Don't know much about history

Canada's National Portrait Gallery Comes out of the Closet

2008-05-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

In the nearly two months since I've last blogged, I've finished up my coursework at Western and have embarked upon the final leg of my journey towards being a master of history -- my internship. I am two weeks in to a sixteen week stint at Library and Archives Canada, working in the Government Records branch. The internship program in its current form is quite new, but already I am very impressed with the number of professional development opportunities that have been made available to me and the other interns. One of these presented itself last Thursday when we attended an open house at the downtown branch of LAC, where the public services are located. The day included a variety of tours, including one of the current exhibit, a joint project with NARA (the American version of LAC) featuring a copy of the Treaty of Paris, and one of the National Portrait Gallery.

Before last week, I had never really realized that we even had a National Portrait Gallery. In fact, the only one I knew of was the spectacular institution in London, England, where I have spent many blissful hours in the Tudor and Stuart galleries. This institution is affiliated with its nextdoor neighbour the National Gallery, but not with the National Archives. By contrast, our version, an affiliate of our national library and archive, is located in an office space, barred to the public. The NPG is unique because it has an active collecting mandate that is more reminiscent of an art gallery than of an archive. It remains part of LAC because of its long history as a repository of nationally significant works, but it also actively purchases, and even commissions, new works of art and is constantly trying to challenge our traditional notions of what a 'portrait' is. And all the while, the majority of its collections and are housed in the Gatineau Preservation Centre and rarely seen by the public.

Currently, there is a movement afoot to set up the National Portait Gallery as our newest national museum (joining the likes of the Canadian Museum of Civilization), but things are complicated. Cities across Canada have been invited to compete for the privilege of hosting the institution. This has opened up a floodgate of controversy. What would it mean for a national institution to be in Calgary or Halifax instead of in Ottawa? How will we pay for it? (This is designed to be a public-private partnership, so the chosen city would have to foot part of the bill). What are the financial repercussions of physically moving the collection, which includes many old and valuable works? This topic has been hotly debated between those who believe that the costs of setting up the museum outside of Ottawa outweigh the benefits, and those who champion the idea that national institutions should be located across out nation, and not centred in our capital.

I haven't figured out exactly how I feel about these questions, but they are interesting ones, and

I'll be sure to follow the debate as it unfolds. Still, wherever it ends up, I look forward to being able to see this beautiful collection the way it was meant to be seen -- in a museum, open to the public, and not in a small and crowded storage facility.

Image courtesy of http://www.portraits.gc.ca/. Part of NPG's collection, it is an image of Japanese-Canadians being relocated to camps in BC in 1942 and was taken by an unknown artist.

Blogging from the Trenches

2008-03-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

Few would dispute that the internet has changed the way we learn. In the early days, websites were fairly static and unchanging, and so all the internet really did was increase the ease with which we could access information. Websites were, in effect, little more than the equivalent of books or articles available on a computer screen. But we are now in the age of web 2.0, a collaborative era in which we communicate and share information more instantaneously, using newer technologies like wikis, blogs, and social networking sites. Because the web has become such a fluid thing, we can learn and correspond in an ever more immediate and interactive way.

This can have interesting consequences for the study of history. On example of this is the grandchild of a First World War soldier who had the idea to use a very simple format – a blo g like this one – to stimulate interest and engagement in history. Bill Lamin, a native of Cornwall, England, used his grandfather’s wartime correspondence to create entries in a blog created under his grandfather’s name. What, for me, is the best part of this experiment is that he does it in real time, posting correspondence exactly ninety years after they were written. This creates an amazingly immersive experience. The blog reader finds themselves in the position of the family at home, waiting, day by day, to see how the story turns out. (And, just to be clear, he already had a son before he left for war, so we really don’t know how the story will end). The blog begins with posts explaining the project and introducing readers to Harry and his family. Starting in mid-1917, there are an impressive collection of letters from Harry, and there is a new post on every day for which his grandson has a surviving letter, and there are also scanned images of postcards, envelopes, certificates, and any other documents relating to the family history of the time that have been found.

This strikes me as a beautiful way for Lamin to share his family history with others, but it is also a very effective way to create interest in this very important period of history. Personal stories always make history more relevant, but what is so unique about this project is the real-time element. Lamin may be “just” a school teacher, and not an historian, but he has succeeded in creating an amazing experience that is immediate, personal, and very interactive. He has also received international attention for his efforts. Lamin has plans to publish the letters into a book, but I would encourage anyone who is interested to check out the blog as soon as possible, while you can still experience this project as it was originally conceived.

Do you really need to know what Freud had for breakfast?

2008-03-18T17:01:00.000-07:00

A common topic of discussion in several of our classes this year has been privacy. To what extent should we consider the privacy of historical figures? Archival repositories have been struggling with these issues for years. Families of deceased persons whose personal papers are bequeathed to an archive may wish to control access to certain documents and thus, the data that they may contain. For example, when Sigmund Freud’s papers were deposited at the Library of Congress, many of them were sealed for decades, with restrictions imposed until, in one case, 2113. While most of these documents have now been made public, some restrictions still exist, seventy years after his death. The reason for this was the concern of his daughter, and the psychoanalyst who was in charge of the Freud Archive, that he might be exposed to unfair criticism. But of course, no-one can actually own a reputation. [1] Information is information, and should be made available to the public as much as possible – right?

