Wikipedia: Reality As a Commodity?

As Wikipedia continues to make a vast amount of information accessible to (and manipulated by) anyone who has internet access, the usability of Wikipedia is an interesting issue for education. In high school and in college, I've had many teachers specifically address Wikipedia. They normally warned against using Wikipedia as a source and often said to avoid it all together. Some colleges, such as Middlebury College in 2007, have forums to discuss the issue of Wikipedia. Many good points were made during the Middlebury discussion, and I have some insight based on my regular use of Wikipedia. Middlebury began their forum with a clip from The Colbert Report, in which Stephen Colbert discusses "wikilobbyists." Wikilobbists are people/groups (Colbert gives Microsoft as an example) that pay people to edit certain wikipages, ensuring those pages contain information controlled by the lobbyist. This is one glaring example of how information in Wikipedia can be biased or affected in negative ways. Wikipedia is certainly not a scholarly source and should not be considered as such. Yet, I view Wikipedia as an effective tool. I often use it to begin my historical research, because Wikipedia gives a nice overview of topics. It helps me find a place to start and get ideas. Often times the sources cited on Wikipedia are legit, so I can build from there once I've verified the validity. But I never actually use Wikipedia as a source in my works, only as that initial tool.

Wikipedia: Women in science page

To continue this discussion, my class about digital history wants us to view some history pages on Wikipedia and discuss what we see. I went to Wikipedia and to ensure I stay on track, I clicked the category 'History.' I selected 'History of science' since that's where my interests lie. One of the featured pages is 'women in science,' so that is the first history wiki page I am viewing. Beneath the heading, this page reads, “This article may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (July 2011).” I'm on Wikipedia relatively often, and I've never seen that message about layout before. The first two sections within the page (Ancient history and Medieval Europe) both have small notices that the sections need expansion. After scrolling down, I've realized almost all the sections have that notice. This is understandable, but disappointing.

Wikipedia: Discussion page for women in science

The discussion page for women in science appears very different from the regular article page at first. I have never looked at a 'talk' page before. Every wiki page has a talk section, which allows contributors to discuss methods to improve the regular page that is viewed by most people. By looking at Talk: Women in science, it seems the brownish-box at the top of the page contains all the important information one would need to know before they begin to add to the Women in science article. This information box contains basic guidelines, such as "Be polite,"  but also  explains the article's relation to the rest of  Wikipedia, and rates the quality and importance of the regular page.  I'm glad the women in science article is considered high-importance! As I scroll past that initial box, the talk page is arranaged just like a regular article in Wikipedia, but the headings are things like: People to include, Collaboration of the month, and Structure. There are obviously people working on and editing the women in science page. 

The other two historical pages and associated talk pages I consider on Wikipedia are Karl Marx and the Age of Enlightenment. Since these pages are laid out like the Women in science page, I have not posted screenshots. Both of these pages are much fuller than Women in science. The contents sections about Marx and the Enlightenment are organized differently, to serve the purpose of explaining a person versus a movement. Within the Talk:Karl Marx page, there is a notice in the information box that this is a controversial issue and a reminder to be neutral. I think it is good that this is there; at least Wikipedia tries to get people to contribute valid information. I like that a search box is also included here, to allow contributors to search past  discussions/arguments about Marx. I am initially surprised that there is such a small amount of discussion here, but the information box points out that this is accepted as a good history page. Since this page is good, there doesn't need to be a lot of discussion, contrasting the Women in science page. There is hardly anything in the information box on the Enlightenment discussion page. It only contains the basic policies, mentions that it was a featured article candidate, and suggests other related articles that need attention. Yet, there is nothing about it being a "good" page, which seems strange. There is an abundance of discussion here, which may explain why it is not considered good. The contents section for the talk page contains twenty-six items! One person blatantly calls this a "sorry excuse for the Enlightenment," arguing that many vital points are not included. I think this is a positive thing though, because it should lead to positive improvements. Viewing the discussion side of Wikipedia articles definitely adds to my understanding of Wikipedia. While I will continue to use it as a tool, I will now include the talk pages. The discussions give further insight into how/why an article is constructed a certain way and why some information is left out or included. It's a guide in which one can literally see how much work has been put into a topic.

The Playboy Contract...

For my class on digital history, I have to work with two classmates in creating an online exhibit. We must utilize UNC Charlotte's archives, so my group is basing our project on the collection of Playboy magazines available. The contract for this project, essentially outlining our goals, tools, and schedule, is due later today. The contract was completed yesterday, but I would not say it is finalized.

