Today's Downloads of Spokane Historical

I get regular reports from the Android market and from iTunes on how many folks have downloaded the Spokane Historical app for local history. Here is today's Android report. A big welcome to our fan in The Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia !

With a Rebel Yell?

What did the "rebel yell" used by Confederate troops in the Civil War sound like? For years and years this question as been posed as mysterious and unanswerable. Historian Shelby Foote, appearing in Ken Burn's Civil War, said we could never be sure, going on to describe it as probably sounding like "a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall." But it turns out we can know exactly what it sounded like, thanks to some early recordings at the Library of Congress:

JSTOR is Not Our Friend; or, What Should a New Public History Journal Look Like?

[Update 5/10/2012] : NCPH Executive Director John Dichtl stopped by to offer some corrections to this post in the comments. Thank you John for setting the record straight.]

The big news at this year's meeting of the National Council on Public History was that the organization has come to a parting of ways with UC-Santa Barbara, the publisher of the Public Historian. Those interested can trawl through the archives for H-Public for details, but the short version is that the two organizations could not come to terms, and that the copyright for the journal apparently belongs to the university and they intend to keep it. So the NCPH is looking to start a new journal for its members. The conference public forum discussion are summarized in this blog post by Cathy Stanton, The Elephant in the Room.

Scene from NCPH via Flickr user David Blackwell

The necessity of starting a new journal provides a fantastic opportunity to rethink what a scholarly journal can be in the 21st century. My thoughts:

• Whatever else we decide, it is vital that the new journal be open access. Currently the Public Historian is really only readable by members of the organization. Back issues are online but behind a JSTOR paywall and accessible only by folks with an academic affiliation. The NCPH gets some money from JSTOR for this arrangement (I don't know how much, but I guess in the low tens of thousands?). 
• Whatever the benefits we get from closed access and a partnership with JSTOR, the costs are both huge and largely unrecognized. Every year, JSTOR turns away 150 MILLION attempts to read journal articles! Imagine the lost relevance when our articles cannot be read, blogged, tweeted, sent over Facebook, assigned in public school classrooms, accessed by poor working and amateur public historians in the thousands of tiny museums, archives, and historical societies. JSTOR is not our friend.
• Also, refusing this opportunity to become open access will alienate many of the younger and more tech savvy members of the NCPH. A lot of us are increasingly uncomfortable with donating our labor in writing and reviewing articles for the benefit of a huge publishing industry that locks our knowledge away.
• The objections to open access are misguided. One concern I have heard from NCPH leadership is that people join the organization specifically to get the journal. I think this is unlikely. People join for the conference, the networking, and the affiliation. 
• At the same time, we must continue a print journal. We must not underestimate the attachment folks have to print. A university library of my acquaintance is pitching a bunch of never-read back issues of journals that are already on JSTOR to make space. Many of the professors there seem to think that this is the equivalent of the burning of the library at Alexandria. Whatever we do, a print journal for members has to come out of it.
•  The new journal should not be like the old one. As much as I have learned from the Public Historian over the years, the real elephant in the room is that the journal's content has always been uneven. The conventions of the academic article are simply alien to what many public historians actually do. There are not enough good public history articles in the academic style to support two journals.
• What I would like to see? A magazine-format journal that is open-access and publishes a range of items from semi-academic articles to interviews with public historians (I could use those in the classroom!), visits to institutions where public history happens ("behind the scenes" articles at Colonial Williamsburg, the Buffalo Bill Historic Center, the CHNM, the Smithsonian, Gettysburg, etc.), reviews, and who knows. Everything would be available online and for free, but a print version would go out to members unless they opted out. Could it also be distributed through bookstores, etc?
• Our model for new NCPH journal could be the Atlantic magazine. Four years ago the Atlantic retooled with an "internet first" strategy. It put all of its content, including back issues, online for free, added blogs, interviews, and other web-only features, and used all of these to promote subscriptions and newsstand purchases. The result: increased print sales and profitability in an era when all its competitors are declining. We can do this!

 I am also interested to hear your thoughts--what should a new NCPH journal look like? Please comment.

The Spokane Historical Smart Phone App is in the House!

Spokane Historical on the web. But that is not all...

Readers with long memories might recall that I have been working with my students to create smartphone walking tours of local history. I am pleased to announce that as of today our smartphone app, Spokane Historical, is available in both the Android market and the iTunes store.You can also explore our contents on the web. Yeeessssss!

Sample stop on the iPhone 

We are launching with about 60 historic sites in Spokane and Cheney, but more are being added every day and by summers end there should be over 200 sites. We are currently in what is called "soft release"--the app is available but I am publicizing it only a little bit at a time as we work out a few bugs. My students in Digital History last spring did a great job in researching and producing community stories and getting them into the database. But without the app in existence we did make some mistakes in things such as formatting and labeling. Email me if you find any errors.