In our current, digital age, the issue of privacy becomes much more pressing. At least Freud could control what records he left behind, even if he cannot control who sees them from beyond the grave. The documents he left behind are of a conventional nature – things like letters and diaries that he actively and knowingly created. But we now live in a world where it is possible that we are leaving behind a trail of evidence of which we are not even aware.

In a previous post, I discussed spimes and possibility of a future in which all objects are connected in a sort of wireless network, so that their own personal history is recorded. The issue of privacy comes in when the objects you buy in the store are imbedded with chips that allow them to be tracked once you take them home. So it’s not just about the record you leave through email and telephone conversations, or through your diary and handwritten letters like Freud. Now it’s about what you buy and what you do with your possessions. The technology to imbed objects with small microchips and monitor its location already exists. It’s called radio frequency identification – or RFiD – and has been around since the Second World War. But in the past few years its potential implications have become more apparent and have been cause for concern, even alarm, among some. In a world that is increasingly monitored, where we are ever more frequently under the scrutiny of surveillance cameras, doesn’t this seem like the next logical step?

This technology could certainly have interesting implications for studying history, as I intimated in my previous post. But the already complicated issue of privacy just gets even stickier. Just as Freud’s daughter didn’t want the less flattering elements of her father’s records to come to light, who would really be ok with the world knowing their every purchase after they died? Aren’t some things, after all, better left unknown?

1. Joseph L. Sax, “Not so Public: Access to Collections”, RBM:A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage vol. 1 no.2, 101-105

World Fairs: Just Another Flash in the Pan?

2008-02-19T18:49:00.001-08:00

My first real memory is from 1986 – or rather, my first string of meaningful memories. I drove across the country with my mother and grandfather to attend my aunt’s wedding in Vancouver and the World Exposition that was being hosted in the same city. To be honest, my actual recollection of the Expo itself is almost non-existent, but I do have a rather impressive collection of memories (and a few photos -- one of which I've tried, without much success, to include here) from the trip. I’ve been thinking about that summer a lot lately, as the topic of world fairs and expositions has come up several times in class discussions and readings.

The idea of a World Fair is an interesting one in its relation to museums, department stores and carnivals – all places where people gather for entertainment, education or socialising. During the 19th century, World Fairs could be incredibly significant social events – think of, for example, the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851 (the first truly international exhibition) or the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. These early fairs were showcases of technology and industry, but they also involved dazzling displays of culture from around the world, an exciting event at a time when the world was a lot bigger than it is now. They were also great opportunities for cities to create lasting architectural monuments or public spaces – the most famous of these being, of course, the Eiffel Tower (not to forget the Space Needle).

Are these international events still relevant today? Perhaps the last truly important World Exposition was held in Montreal in 1967, during a time of promise and excitement. It was a time to celebrate the Centennial of Canadian Confederation, and the Expo involved truly innovate architectural projects like the Habitat apartment complex. But by the early 1980s, a world fair held in Louisiana had to declare bankruptcy. There hasn’t been one in North America since 1986, and most of us are unaware that they, in fact, are still held every 2-3 years – usually in Europe or Asia.

And so, since, in North America at least, world fairs are almost forgotten, what exactly is the point of them? The original idea was to promote international co-operation and friendship. Before international travel was as easy as it is now, it was a chance for people to ‘visit’ foreign lands and learn more about the world around them. But in an increasing global world, it seems like there is too much to compete with our attention for world expos to have much success. Public spaces or architectural designed for the events can end up underused or ridiculed – see my classmate Sarah Waugh’s recent blog post on her experience in Seattle, or think back to ever-controversial Habitat.

Expo ’67 was certainly something that meant something to Canadians – both my parents made the trip from Winnipeg to Montreal as children and still have very significant memories of it. But Expo ’86 didn’t have quite the same impact. And I’m not convinced that a World Fair ever will again.

For those who are interested in the history of world fairs, check out this website.

For these Ruby Slippers, There's No Place Like Home . . .

2008-02-13T15:45:00.001-08:00

In my museology class today, our professor brought to our attention a recent "controversy" involving Oprah Winfrey and a pair of ruby slippers apparently worn by Judy Garland during the filming of The Wizard of Oz. These shoes are usually on display at the Smithson ian Institute's American History Museum in Washington, D.C. but were flown specially to Chicago for a recent episode of Oprah's show, travelling first-class with the protection of armed guards. The "controversy" arose when, even as the museum director Dr. Brent Glass tried to get across the message that the shoes were fragile and needed proper care, Oprah insisted that she be allowed to pick them up, and then allegedly waved them around, and according to one viewer who posted on a discussion board dedicated to this topic, "the slippers touched and touched hard as far as I can tell." And she'd checked her tivo. I can't, however comment the specifics of her handling of the shoes -- the video has disappeared from youtube, and I can't find it to verify for myself.

