Has anyone tried to use OCR software in the Digital Studio yet? I have color images of my book pages and I wanted to know how to convert them to black and white and make them a more simple PDF and not huge JPEGs.

I am also wondering what other people are doing in terms of the background history to their specific topics. Should I include a general overview of the US and Mexico up until the war? Maybe I should talk about the war’s legacy. How much effort should I put in to expand the information on the site in order to attract people to engage my site.

Some thoughts, rather than a tech question this week…

One of the things that struck me in this week’s readings was the notion of scanning versus full-text reading. Writing for the Web’s authors emphasized the tendency of computer users to scan webpages and Web-based writing rather than read the text in full. I agree that most of us likely scan a page before investing time reading it, but I am shocked to discover that only 16% of Web users read the entire text. Then again, I believe this number reflects a study done on only two websites, both affiliated with the Sun Science office which may not require a full-text read.

I agree with the authors’ suggestions on improved navigation and site search by including keywords, headers, lists, image captions, and embedded meta-tags. However, I fear that their emphasis on text reduction contradicts much of what Rosenzweig and Cohen write in Collecting History Online and may even prevent potential Web contributors from sharing their own stories digitally. A potential contributor to a website may be disillusioned by the notion of Web 2.0 if asked to limit their text because studies show that people generally read less online than in print. Such contributors may decide that to abridge their story loses its value and may opt not to contribute at all.

I argue that different types of sites attract audiences more willing to read word-for-word. I think it is important to keep the suggestions offered by Writing for the Web in mind, but not to lose sight of the mission of each individual website. Often that mission cannot be achieved without lengthy contributions from site visitors and serves little purpose if not read in full by its audience.

In reading this week’s articles, I have begun to wonder what I will do with this site. In some ways I guess I thought originally that it would only be viewed by fellow classmates and maybe some friends (if I maybe posted the link to fb) but now that it is all coming together and the exhibits are being written and the design is being tweaked something I like, I wonder what should be next? After I am happy with the intellectual content, would it be presumptuous of me to see if the cemetery wanted to link to it on their own page? are there other institutions or organizations where I can find an audience?

In regard to the “Search engine optimization guide” when they are speaking about clear and useful URLs, omeka is allowing us to do that already right? like in the exhibits with the slugs?

If I want to change the URL of the main page to something more descriptive (in the hopes that it is more easily searched for) like brigidharmon.com/lutheran_cemetery, do I just rename the file ‘project’ to ‘lutheran_cemetery’ on the server side of filezilla?

The Rosenzweig and Cohen chapter discusses the utilization of history “gateways” to direct an audience as well as looking at similar websites and communities. They advise contacting webmasters and asking for advice and reciprocal links. This seems very logical, and I am wondering if there is competition for audience in the web environment. Are similar sites likely to want to share their audience?

I’m interested in the Cohen and Rosenzweig chapter on mass marketing and the role Google plays in ranking on its search engine. I especially was interested in their discussion of a site’s ‘reputation’. I have to wonder how much of that decision making is based on critical analysis, how much Google will receive in advertising for ranking certain sites and how much of that is just personal taste. What I’m taking away from the chapter is that much of it seems to be arbitrary and that it  is up to the website’s producer to get traffic for the site. The quality may not always be attraction that builds a reputation that invites traffic.

CNN had an article today that I thought was interesting and relevant to our readings this week. It discusses the recent upset over the racist picture of Michelle Obama and search engines’ (mainly Google’s) role in it. I suppose it’s kind of an alternate perspective to the readings this week that offer guidance on how to be a top search result. Search engines have not only become an economic but also a political tool. What do you do when being a popular search result is working against you? What responsibilities do search engines have or should have in these situations?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/02/google.search.obama/index.html

The readings this week seem to put a fair amount of weight on adding meta tags to your site. As a frequent google user I do see how valuable it can be, if you are so lucky as to be indexed by google. How does one go about using meta tags and do they serve a function outside of search engines?

Gawker http://www.gawker.com
http://jezebel.com
Gmail — all e-mails (leave it up to individuals) / Public figures’ e-mails
The Huffington Post
The New York Times website http://nytimes.com
Gawker — both what’s posted & the comments
Flickr — all of Flickr? Snapshots of Flickr?
Institutional blogs
NYPL digital collections (also, just throw s**t out!)
Google search keywords & rankings
YouTube Videos++
The Wired Magazine website
Obama’s text messages
Gchats
Wikipedia
NPR’s website & blogs
NY Times comments
Digital photographs — but how would you archive all of Flickr?
Writer’s manuscripts
A sampling of personal and professional blogs
Presidential e-mails with heads of state
Personal e-mails — AOL will delete e-mails for you without asking, defaults to deleting+++
Picasa
Shutterfly
Getty Images
ArtSTOR
Corbis
Does Google “own” its e-mails?
Scam spam!
Forwarded e-mails — “memes”
Save all links
Local newspapers — Rocky Mountain News
Link shorteners
CNN
Digg.com
FMyLife
Postsecret.com
Yelp.com
Facebook — both personal and institutional accounts
Napster files, music files
iTunes
Craigslist — missed connections!
Proquest Historical Newspapers
Funny or Die
eBay — random snapshots
Reddit
Dating websites — Match.com
Livejournal, personal diaries
AIM, chatroom, MySpace, AOL chatrooms & communities
Friendster
Pandora playlists
Licensing agreements

How to back up / restore your class project

1. Make copies of the “files” folder and the “themes” folder (or just the theme within that folder that you’re using) and save them to a hard drive, CD, DVD, or USB stick. Or all of the above.
2. Go to http://panel.dreamhost.com and click on “MySQL databases.” Note that there’s a link on the side that says “Restore DB.”
3. Discuss migration — how would you recreate this web site for someone who doesn’t have access to a Linux server with MySQL and PHP installed on it?

Digital Preservation Exercise

Take five minutes and list some websites or other “born-digital” resources that you personally would like to make sure exist in a hundred years. What are the most important ones, do you think? Why? Who, if anyone, is taking steps to preserve these now?

Digital Preservation Projects

• The NDIIPP project, aka http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/ — A project of the Library of Congress, the “National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Project.” Note as emphasis on Personal Archiving, as well as more specialized projects such as the North Carolina Geospatial Data Archiving Project.
• HATHItrust — An attempt to make sure that digital copies of books will remain available: “HathiTrust’s aspirations, at the very least, are to bring together all of the digitized books and journals held by libraries, to provide secure, long-term storage and (where possible) access, and to aid in larger preservation efforts for printed materials.”
• The Tamiment Library Web Archive — A collection of archived web sites focusing on leftist and labor political organizations.
• The Internet Archive — Note especially the BookServer project; the distinction between preservation and access is extremely thin with digital objects.
• Brand-new: The Memento Web project — Experimental “competitor” to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Exhibit Creation Exercise

Take 20-30 minutes and begin to create an exhibit with one or more items in your archive. Publish the exhibit. Then break up into groups of three and comment on each others’ work — we’ll then get back together and discuss.

Note: no class next week. See you in a fortnight!

My question this week is regarding one my items. I have a technical report that I am scanning and transcribing. It has graphic in it and some mathematical formulas, diagrams and charts. I think that these will be lost in the pages of the item. I am not sure of the best way to present this report in digital form.