Many more sites are under development. My excellent graduate students, Julie Russel and Tracy Rebstock, are developing rich tours of Spokane's cemeteries and parks, respectively. I am teaching a Digital Storytelling class right now where the students will be developing tours of the Centennial Trail, Indian War markers, Fort George Wright, and more.

Next steps on this project include looking for sponsorship and content partners, software updates that will include QR codes and better tour functionality, and perhaps expanding the project beyond Spokane. If you want to help, drop me line.

Navigating with the Android app

Spokane Historical was made possible by the generosity and support of my colleagues in the EWU History Department, who voted unanimously to support the project with department funds. So many public historians complain about how their colleagues demean or ignore what they do, I am lucky to work in a supportive department. Thanks friends. I also want to thank all of the local archivists, librarians, and historians who have helped my students create these stories. Spokane has friendly and sharing historical community, without whom this project would hardly be possible. A big thank you to Mark Tebeau, Director of the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University and his team for sharing with us the software platform for Spokane Historical, along with their hard-earned expertise. And my colleagues at the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives offered some technical advice along the way.

Last but not least, Spokane Historical is the product of many hundreds of hours of work by my awesome EWU students in public history. A year ago I walked into my Digital History class and announced that everyone should scrap their final project plans, we were going to create mobile historical walking tours instead. "How do we do that?" they asked. "I don't know," I answered, "Let's get started." It is a brave student who stays in a class after that.

Check out Spokane Historical and let me know what you think.

NCPH Day 2: A Lightning Post on Lightning Talks

I just left the Lightning Talks session at the NCPH. According to Wikipedia, are "lightning talks last only a few minutes and several will usually be delivered in a single period by different speakers. At the lightning talks session at the NCPH, presenters signed up the day of the presentation and each got three minutes to show off their digital project. At the end of three minutes speakers were cut off, even in mid sentence. (An innovation that should be widely adopted at history conferences.) Here is a quick rundown of the presentations:

Photo by Flickr
user veggiefrog.

• The indefatigable Cathy Stanton showed off History@Work, a "public history commons sponsored by the National Council on Public History." Launched just a few months ago, this is a group blog from the members of the NCPH. Every professional organization should be doing this!
• We enjoyed a demonstration of the Digital Innovation Lab at UNC-Chapel Hill. Particularly interesting was a tool they had developed that overlayed information from city directories onto a Sanborn map.
• Flat World Knowledge is a publisher of free, open-source textbooks. Professors can create an account and customize the textbooks with their own content. Students may access the materials fro free online of pay $35 for a physical copy of the book. Here is the book for the second half of of the US survey.
• From the Library of Congress, the Viewshare project, is a "free and open tool for creating interfaces for digital cultural heritage collections." For an example of how this exciting project can work, check out this LOC blog post about using Viewshare to explore Texas funeral records. 
• Laura Rosenthal showed us the excellent TeachingHistory.org, the "national history education clearing house." Particularly interesting is their Digital Classroom. “If you want to get your teaching materials into the hands of teachers, contact us," she said. 
• The History List is new site that aspires to be a universal calendar for history-related events. What a great idea! It is in beta but you can sign up now at this link.
• Museum Without Walls "is a new kind of interpretive program for Philadelphia’s public art. Each audio program is told by a variety of people from all walks of life who are connected to the sculpture by knowledge, experience or affiliation. Nearly 100 “voices” at 35 stops explore 51 sculptures along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Kelly Drive."
• I presented Spokane Historical, the new mobile phone app for touring Spokane History. 
• Mark Tebeau presented Cleveland Historical and the underlying platform Curatescape, the platform that powers Spokane Historical and other mobile tours.
• The Ojibwe People's Dictionary is a multimedia dictionary and cultural resource. Funded with over $800,000 in grants, the dictionary includes 60,000 spoken items by native speakers of Ojibwe.
• The1968exhibit.org is the online companion to a museum exhibit. It has a neat cell phone version to provide added content to visitors to the exhibit. Check out the 1968 Timeline.

It was a tremendous and energetic session, packed with information and ideas. A good lightning talk is like a punk rock song--you get out there, deliver a few power chords and a hook, and get the hell off the stage while the audience is still wanting more. 

At the National Council for Public History Conference

Sweetest. Nametag Ever.

 I am at the National Council for Public History Conference in Milwaukee. This year the public historians are meeting jointly with the OAH, and trying to show academic historians how to have a good time.It isn't easy, but we are making progress.

I am here to do a poster session with my excellent student Tracy Rebstock and friend Mark Tebeau on the subject of "Building Historical Community with Mobile Historical Smart Phone Apps." You can read our proposal here, but the short version is that we are going to show off our mobile app for Spokane history. (Spokane Historical, by the way, is in soft release--more on that to follow!)

I love this conference. Public history is a much more diverse, interesting and fun world than academic history. I enjoy coming here and meeting archivists, cultural resource officers, museum people, consultants, historic park employees and all the other flavors of public historian. Some of the highlight today included a session about steampunk and public history, listening to some National Park Service employees wrestle with problems of interpretation at "Indian War" sites in the American West, and meeting old friends.

