Working Bibiography

Bibliography

Primary

“Chinese Plan Big Celebration.” The Spokesman-Review, August 8, 1924.

Secondary

Tertiary

“Brian Shute, Ph.D - Speech Pathologist - Remembrance of Executive Order 9066 and the Japanese People in Spokane.” Accessed October 7, 2013. http://www.drshute.com/archives/000107.html.

“HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History.” Accessed October 7, 2013. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=8120.

Soennichses, John, and Doris J Woodward. The Chinese: Unwelcome Immigrants Who Helped Build the West. Spokane, WA: Spokane Corral of Westerners, 2012.

“Throwback with Jim Kershner | Spokane Public Radio.” Accessed October 8, 2013. http://www.kpbx.org/guide?entry=throwback-with-jim-kershner&id=142.

Images

“HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History.” Accessed October 7, 2013. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=8120.

        Risaburo Nakai & Co. Store and Pool Hal, Japanese Alley, Spokane, ca. 1913
Courtesy Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (Shiosaki Collection, Image No. L2005-7.1)

Another Step Forward in the World of Digital Media

            Last week it was twitter, this week it expands to Flickr, YouTube, Picasa and Google Plus. Although the huge influx of information was overwhelming at first, and the pull to ‘surf’ into irrelevant content on these sites was tempting, I manage to find my way through to the other side (though I’m thinking of investing in stock in eye drops).

            Flickr was a great discovery and catches your attention immediately, although I will admit to being slightly confused about some things. It seems to be divided into two realms, Flickr Commons and Creative Commons. Flickr Commons was created to increase access to public photographs as well as allow the public to contribute their own considerable knowledge, while Creative Commons is an area for users to submit their own collections.  Flickr Commons content is contributed by various world institutions allowing you to see photographs you would have otherwise never seen unless you were a scholar digging through a dusty records room, seemingly cut off from civilization as you listen to the hum of fluorescent lights for hours on end.  These photographs have information about the content contained and relevant information below, including copyright info stating if there are any restrictions on using them. A couple articles explaining how this site is useful to museums and other institutions looking to share history as well as programs being created for such institutions are Five Ways Museums Are Using Flickr and Curate the Commons.

Flickr homepage screenshot

            YouTube was familiar already, although more from a browser standpoint than an actual uploader. I discovered I already had a YouTube account, which was a surprise because I have no memory of creating one.  Some articles explaining what museums can gain from expanding to YouTube are FiveWays for Museums to Use YouTube and Beyond Launch: Museum Videos on YouTube, the latter of which is quite long but goes more in depth of the benefits of using the online tool and guidelines to keep in mind.

            I already had a Google Plus account, though I only used Gmail and thus never did anything with the other applications, and upon exploring it contains a lot more than I thought it did, which is kind of intimidating.  A good article that compares Google Plus to Flickr is I Have Discoveredthe Purpose of Google Plus!, with the author having definite opinions of the two sites. Google Plus reminds me of Facebook, which I, at the moment, like more.  Google+ at Two Years: AnAssessment compares the site now to when it was created two years ago, and I found myself relating to many of the authors views, such as “It didn't help that when Google started touting its strong Google+ user numbers, the company failed to distinguish between people who have Google+ accounts as the result of being harangued into creating an account via Gmail versus those genuinely engaged in the Google+ social network.”  I was one of those people to suddenly found themselves with such an account when all I wanted was an e-mail, and never really explored it.  An interesting feature I was directed to was the Hangout feature, which reminded me of Skype, though a bit more user friendly.

            All in all, there seems to be many sites that bring museums and historical sites to the public rather than the other way around, a trend that has skyrocketed and seems to reach new levels every day. Even better news is that much of it is free to the public (up to a certain extent), which is good news to a college students wallet.  

Digital Storytelling Introductory Post

            School (EWU) started up again last week, and this post heralds the start of Digital Storytelling, a class that already looks to be both interesting and pertinent to today’s media requirements. I say this because it’s the second week in and I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming to the computer in order to set up a twitter account, as well as to brush off this lovely blog and start typing again. This first post is the opening to using multiple digital mediums in order to tell personal and historical stories.

            This week’s reading included Digital Storytelling from Wikipedia, The Value of DigitalStorytelling for the Small Museum, Stony Brook University’s DigitalStorytelling, various projects using the Curatescape platform, Two Must-See Digital Storytelling Projects from Mashable, and Four Inspiring Examples ofDigital Storytelling from Mashable.  Wikipedia’s page on Digital Storytelling gives a broad explanation and various uses in schools, museums and libraries, doing a fairly decent job though you should keep in mind it is Wikipedia and should not be taken as hard fact.  One of the better items on the page is the extensive (for Wikipedia) notes and references section and the external links list.  Another plus to this page is it brings in enterprises using Digital Storytelling outside of the United States.

            In The Value of Digital Storytelling for the Small Museum the author expounds on the pros and cons of using digital media in a museum, and how taking digital media classes has changed the way she works.  An easy read that gives the point of view of someone who actually has firsthand experience with the changeover from typical historical mediums.

            Stony Brook University’s page on Digital Storytelling does a really good job on explaining the subject and gives the seven elements of this technique.  Easy to navigate and understand, this site provides information on useful tools, copyright issues, and steps to create your own digital story.

Stony Brook University Digital Storytelling page.

            There are many projects that use the Curatescape platform to tell their stories, and this site gives a list of 18 various public projects. The Indy Historical, Raleigh Historical and Northwest Pennsylvania links take you to websites that aren’t active yet and provide no real information, though they do give you opportunities to donate.  

           

Bear 71 screenshot. Courtesy of blog 2 must-see digital storytelling projects

The two ‘must-see’ Digital Storytelling Projects from Mashable are Bear 71 and Welcome to Pine Point. Bear 71 is an interactive website/documentary that allows the user to see the interactions between man and nature. Interesting concept, but there wasn’t a lot of guidance for the user and the background music/sounds got annoying. Welcome to Pine Point introduces visitors to the no-longer-in-existence town of Pine Point, and the people who lived there and still reminisce about it.  The format was innovative in a yearbook kind of way, though sometimes the images would cover up the text.  There were lots of pictures, videos and sounds clips, though they would protrude over each other, and were a lot to take in.

            The Mashable list of four examples of Digital Storytelling were Bear 71, Pandemic, Welcome to Pine Point and Rome.  Pandemic was confusing because it was a real time interactive social experiment that is no longer active and so the website was kind of dead.  The link to Rome takes you nowhere, which is disappointing because the description provided sounded very interesting: “a multiplatform interactive narrative experience inspired by the music of Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi (featuring Jack White, Norah Jones and renowned composer Ennio Morricone’s original 40-piece orchestra from Italy).”