So what's at issue here? Basically, it comes down to the fundamental question of access versus preservation. As Dr. Glass said, not everyone would have the chance to visit D.C. and see the shoes for themselves. But by taking them out of the museum, putting them on a plane and subjecting them to the whims of Oprah Winfrey, the museum was putting them at risk of irreparable damage. And for what gains? Well, the show was certainly good publicity for the museum. And Oprah got to have her fun. But seeing the ruby slippers on video in no way compares to seeing them in person.

At the end of the day all museums have to face the difficult question of whether to keep fragile artifacts in storage where they are safe from deterioration or to put them on display where the public can learn from them and enjoy them. So, too, must archivists face this important challenge. Modern technology, and especially digitization, can go a long way to improve access to fragile documents and artifacts. But I don't think anyone would argue that there is something very special about actually being in the presence of an historic artifact, and millions of visitors to the Smithsonian each year feel that way about the ruby slippers.

There is no easy answer to this question. But we can only hope that Oprah's little faux-pas did some good, after all: maybe it got people thinking about the objects they see in museums, and how important it is to take good care of them.

How is a Book like a Can of Beans?

2008-01-26T19:14:00.000-08:00

After my recent post on spimes, a reader comment pointed me to Clay Shirky’s 2005 talk Making Digital Durable: What Times Does to Categories. I was immediately intrigued and would recommend it to anyone interested in categorization, social tagging and preservation of information in the digital age. Shirky, who, according to Wikipedia, teaches New Media at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, has a fascinating and engaging way of exploring the world of digital and analog information systems.

What interested me most were the questions of how we organize what we know and then how we find it again. Shirky examined the flaws of classic library classification schemes like Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress. They have always been necessary, he says, because a book is like a can of beans – without the label, how can you tell a can of chick peas from a can of tomatoes? You have to find some way to organize them, and a flawed system – even one that has nine categories for Christian religion and only one for all the others – is better than none at all. But information on the internet is fluid, no longer encased in tin cans, and isn’t classified by one people or by a hundred but by millions. The problem with rigid classification schemes found in traditional libraries is that they are necessarily hierarchical and cannot overlap. The beauty of folksonomy – the process of collaboratively creating tags to manage and classify content on the internet – is that this rigidity no longer exists.

There are of course many potential problems when using this kind of system to classify information. Without terminological control, multiple words can be used to tag the same concept, and the same word can be used to tag many different concepts. We have to ask ourselves which we would prefer: a flawed, but predictable, system designed by professionals, or a spontaneous and ever-changing collection of tags created by the anonymous crowd? Shirky suggests identifying communities of practise, which means you can look at the tags just from the people that you care about – those with the same interests or expertise as you. A controlled vocabulary could be created, but it would need to evolve gradually, or the whole thing will simply return to the kind of hierarchical system we already have. In the end, this sort of collaborative classification is generally quite useful – and can be used to tell us about the way people think about information.

But would this kind of thing work on the scale of an academic library? Even though our current classification schemes are flawed, we all know how to work within them. But what would it be like if we could tag the books we take out of the library? We wouldn’t have to get rid of the Library of Congress, but imagine the links and connections we could find, and what we could learn about the users of these books. Maybe books don’t have to stay like cans of beans forever.

The Way of the Future?: Spimes and the Internet of Things

2008-01-15T08:08:00.000-08:00

I usually don’t understand much that goes on in the digital realm; computers are generally beyond me. In the past few months, I have only just begun to develop an appreciation for the far-reaching implications of changing technology – the way we obtain, organize and process information is undergoing a revolution right under our noses, whether we pay attention to it or not. In our digital history class, we have discussed technologies like OCR (optical character recognition) that are probably quite obvious to the computer-savvy among us, but I have to be honest – it had never crossed my mind to wonder how Google or JSTOR worked, even though I use them all the time. Although it has sometimes been a struggle for me to wrap my mind around these new concepts, I am starting to appreciate how important it is to try and understand this very foreign world. And when I came across something called a spime in one of our readings for class, I actually got kind of excited.

A spime is a term coined by Bruce Sterling, a science fiction novelist and design critic, to explain a theoretical object that has a computerized tag that can identify it and allow it to communicate. It can be precisely located, and tracked, in time and space. They are networked and reveal metadata about themselves. Owners would be able to personalize this data. Eventually, all of this information would become an Internet of things, through which we could see relationships between objects and users.

Sterling first introduced the idea in 2004, when he coined the term for the theoretical object because “it needs a noun so that we can think about it”[1]. Now, Spime Inc. is a Silicone Valley company which advertises several products on its website, several of which are software for mobile phones, but one of which also claims that “It can be deployed at homes to track your assets and locate children”. I’m certainly not going to pretend that I understand the technology or even most of what’s on the website. But I am intrigued.