Creating our contract took a bit longer than I anticipated, but we got it done. Samantha and I had to do a lot of brainstorming to begin our contract, since our focus was redirected towards the cliche topic of sexuality. We originally wanted to examine American social movements during the 1960s and 1970s through the lens of Playboy, following the women's movement (including sexuality), the civil rights movement (MLK Jr. interview in 1965 issue!), and the movement that spawned from the Vietnam War (creation of hippie, drug, anti-war culture). These ideas morphed into the categories of female sexuality, male sexuality, and black civil rights...but civil rights obviously does not fit here. We wanted to include the black civil rights movement in our project, because there is a surplus of relevant material in Playboy that gives an interesting point of view, but Samantha and I could not think of a logical way to link sex, sex, and race within Playboy. Maybe Samantha and I weren't creative enough, but we felt forced to exclude anything other than sexuality. The mission statement of our contract reads, "In our exhibition, we will explore the perceptions of male and female sexuality through the lens of Playboy magazine in the mid 1960s through the late 1970s..." This is exactly what one would expect from an analysis of Playboy, but still somewhat interesting.

Once we finally had our mission statement, Samantha and I were able to complete the rest of the contract. We had to keep it rather vague, since we were missing a group member, and we were not entirely sure what to anticipate. Neither of us have created an online exhibit before, or dealt with metadata. I hope our schedule is reasonable, but we will probably have to include further specifics once we get a bit deeper into the project. I look forward to the actual research: flipping through the magazines to figure out what I want to use in the exhibit. It's so interesting! Although, I think narrowing the material down and actually deciding what to use and not use will be difficult. I'm also excited about playing around with the web aspect of the site and learning about various digital tools. Making the schedule made me realize that an immense amount of effort, time, and communication must go into this project for it to be successful. Everything that has to be done is intimidating, but breaking it down into pieces should make it manageable.

JSTOR: Simple and Efficient Use of Digitization

JSTOR's Main Web Page

JSTOR is a website I frequent regularly, as I am sure most students within the humanities do. JSTOR is a massive digital database of scholarly articles and primary sources (apparently books are to be added soon), and its audience is essentially for educational purposes. The right side of the front page further explains, "JSTOR connects libraries, researchers, teachers, and students around the world with vital scholarly content in more than 50 disciplines." This is fantastic, but there is one downside to JSTOR: it has limited access. The only way I can enter JSTOR is through UNC Charlotte's online library system, as a student. Someone who cannot access JSTOR through an affiliated institution as I have must pay to create an account.

Just by glancing at JSTOR's main page, one's eyes are immediately drawn to the dominating search bar. Surely this is intentional, since searching JSTOR's community of digital articles and sources is the ultimate feature of the website. While this simple search is offered, one can also perform an advanced search, which allows a significant amount of specificity.

JSTOR's Advanced Search Feature

The search techniques provided (which also allow Boolean phrases and such) are exactly what is needed for scholars to sift through this massive database. Once an item is located, let's say a journal article, JSTOR offers additional selections. An article can be viewed as a page scan, PDF, or summary. While different mediums are available to read articles, all text is searchable. The database would be almost useless if everything were not largely searchable. As seen below, there are many options provided for citation and convenient features on the right side of the page. The ability to view the author's references and other items related to the selected article are notable. With such easy-to-use functionality, research is greatly simplified yet also expanded, making JSTOR an extremely helpful and efficient tool.

JSTOR Web Page of a Selected Article

Omeka Plug-In: Timeline!

Omeka is a website that offers a free option for publishing a small online exhibit/archive. While scrolling through Omeka's decent number of plug-ins (basically additional features one can incorporate into their online exhibit), I notice a few basic ones that any person working within Omeka would most likely use.  A couple examples of these are the Image Annotation and Image Resize plug-ins. Images are a given when it comes to attractive and interesting web pages, and they must be annotated and resized. Otherwise, I am interested in using the Neatline plug-ins, specifically NeatlineTime, for my group's project.

NeatlineTime allows the user to make a timeline in Omeka. Since my group is going to analyze changes within Playboy throughout the 1950s and 60s, a timeline would greatly benefit our project. While I'm not sure how extensive this plug-in is, it would be neat if we could incorporate the covers of the magazines into the timeline. This would be a quick and easy way for viewers of  the timeline to compare the covers and really see the points my group decides to focus on. Even if we cannot use images, text in a timeline would still work to better our online exhibit. Timelines make a web page more interesting for the viewer and help to direct viewers by focusing on the most significant points/changes within a topic. At least, I'm excited when I see a timeline! They are visual and help contextualize (often a significant amount of) information.