opportunity to search for materials by date and keyword via the main map interface. For example, a search using the keyword "soccer" revealed a photograph collection from St. Louis University, dated 1965, relating to that institution's soccer team, as well as 1975 photographs of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and the Brazilian soccer player Pele. 

Many materials in Historypin may be of interest to historians, but the site will likely prove frustrating. All of the resources discovered by my limited review presented very limited metadata/descriptive information. Materials  submitted by archives, museums, and professionally-staffed institutions generally included (in my review of available materials) more information, but generally less than one would hope to find in a visit to an archive, museum, or library itself. Resources submitted by individuals or non-professional groups generally included very little or no metadata, aside from a title and perhaps a date.


The archive/museum/library materials that I examined often were accompanied by contact information for their home institution, which could enable an interested scholar to track down additional information via email. But my review of individual submissions revealed no such contact information for individual contributors. These are then materials presented in geographical and (usually) temporal context, but lacking virtually all other types of helpful information.

I also wondered about the long-term status of materials appearing on Historypin. Might an institution or individual adding a single item or collection to Historypin withdraw those materials at some future date? If a scholar or other researcher wishes to refer to those materials in a publication, blog post, or in-person presentation, how can s/he be sure that they will still be available in the future? What if Historypin goes out of business or experiences a catastrophic technical failure.

These questions affect a scholar's willingness to use/cite materials found via Historypin in a publication or other type of presentation requiring formal documentation. 

In the end Historypin is a positive development in that it brings a wealth of historical materials to the attention of the vast public using the web. In this regard it is sure to stimulate historical thinking and discussion on a number of levels. But its emergence raises a number of problems and questions for users interested in more than casual browsing of available resources.

Explaining Ourselves

The present political and economic climate for higher education, including history and the humanities, is very ominous. State-supported institutions, like the one at which I work, have been absorbing significant budget cuts from hard-pressed state governments for years.

The federal government's ongoing reckoning with a public apparently unwilling to authorize the collection of additional tax revenues, while demanding increasing funds for entitlement programs, stands to make this situation even worse.We have witnessed this at Northern Illinois University Libraries, where the March 2011 budget deal hammered out by the president and the Congress, which reduced funds available to the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI program by 40%, led to the loss of our Southeast Asia Digital Library project. Eleven other institutions supported in similar international education digitization projects also suffered a complete loss of funds. I would imagine that amidst current discussions of the federal deficit and debt ceiling, agencies like the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Science are bracing themselves for additional cuts.

This is not only about state and federal agencies' increasing inability to support history, the broader humanities, and higher education in general. It is also about the cost of higher education, which is presently increasing at an unsustainable rate. Pay Pal founder and billionaire Peter Thiel has argued that a college education is a bubble and a bad investment. A recent publication in The Atlantic has described higher education as  "an industry that has largely ignored cost efficiency and scalability."

The purpose of this post is to argue that in this climate, historians and humanists in higher education need to provide policymakers and the public with a clear explanation of why we are deserving of support. One's first instinct may be to recoil from such a direct request. Isn't the value of history, the humanities, and higher education in general self-evident? As scholar-professionals, aren't we above the dirty work of currying public favor, especially in a cultural climate marked by considerable hostility to science, the historical record, and higher education in general? Well, apparently not. In a climate marked by shrinking resources and increasing demands upon them, we need to explain ourselves. Everyone hoping to receive support from any government does. Those who ignore this debate will risk being left behind in one way or another.

Historians, humanists, and other representatives of higher education should use the web to reach the public in new ways. State-supported institutions of higher education are generally vigilant about communicating with legislators who provide funding, documenting what that money produces. But I would argue that individual teacher/scholars need to appeal to the public directly. Right now, to my knowledge, historians and other humanists do a bad job of this. If anyone actually reads this blog, I may well receive messages saying "I give public lectures!;" or "What about public television?;" or, "What about museums?." These are certainly not inconsequential efforts and institutions, but they represent an outreach mechanism that has changed little in at least 30 years.They do not seem to have been effective in building broad-based popular support for history and the humanities.

Many historians, humanists, and other academics use the web for research - accessing journals and collections, and communicating with each other via services like H-Net. But there is at present little attempt to use the medium to reach the public with a discourse aimed at non-professionals.

Starting this discourse can begin when historians and other scholars use the web to provide the public with brief discussions of their interests, findings, and methods.A short paragraph added to an individual faculty member's departmental web page is a start, but I believe short video clips of approximately 2-3 minutes can allow individual teacher/scholars to reach a wider audience. I can imagine that most practitioners might respond by saying "My work is so specialized that a lay audience could never understand it." To my mind, this was an assumption applied to the web more broadly in its early days. Few people thought that substantial communities would emerge online for the discussion of esoteric subjects like the history of eugenics  or architectural stained glass. I would argue that if academics were to discuss their research online, making an effort to use accessible terminology, they might be surprised at the attention they attract.