There are several interesting implications. Sterling emphasized the non-renewability of many of our resources and the importance of knowing the resources we have, and using them:

“Our material culture is not sustainable. Its resources are not renewable. We cannot turn our entire planet's crust into obsolete objects. We need to locate valuable objects that are dead, and fold them back into the product stream. In order to do this, we need to know where they are, and what happened to them. We need to document the life cycles of objects. We need to know where to take them when they are defunct.
In practice, this is going to mean tagging and historicizing everything. Once we tag many things, we will find that there is no good place to stop tagging.”[2]

So yes, there are very interesting implications for industry, and for the potential to improve the products we use every day. But there are also implications for history. Imagine if every object dug up in an archaeological expedition was a spime. What more could that teach us? How much easier would the jobs of historians be? It’s true that we are talking about an internet of things, not of ideas, and while objects are incredibly valuable tools for understanding history, they alone are not enough. Nevertheless, this idea could have far-reaching implications for how we understand the present and (in the future) our past.

Despite the possible problems with theft, fraud, and invasion of privacy, the idea of being able to embed our objects with this kind of tag is an intriguing one. Interestingly, however, although three and half years have passed since Sterling first coined the term (and speaking of new ways of organizing information), there is still no Wikipedia entry for spimes. It seems the internet of things has not arrived quite yet. But I’ll be ready when it does.

[1]Bruce Sterling, "When Blobjects Rule the Earth", SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles, August 2004
[2] Bruce Sterling, "When Blobjects Rule the Earth", SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles, August 2004

Sometimes we'd rather be drinking . . .

2008-01-04T08:28:00.000-08:00

I spent the holiday season this year in London (England, not Ontario) and visited a few of my favourite museums. To be honest, however, I spent far more time hanging out with my friends and telling myself I should be visiting museums than actually visiting them. But on the occasions that I did actually make it to one of these hallowed halls of learning and culture, I couldn’t stop thinking about Tony Bennett’s "History and Theory" (in The Birth of Museums: History, Theory and Politics) which we read in our public history class last semester. In his historic discussion of museums, fairs and exhibitions, he argues that they “regulate the performative aspects of their visitors’ conduct” and are “instruments capable of lifting the cultural level of the population.” [1]

London is full of world-class museums, but also of other tourist attractions like the London Eye and Madame Toussaud’s that exist purely to entertain (or, as the more cynical might say, to make money). In the past decade, most of London’s best museums have waived their entry fees and so, in theory at least, welcome every segment of the population. But the brutal truth is that most people who live in London will never make it to the V & A or the National Gallery. I know – I worked in Hack ney, one of the roughest areas in the city, for a year and met many people who barely knew these places existed, let alone had the remotest interest in visiting them.

The tone in these museums is very definitely one of high-brow elitism. The guided tours are led by genteel retired women who, if they don’t exactly take on an attitude of superiority, assume a considerable general knowledge base that is probably beyond the scope of many of their visitors. Said visitors walk around slowly with their hands clasped behind their back, high heels echoing through the marble halls. Maybe Bennett is on to something – our behaviour is regulated once we enter a museum. This is not the real world.

And many of us are guilty of a certain sense of superiority when we visit one of these institutions. There is a sense that is it is a far better use of our time than shopping or gossiping with friends at lunch. There is a sense that we are better people for exposing ourselves to “high culture”, whatever that is. I’m guilty of it myself. Several times during my trip as I lay on the couch watching tv or sat in the pub with a pint I felt a certain stab of guilt that I wasn’t out lapping up all the best that London had to offer. But in the end, I enjoyed my trip just fine. And I spent a total of about three hours in museums, most of it in gift shops.

Do museums really lift the cultural level of the population? Sometimes they most definitely do. During the year I spent in London, I honestly did visit museums quite often, sometimes returning again and again, and some exhibits I saw introduced me to new information and schools of thought that have remained with me to this day.

But let’s stop faking it. Sometimes museums are great. And sometimes there’s nothing wrong with just going down the pub instead.

[1] Tony Bennett, “History and Theory,” The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, and Politics
(London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 6-7

Image of Henry VIII courtesy of http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp

Image of the Tate Modern courtesy of me

Categorizing Knowledge, Danish Style

2007-12-18T09:18:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine spent a semester in Denmark and had an interesting experience with the library there. Instead of finding the call numbers online and going to get the books herself (which, as we all know, usually leads to the discovery of any number of other books on the same topic nestled snuggly together on the shelf), she had to submit a request for each individual book she wanted to a staff member who went to get it for her. She couldn't go find the books herself, because they weren't arranged in any way that would help her find them. They were arranged by size.

I had a somewhat similar experience when I lived in Montreal, where the movie stores were almost as difficult to navigate as Danish libraries. The movies were arranged alphabetically, but not by title. According, I suppose, to the whim of the manager, they were ordered either alphabetically according to the last name of the star, director, or producer, so that Indiana Jones, for example, could very easily be shelved under "F", "S", or even "L".

Libraries, and other versions of information repositories are, at least in theory, organized in a way that maximizes user access, and their resources are categorized into different branches of human knowledge.

But I wonder how much information is never found because it has not been categorized in quite the way we think. Today we type in "keywords" to help us find what we are looking for but there are many different ways to categorize human knowledge and many different ways to label things. What one person may find to be the most significant, another may find to be completely irrelevant.

The internet is becoming one giant communal information repository. People can edit entries on Wikipedia and tag images and texts in the way that they feel is best. There is no standard for categorizing information. Even if there was, there is no real way for it to be definitive, which is reflected in the myriad classification schemes used by libraries around the world. Still, I do love traveling through the stacks to find the book that I was looking for and realizing that somehow, the one that I really need, while it didn't come up in my search, is sitting right there.

I guess I would have trouble in Denmark.

To Keep or Not to Keep: Spam and the Culture of "Found"

2007-11-12T21:13:00.000-08:00

We recently read Paul Graham’s 2002 article “A Plan for Spam” for our Digital History class and as a group, we came to the surprising realisation that we do not, in fact, get much spam anymore. So this got me thinking: What would an archive of spam look like? Would it tell us anything?

The idea of keeping what used to be “garbage” has been gaining currency in recent years. People are finding meaning in the things others throw away, from grocery lists to postcards. See, for example, Davy Rothbart’s Found Magazine (and the book he’s published) – there is an internet archive of the most random objects people find, and find meaning in. Today’s “find of the day” was a handwritten note asking Joey to give Grandpa more hugs because he feels left out. I had my own experience in that regard: last spring, I was walking across the Maryland Bridge in Winnipeg and I came across a manila envelope stuffed with pages of handwritten notes and drawings that had been mailed around 1991. I read the whole thing, but then decided to leave it where I found it. I couldn’t bear to throw it out, but I didn’t know what I would do with it if I kept it. Maybe someone else would find more meaning in it than I did.

Things like this are invested with meaning by the finder. But the internet opens up a whole new level of “junk” to be discarded or cherished: from spam, to old emails, to myriad inactive web pages, there is more potential garbage than ever before. But I don’t think the appeal of something like Found Magazine is in mass produced fliers or advertisements anymore than there is an appeal to an archive of old spam. The appeal is in the human element, and in the connection between the object and the finder. People send things to Rothbart because they felt a connection to them, and they think maybe someone else will too. I’ve never personally felt a connection to junk mail. In fact, I’d prefer to forget it altogether.

England, England: a study in re-presentation

2007-11-04T06:31:00.000-08:00

I recently read Julian Barnes’ novel England, England in which a wealthy businessman recreates, or as one might put it, distils the essence of, England, on the Isle of Wight. All of the major tourist destinations and significant moments in English history are represented. Tourists begin to make a conscious choice between the real England and the Island, which is “cleaner, friendlier and more efficient” [1]. People make the choice between authenticity, which can be disappointing and far from clear cut, and a representation of England that was selected from stereotype and myth, from Robin Hood to double-decker buses, that is simple, uncomplicated, and exactly what they expected.

“Once there was only the world, directly lived. Now there is representation – let me fracture that word, re-presentation – of the world. It is not a substitute for that plain and primitive world, but an enhancement and enrichment, an ironisation and summation of that world. This is where we live today. A monochrome world has become Technicolor, a single croaking speaker has become wraparound sound. Is this our loss? No, it is our conquest, our victory.” [2]

In the end, the Old England falls into economic disaster and reverts into a semi-primitive state. The allure of the Technicolor world of England, England, where you can shop at Harrod’s in the Tower of London and have Yorkshire pudding with Dr. Johnson, is too great. England, England is exactly what it is expected to be, which is easy, instead of what it really is, which is much harder.

No-one has done something in quite the same scale as Barnes imagines, but recreations of history are everywhere, from re-enactments of Civil War battles, to video games, and multimedia exhibits in museums recreating experiences like First World War trenches. Perhaps there is a certain correlation between these kinds of carefully designed experiences and Barnes’ fantasy world. In our digital history class, we have been imagining all kinds of historic appliances that can put us in touch with the past. Representations of history, whether digital or not, are all created with a specific agenda in mind, and are designed to deliver certain messages and invoke certain reactions. In the case of England, England, the “England experience” is designed to fit the visitor’s expectations. In a sense, it doesn’t seem that great of a leap from England, England as a physical space to England, England as a virtual reality experience in which the physical recreations are replaced by digital ones. And, really, what’s the difference?

It seems to me that there can be an almost religious quality to the experience of visiting an ancient historic site or seeing an artifact with your own eyes. But perhaps it makes no difference whether you are looking at the real thing or merely a replica of it, and maybe a historical agenda will be pushed on you either way. Maybe, in the end, Julian Barnes was on to something. In a sense this is exactly what museums are doing anyway. Maybe we should just throw up our hands and make everything into a sexy, multimedia experience and forget about authenticity altogether, whatever that means.