I have of course touched on this general subject in previous posts to this blog, arguing that the projects that I've developed at Northern Illinois University Libraries are an attempt to bring historians' findings, and their methods, to a general online audience. Today, I argue that the tremendous pressure for universities to cut costs makes it incumbent upon every scholar and academic department to demonstrate their unique value.

To my mind, there are two related questions that need to be addressed here: the value of in-person university teaching and the value of faculty members' scholarly research.  I will first consider the issue of university teaching and learning.


The Atlantic has outlined a vision of centralized instruction in higher education, in which online courses taught by superstar academics become a part of the curriculum at many smaller, less-prestigious institutions. This initiative does not propose to do away with local instructors completely. Rather, on-campus relations would be managed by personnel acting in a capacity quite similar to that of teaching assistants in a lecture course at a large research university. Institutions partaking of this type of centralized instruction would reap cost savings by retaining these instructors at a lower rate of pay than that presently provided instructors and dramatically reducing the number of faculty with an opportunity to earn tenure.

I believe that, while this vision may seem utterly dystopian to most members of the academy, it needs to be taken seriously. This is not to say that I embrace it. Rather, I want to emphasize that dismissing it out of hand will not make it go away. Institutions of higher education, and particularly non-elite public institutions, already face growing pressure to cut costs and reduce the rate of tuition inflation. These are likely to increase.


Historians and humanists, like most other professors, have long argued that knowledge is best transferred by face-to-face instruction.  As a graduate of small liberal-arts college, I certainly believe that this is true. But in practical terms, the rise of huge lecture courses in which instructors only lecture and hold limited office hours, leaving most direct student contact to teaching assistants, has already devalued it in many institutions. The rapid growth of online-only higher education like that provided by the University of Phoenix has also provided administrators and public officials with an example of low-cost teaching and learning. The pressures for what The Atlantic has called "efficiency and scalability" are immense and, in the context of non-elite institutions, may be irresistible. Historians and other academics' challenge is not to hold the fort and throw back the forces of distance learning and cost-efficiency. Rather, it is to gain the political traction necessary to exercise some influence over the shape that these developments may take.Historians, humanists, and other academics can attempt to gain this traction by discussing the broad themes, presumably manifest in the historical literature, that they present in individual classes.

So, what of research? As we all know, scholarship is a collaborative enterprise. In the historical profession, superstar scholars write syntheses from the raw material provided by countless monographs. If the number of teacher/scholar positions available were to decrease by, say, forty percent over the next twenty years, the work of producing these monographs would slow down dramatically. As a scholar, I would mourn this development. But I don't believe that we can expect much sympathy from the general public on this front. Rather, it is incumbent upon scholars to demonstrate how they do historical research, and how their individual projects touch the lives of non-historians. A simple emphasis on how historical understanding grows from an analysis of the existing historical record would make an outstanding contribution to a public discourse that often seems unaware of this fact. When pressed, many historians argue that our work contributes to an historical consciousness that in turn facilitates good citizenship. We could easily begin to engage the public by making this argument online, showing how specific pieces of evidence shed light on the past and our present circumstances.

I do not believe that the introduction of new priorities and arrangements in higher education will be a uniform process. Rather, it will be subject to many of the same political pressures that affect other public policy decisions. If scholars were to describe their research in an online format, as in the case of the short video segments I have proposed (and hopefully in other, far more creative ways), they could attract the interest of various members of the public. With further effort they could create constituencies for themselves and become a part of the process of interest-group politics. These allies could help to remind administrators and legislators of  historians and other humanists, as well as their universities', real value.

A recent piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education has reminded readers how academics seeking to bring their work to a public audience can face negative consequences in a tenure and promotion process often singularly focused on research. My proposal is clearly at odds with this widely-recognized aspect of academic life. A focus on research  may have been appropriate in a Cold War era marked by the American public's apparent willingness to support universities in the name of national competitiveness, prestige, and defense. But this approach is problematic in a political context marked by increasingly sharp criticisms of higher education. Many universities have become increasingly adept at documenting how they contribute to local and national economic development, but historians and other humanists have largely failed to make a case for their contributions to a broader common good. Individual scholars' online discussions of their teaching and research can begin to fill this gap, but I would argue that university administrators need to embrace and encourage faculty outreach as an activity contributing to an institution's future viability and survival.