Maybe. But maybe not.

1. Julian Barnes, England, England (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1998), p.184

2. Barnes, 55

Website review: The Virtual Museum of New France

2007-10-15T18:40:00.000-07:00

This website review is an assignment for our Public History class. Congratulations if you manage to get through it . . . you can check out the website at www.civilization.ca/vmnf.

The Canadian Museum of Civilization is one of the most respected museums in the country. It is a pity that its website is not up to the standards we might expect of such an austere institution. For those looking for a comprehensive website or online educational resource about New France, the Virtual Museum of New France, a project of the Museum of Civilization, appears to be an ideal place to start. This website appears to be geared primarily towards school children and provides some basic information about the history of New France, important personalities of the period, daily life for the different kinds of people who lived there, a few educational /interactive activities, and links for those looking for more information for general research or genealogy purposes. Much of this information could be useful for an interested, although uninformed, member of the general public, a young student researching a project, or a teacher looking for additional resources. Unfortunately, the website is woefully out of date in a way that is difficult to ignore. The graphics and layout are distracting and it seems that the museum could be making far better use of their considerable resources to create an engaging and interactive website.

The Virtual Museum of New France was created as a joint project between a number of private and public collaborators, drawing on collections and resources from across North America and Europe. Information is organized into the following themes: Explorers, Great Names, First Nations, People (such as voyageurs, Filles du Roi, soldiers, etc.), and daily life. There is also a special feature on education in New France as well as several educational tools. There is a glossary and timeline for quick reference, as well as bibliographies included for most of the topics covered.

The outdated nature of the website poses a lot of problems. The site is a little difficult to navigate due to a lack of side bars or appropriate internal links. In the People section, none of the topics have been updated in at least eight years and not only are visually displeasing, but can be confusing as subheadings often have unclear titles like “A colourful expression”. One can only search the whole Museum of Civilization site and not the Virtual Museum itself, so it may take some time of futilely clicking on these links before finding the desired piece of information. Some of the topics in other categories were more recently created and are both more pleasing visually and easier to navigate, such as “Living in Canada at the Time of Champlain”. Nevertheless, it still remains impossible to search within these topics. The only place to search specific words is in the glossary. This remains problematic since the definitions are short and no links to the longer articles available on the website are available through the glossary. Furthermore, a few of the definitions are only available in French.

Through the ambiguously titled “Youth Adventures”, one is led to several educational resources including a bizarre cartographic puzzle, a lovely New France ABC and an activity for school children about a young boy immigrating to New France. The ABC uses images of artifacts from the museum, identifying the objects and their use as well as providing historical context. The school activity consists basically of reading a young boy’s diary and reacting to it. The graphics are awful and there is no level of interactivity, but the diary provides useful context about daily life in New France.

The Virtual Museum comes off as a bit of a hodge podge. It appears that the vision the creators had at the outset was not entirely realized. It provides a useful overview of many aspects of life in New France, but some key subjects are largely ignored. The section on First Nations people provides almost no information and certainly does not deal with Europeans’ interactions with the first people of Quebec. The site rarely makes use of its considerable resources to provide users with access to artifacts or documents from the museum’s collections. There are a few images interspersed with the text, but the New France ABC is the only concerted effort to actually use existing resources.

When this website was created, it may very well have been considered cutting edge. Unfortunately, it has not kept up with the times. It has not been updated for about six years, and many of the external links are no longer valid. This is a shame since some of the more recent exhibits are quite charming and there is certainly potential for an institution like the Museum of Civilization to make a formidable online resource.

Archiving Lauren Conrad

2007-10-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend writing an essay on issues relating to archiving motion pictures. When I sat down to write a blog about some of the things I’ve been thinking about, I thought it would be about questions of art and history, or at least about something sexy like spontaneously combustible film. But when it came right down to it, I kept coming back to The Hills.

I’m going to put it out there and admit it: sometimes I watch The Hills (and I know for a fact I’m not the only one in Public History who does). And The Hills, like it or not, is definitely becoming somewhat of a cultural phenomenon. (If you are oblivious to this, I would recommend that you stay in the dark. It’s probably not worth your time – but in a nutshell, it’s a semi-scripted/semi-reality show about a bunch of beautiful young people living in LA).

Where does archiving come in? Although we are in the DVD age, and millions of copies of season 1 are already scattered around the world, the theoretical question is still interesting to me: what would – or should – a motion picture archivist do with the original reels of The Hills?
Motion picture archivists select documents for archiving based on one of three things:
a. Aesthetic or artistic value (I’m pretty sure no-one would argue it’s a work of art)
b. Historical or sociological insight (again, probably wouldn’t make the cut)
c. Emotional impact/intrinsic value. And here’s the kicker. Many millions of people tune in to watch the latest exploits of Heidi and Lauren each week. No matter how vapid and pointless the show may be, it’s struck a chord. And that’s worth a thought.