This is not a sunny vision of the future in which, if everyone explains their research to the public, every university and every department gets to keep all of its budget lines. I have not discussed how academics, often lacking in technological skills, would produce videos discussing their work, or other such materials, much less present them on the web. It will of course be much easier for those at wealthy institutions to find the technical support necessary to do so. Also, it will likely be much easier for historians of the American Civil War to make online allies than historians of, say, medieval women. Many scholars' findings may arouse the ire of culture warriors who wish that the historical record, or fossil record, were otherwise. Nevertheless, I suggest that those who can use the web to make their work interesting and accessible to the public, and attach themselves to the types of interest communities that the web seems to spawn, may have a better chance to survive the present and future shake-out in higher education.












 

Review: Next Exit History

Next Exit History is an app (available for iPhone and Android) that makes information about specific sites or places available via a Google maps interface. It was produced by a collaboration of the Departments of History and Engineering and Computer Technology at the University of West Florida, with contributions by Wirehead Labs, a mobile software and platform design firm based in Pensacola, Florida. 

At present the portions of the Next Exit History interactive map that I was able to explore are principally stocked with information provided by the Historical Marker Database (hmdb.org) and the National Park Service. Correspondence with company representative Tim Roberts revealed that Next Exit History's app is in the very early stages of development, and its designers hope to create "a very simple and intuitive system whereby content contributors can easily transfer existing or new interpretive material related to historic sites into a user friendly mobile environment." Although they are exploring monetization strategies, they hope to continue to allow those downloading and consulting the app, as well as submitting organizations, to use it at no charge.

The company's website largely relies on a video to describe their application to potential users. It is candidly commercial in tone, describing heritage tourism as a major component of the tourism industry marketplace, and notes that the company's services bring this aspect of tourism into contact with the rapidly growing smart phone market. The video's main purpose seems to be to recruit local groups and organizations to contribute materials to Next Exit History's nationwide interactive map, available through their app.

At the same time that Next Exit History's video promises contributors help in reaching "an increasingly mobile and technology-dependent population," it argues that the app promises to provide "high-quality historical interpretation."

This is an uncertain prospect at best. Roberts admits that "We exercise very little editorial control over the content. The sheer volume of material we hope to bring in precludes any serious editing, so rather than vetting the information, we focus on vetting the source. All materials that are placed into the database are labeled with the entity or professional that uploaded them and they are ultimately responsible for the accuracy of the information. With that said, we are creating a `social' aspect to the app and website whereby users can comment on sits and content, rate them, and  `flag' them as inappropriate if necessary."

This sounds like a viable and judicious way forward from a business point of view, but it does raise a potential problem in regard to the quality of historical interpretation provided.

I would imagine that many historic sites and other organizations interested in adding materials to Next Exit History's app would be staffed by professional public historians eager to add legitimate interpretive resources to it. A number of other groups and organizations will in all likelihood not have the benefit of this professional capacity however. The materials that they submit would be less likely to meet the interpretive standards that Next Exit History claims for itself. I would also imagine that a least a few organizations contributing to the database/app would weigh the chance to provide the public with engaging interpretive materials against the opportunity to create resources primarily aimed at increasing visitor totals, especially in light of the overtly commercial rhetoric employed in the project's online video.

I know from experience that resources of the latter type would be extremely unlikely to contain discussions in anything but the most general terms. It is not difficult to imagine that they would also lean heavily toward emphasizing a site's positive qualities, in terms of overall visitor experience, at the expense of any real discussion of historical themes or debates.

The project's forthcoming upgrades, allowing comments on submissions, will provide users with an opportunity to benefit from others' impressions of materials' value. Presumably a number of users would eventually compare largely promotional submitted materials to more interesting and challenging resources available through the Next Exit History app, and subject them to criticism. Thus the more honest and challenging materials would gradually come to command more respect than those serving as de facto advertisements.

Nevertheless, as I see it, Next Exit History will depend upon professional historians and laymen devoted to the study of history to contribute high-quality materials to its database. This group would include historians employed by contributing groups and organizations, as well as individuals not directly connected to a particular site's administration, but still knowledgeable about it. In a nutshell, if historians and like-minded laymen adopt Next Exit History in the spirit of Wikipedia, the project has great potential.

The prospect of nasty interpretive battles over controversial sites, such as those pertaining to the Civil War or Native Americans, does exist, and the posting of partisan (in the broadest sense) materials can threaten to undermine the app's credibility. This is a problem beyond the Next Exit History team's ability to rectify, and was discussed by the late Roy Rosenzweig in "Can History be Open-Source:Wikipedia and the Future of the Past" (http://chnm.gmu.edu/essays-on-history-new-media/essays/?essayid=42).

Rosenzweig did not foresee a bright future for the type of open-source history that Next Exit has to offer. The above-mentioned temptations may be too much for interested parties to resist. I believe that such a project will struggle to maintain credibility without some form of central editorial control, and may become known as a haven for wildly divergent interpretations posted by individuals who see history in simple terms, but we will have to see what transpires.

If contributors are able to provide a stream of judiciously prepared materials, users will likely believe that the app provides them with a fair overview of historic sites and other like attractions, and it will attract a significant audience. If the materials submitted skew toward the overtly promotional or tendentious however, I see a less promising future for Next Exit History.

The Future of History Journals

The recent American Historical Association Annual meeting in Chicago featured an unusually large number of panels devoted to the discussion of digital history, thanks in part to an NEH-funded grant program at the University of Nebraska "Sustaining Digital History" (http://www.neh.gov/ODH/Default.aspx?tabid=111&id=164).

One panel discussed the future of history journals. In it panelists and members of the audience wrestled with the question of what form future history journals featuring and/or including digital materials might take. Many participants identified Southern Cultures, an online publication of Emory University Libraries, as a potential model for future development. This led the discussion to identify academic libraries as potential allies in the development of other historical journals with digital content. Several individuals participating in the discussion suggested that academic libraries could act as hosts or sponsors of individual journals, much like Emory does for Southern Cultures, providing them with editorial staffing and web hosting in exchange for the prestige/recognition associated with the publication.

As someone who works in a library, I had to concur with the participant who pointed out the academic libraries are as short on funding as any other part of academia these days. There certainly are not spare funds floating around to be devoted to journal publication.

I did not make a relevant point at this time, but should have. To wit, the major source of academic libraries' financial difficulties is the rapidly rising cost of journal subscriptions, especially those published by international concerns like Elsevier. In the past decade a handful of companies have purchased a majority of academic journal titles and established an oligopoly. As foreign corporations they are not subject to American anti-trust laws. At the same time that most colleges and universities, and certainly public institutions, have faced very significant reductions to operating budgets, the costs associated with providing faculty and students with access to scholarly journals have risen at a high rate. Subscription prices have climbed by an average of 8-10% per year, per title in the last decade.

The future of digital history journals is closely linked to the above phenomenon, which librarians often call the crisis in scholarly communication. If academic libraries could somehow provide their users with high-quality academic journal content without paying publishers' extortionate subscription prices, many might indeed be in a position to support a journal like Southern Cultures.

The best way to get out from under the costs associated with the publishers' oligopoly is to promote the development of open-source journals, i.e., publications that make their materials available online free of charge. Scholars often mistakenly identify open-source journals with the undermining of peer review and scholarly rigor. While there may be distinctly substandard publications out there making their contents available free of charge online, the existence of Southern Cultures and other similar titles attest to the fact that open-source publications can and do meet scholarly standards. Of course well-known journals that have accumulated great prestige in the course of a lengthy publication history remain very attractive to scholars seeking recognition for their work, or tenure and promotion. There are cases of the editorial boards of well-known journals decamping for a new, open-source publication, however, seeking to address the crisis in scholarly communication.

Beyond this larger issue, open-source publications can offer several advantages to historians seeking to produce and publish digital scholarship. Most open-source journals are born-digital, meaning that they produce no analog, or paper, version of their publication.   Where old-line journals still producing analog versions might struggle with the question of how to mesh digital materials with their traditional format, online-only open-source publications represent a natural forum for the integration of digital history materials.

The development of open-source journals can also provide historians with access to a wider audience than that provided by a traditional, for-pay journal. Work published in for-pay journals is presently only available to subscribers, including individuals and libraries providing access to their patrons. Materials presented in formats like Southern Cultures,  in addition to freeing academic libraries from large costs, can reach the immense population using the World Wide Web. Indexing by Google Scholar and other similar services can only serve to improve citation rates, which many institutions are increasingly including in the promotion and tenure evaluation process. Open-source, online publication can also help historians to reach laymen.

Many academic librarians are currently trying to promote institutional repositories (online resources featuring scholarly publications and other academic materials produced by the faculty of a single college or university) as a means by which they might disseminate such faculty work as copyright law will allow beyond the realm of subscription-only formats. Institutional repositories provide colleges and universities with an opportunity to provide various user groups and stakeholders, from potential students and alumni to potential donors and state legislators, with an accounting of their scholarly output. They mesh well with educational institutions' increasing attempts to establish the positive brand identity necessary to assure their survival and growth in the future. As one might expect, the best place for institutional repository developers to find faculty publications are open-source journals, which do not seek to constrain access to their materials.

My point here is simple: online, open-source formats present a viable way forward for the development of history journals including sophisticated digital content.  In addition to presenting a ready platform for digital scholarship, they can enable historians to reach a broader audience than subscription-only journals, and help academic institutions to begin to fashion means by which they might mitigate, or even overthrow, an economic model for scholarly communication that is untenable in the long run and severely restricts their ability to innovate in this medium.