There’s a whole other question here. When we look at a motion picture we always have to consider whether it is a genuine event or a re-creation of one. Obviously most feature film is fiction. Documentary is, in theory anyway, a more honest representation of real life, although the presence of the camera means that it will never be entirely accurate. But The Hills takes fiction and reality and blends them together so you have no idea what’s real and what’s not.

So here we have a show that has zero artistic value or potential for historical insight. We don’t even know how much of what happens on the show is genuine and how much is staged. And millions of cheap DVDs are floating around the planet. But it's also a hugely popular show that's struck an emotional chord and has entered the cultural lexicon, at least for the moment. So do we keep The Hills? I guess the real question is, what would Lauren do?

Instant nostalgia: partying like it's 1989

2007-10-01T07:02:00.000-07:00

We live in a digital age where everything is immediate. We no longer have to wait for weeks to get a letter in the mail from family and friends who are far away, but are instantly connected through email, webcams, and text messaging. So history appears to be moving faster than ever before. With each year that passes we are creating more and more records of our lives. So much is documented that the smallest changes seem monumental, from hairstyles to the design of our personal computers, and we are eager to categorize the events and changes we see in our own lifetime. David Lowenthal explores this phenomenon in The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History where he suggests “modern media magnify the past’s remoteness.” [1]

The problem with focusing on our recent past is that perspective is difficult to achieve. Interpretation of past events changes over time, as it should, benefitting from hindsight and a broader of view of context and effects. In our eager race to document the ever more recent past, we risk losing a clear idea of the big picture while being bogged down by minutiae – missing the proverbial forest for the trees.

This phenomenon of instant nostalgia is all over the place in popular culture. Retrospectives and ironic celebrations of decades past are commonplace. As an example, we have been looking back on the decade of my early childhood – the 1980s – with a nostalgic sigh and a chuckle for years now. The Wedding Singer, an homage to eighties culture, came out in 1998, a mere eight years after the decade was over. Maybe the 1980s weren’t really that great (I don’t remember them too well myself but I had some pretty awful haircuts), but it’s not the Recession or the Cold War that people want to remember. It’s the little details of pop culture; the tv shows, the music, the toys, and the greatest contribution the 1980s made to humanity: the fashion. Maybe people aren’t really looking for answers. Life wasn’t simpler or better back then. Vertical blinds in pink and grey were not a good idea. So what is it? Are we so self-obsessed that we can’t look beyond our own lifetimes? Or is there just something about a past that is almost identical to our present, but just different enough, that is comforting?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with looking back on our recent past with such longing, but as Lowenthal reminds us, things haven’t really changed that much in the past couple of decades. So let’s keep some perspective. And keep our fingers crossed that the flock of seagulls hairdo (see above) remains a distant memory.

[1] David Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusades and the Spoils of History (Cambridge: Cambridge 1998), p.8

In defence of progress

2007-09-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

I know technology can be scary (as some have expressed in our digital history class . . .). I too have been a bit wary of embracing new technology. In fact, I was one of the last people I knew to cave in and buy a cell phone and then an ipod. But here’s the thing: now that I have them, I can’t imagine living without them.

I have been looking at a lot of history websites lately, searching for the perfect one for our website review assignment for Public History. I happened upon the Virtual Museum of New France through the Canadian Museum of Civilization website. The thing about this website is, it was created in 1997 and hasn’t been updated since 2001. These are exactly the years that I was in high school, which doesn’t seem insanely long ago, and back then we thought technology was pretty good. But it’s amazing how far we’ve come. The site is difficult to navigate, barely interactive, and makes very poor use of the resources available to a national institution. I’m sure it was cutting edge back when I was in grade ten. But now it’s almost laughable.

The point? Someone looking for information on New France will have an enormously easier time now than they would have ten years ago when the website was launched. No matter how scary technology can be, and no matter how dizzyingly fast it changes, it seems to me that the more resources that are made available, and the easier they are to search and navigate, the better. It’s just too bad that the Virtual Museum of New France hasn’t kept up.

Historical song and dance?

2007-09-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

What is truth? As public historians our job is a big one, and kind of a scary one. We are the ones who are actually getting it out there, whatever the historical truth may be. If we can decide on what it is. If such a thing even exists (the post-modernists among us would argue that it doesn’t). And the really big challenge is getting it out there in a way that people will actually digest, so that they will go away with something. How to distil whatever message, or truth, we have deemed important into a soundbyte that people will actually take with them? Is that even possible, or do we then just end up with parody?

Growing up in Winnipeg, one of my favourite summer events has always been Folklorama. For those of you unlucky enough never to have experienced this fine institution, it’s a two week festival where different cultural and ethnic groups in the city put on “pavilions” where they show off their culture and history through food, song and dance, displays of handicrafts and historical and cultural exhibits. Each community puts on their own pavilions, so they are all a little different in approach. But let me paint you a general picture: at the Brazilian pavilion, you drink Brahma and watch capoeira. At the Caribbean pavilion, you listen to the steel drum orchestra and drink rum punch. You drink Guinness and watch the Michael Flatley wannabes at the Irish pavilion. (You may be sensing a theme).

So what does all of this have to do with historical truth? I love Folklorama. But what I find so fascinating about it is the way in which different cultural communities in the city choose to present themselves. They all embrace the stereotypes, and in doing so, perpetuate them. But if you are hitting up two or three pavilions a night, can your brain really take in any more information? And if you are a tourist breezing through a museum or historic site with your three kids in tow are you really looking for a serious, thoughtful analysis or do you just want to be entertained?

As a historic interpreter I have certainly met many people who fall into both categories. We need to be able to identify the needs of the public and accept that some of them only want the Cole’s notes version of history. But I don’t think it’s about dumbing history down, or about pandering to the stereotypes people expect to see. It’s about figuring out a way to get your point across, whatever truth you believe is essential to pass on, and to get it across without losing your audience. And if that means sometimes you have to sing . . . so be it.

Beyond the Iron Curtain: re-imagining a Communist past for the tourist present

2007-09-14T12:12:00.000-07:00

Call me crazy but I always had an idea that the Communist past of former Soviet Bloc countries was not entirely a laughing matter. Even in Hungary, where “goulash communism” made it one of the best places to be if you were unlucky enough as to be stuck behind the iron curtain, life was not a walk in the park. So the public historian in me had a field day last summer when I found myself behind said curtain. Turns out it was all a big joke.

Never mind the Museum of Communism in Prague whose cartoony mascot grimaces at you from every corner. I’m talking about a veritable communist Disneyland, the Communist statue park on the outskirts of Budapest (http://www.szoborpark.hu/index.php?Lang=en). The surprising thing was not that the government decided to keep this assortment of monoliths, which mostly depicted either Hungarian communist revolutionary Bela Kun or anonymous heroic youths striving for the glorious future. The surprising thing is how they approached it all. The giftshop is case in point. You could actually buy CDs entitled Best of Communism volumes 1 through 3. They had t-shirts and mugs with various slogans, including a satire of the three tenors (“the three terrors”), socks and pins bearing the hammer and sickle or the Hungarian communist party logo, and various other kitsch designed for the backpacker with a sense of homour. What they didn’t seem to have – at the giftshop or in the park itself – was anything that lent even the remotest sense of context to the statues we were seeing. Stalin was nowhere to be found. Lenin was being restored and was under a tarp. My travelmates and I had a blast there, despite the disappointment at having missed Joe and Vlad. But I have to ask: is this the responsible way to deal with a recent past that was truly devastating to a very large group of people? And it’s not just the statue park. Up on Castle Hill you can buy soviet era gas masks for the equivalent of $400 Cdn and pause for a photo op climbing over the very tanks that rolled through Budapest in 1956. And most Hungarians I met made constant jokes about their years behind the iron curtain.

Hungary is recovering from the economic wreckage of its half century under communist rule and is now welcoming tourists back in droves. Tourists bring money. Tourists want to be entertained. And so Hungary entertains. I still wonder though: is this more important than honestly coming to terms with an unpleasant past? And is it really appropriate to make light of a such a serious and recent piece of history?

I’m not pretending I’m not just as capable of laughing at the Soviets as the rest of you. And for the record I didn’t visit a single other museum while in Hungary, so for all I know there could be thoughtful and balanced exhibits of life under Communist rule all over the place. But the question of how to balance economic revival and very serious issues of national identity is an intriguing one. I don’t have any answers – but I would recommend checking out the park if you ever find yourself in Budapest. Just make sure to leave time for the Turkish baths . . .

Taking the plunge

2007-09-11T13:26:00.001-07:00

Here it is. My first ever blog post. Shouldn't really be so intimidating, should it? But for someone whose academic career up to this point has consisted entirely of submitting papers which were most likely only ever seen by one person, the idea that anyone at all can read this is somewhat disconcerting.

But then again this is Public History, isn't it. And what we are trying to do, after all, is communicate with people outside our sheltered little academic world, a world in which people already understand the importance of what we are trying to do without being convinced.

This is in fact what I have been doing for some years, although never on the internet, a medium with which I have never felt entirely comfortable. I have spent a good part of the past five years on the front lines of this effort to bring something of our past to the general public, as a tour guide and costumed interpreter, and this has led to a lot of thinking about exactly why it is we do it. Is it truly possible to justify the money and effort spent? Who exactly is benefitting? And does it really make a difference? There have been days when I wondered if the little reconstruction of a furtrading fort on the banks of the Red River where I spent my days was nothing more than a playground for re-enactors or a pretty backdrop for wedding photos. I'm not suggesting that it is -- places like that mean a lot to me. But sometimes I wonder whether the lives of the people who visited us there were really improved by talking to me. And if they weren't, shouldn't I be doing something else with my time?

I'm only just beginning to figure out what public history is all about. I have a feeling the coming months will bring more questions than they do answers. But I'm pretty sure, even if I can't articulate yet exactly why, that what I want to do -- as vaguely definied as it currently is -- is actually pretty important. Here's hoping.