I have to say however that the very best part of the day was the young man who spotted my name tag and told me that he was a graduate student in public history and a big fan of this blog, and how much some of what I have written has helped him on his career path. This was really touching and absolutely made my day. Thanks!

NCPH Launches History@Work Blog

This is very promising! The National Council on Public History has launched a sort of communal blog, History@Work. Described as "a multi-authored, multi-interest blog . . . a digital meeting place--a commons--for all those with an interest in the practice and study of history in public," the blog launched in March and already has some wonderful content.

The idea of a multi-author blog from a professional association is something that I have been pushing for years.I will be reading, and posting, at History@Work and urge you to pay us a visit.

The Threat of Spring Break, 1962

This is fun--a 1962 NBC News special about the latest threat to America's youth. It is a new tradition called "spring break," where college kids abandon their studies to "drink prodigious amounts of beer" and dance the twist. Back to Northwest History blogging next week.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Trolley Car to Natatorium Park

 

Another magnificent image from my collector friend, Darin Krogh. Natatorium Park was Spokane's preemier trolley park and operated from 1889 to 1967. Trollery parks were a commmon American attraction in late-19th and early-20th century America. Trolley car companies would create amuseument parks on cheap land at the outskirts of town. Admission was often free--but you had to ride the trolley to get there. Clever those trolley owners.

More to come.

Peaceful Valley, 1925

Encampment at the National Indian Congress, Glover Stadium, Spokane, Washington, 1925

As I work with my students on developing mobile history tours for Spokane Historical (which is only weeks away!) I have been discovering some great historic images. So I thought I'd start an occasional series of posts highlighting some of them.

This spectacular image is a Charles Libby photograph of a 1925 Indian camp in Spokane's Peaceful Valley. The scan was provided to me by a local collector who owns an original print. The University of Washington also has a copy. The National Indian Congress was meeting in Spokane and the sports field was made available to them. The even was widely publicized and photographed--see here and here as well.

Up next time--some historic postcards, and a love story.

Mullan Road Conference, 2012

The Mullan Road is one of the under-studied  topics in Pacific Northwest History. Built by Lieutenant John Mullan of the U.S. Army in 1859 and 1860, the Mullan Road was the first wagon road over the northern Rockies. Linking together the height of steam navigation on the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, it completed the route of commerce across the continent that Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to discover almost half-a-century before.

The portion of the road over the Rockies did not last long. Parts of it was destroyed by floods the year it was completed, and despite repair attempts the road was closed by 1861. Yet other sections of the road remained in use for decades, and the modern Interstate 90 follows the same route through the mountains today.

In recent years interest in the Mullan Road has grown, including an annual conference. The 2012 Mullan Road Conference, will take place April 13-15, at Walla Walla, Washington. This year's conference is organized by the Mullan Road Project Staff at Eastern Washington University(which I can tell you is mostly Bill Youngs and his students!)and the Walla Walla Mullan Road Sesquicentennial Committee.

I will be giving a presentation "Creating Historical Tours for Smartphones" on Saturday at 10 am. According to the schedule "Cebula ... will present his experiences in developing "Spokane Historical" a multi-media smartphone app for Spokane History, and he will suggest ways that this technology could be applied to touring sites along the Mullan Road." I guess I had better write that presentation! I hope to see some of you there.

NHPRC Action Alert

I just received the following alert via email and thought I should pass it along. The National Historical Records and Publications Commission is a vital federal agency that funds the identification, description and above all the preservation of historic documents in the United States. The agency has absorbed deep cuts in recent years, and President Obama's proposed 2013 budget cuts then another 40%! Please take a moment to contact some of the people listed below, and defend American history. The Society of American Archivists has more information here.

Action Alert:

Stop the Impending Fiscal Disaster for Historical Records in the United States!
Tell the House Appropriations Subcommittee to Fund NHPRC at $5 million!

In a year in which natural disasters have rocked many parts of the United States, a fiscal disaster is brewing in Washington, D.C., for archives, manuscripts, and records organizations nationwide and for historical editing projects. The President’s FY13 appropriations budget proposes just $3 million in funding for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission grants program – a $2 million (40%) reduction from the current $5 million appropriation. This is the third year of substantial reductions for a program that is authorized at a very modest $10 million.

While most other federal agencies have been weathering hits of around 9% annually, NHPRC’s cuts have been much heftier. The result is a severe crippling of NHPRC’s ability to carry out its legal mandate – which in turn seriously impedes the capacity of states and organizations nationwide to care for our nation’s heritage and make it available for use by our citizens.

What can you do to help avert this crisis?

Submit testimony in support of restoring NHPRC funding to $ 5million. The House Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee (of the House Appropriations Committee) will hold a hearing on the NARA budget on March 20, 2012. The Subcommittee will accept testimony submitted for the record, but it must be submitted by COB on Thursday, March 15, 2012, to go into the record prior to the hearing. We encourage archives, libraries, and other historical organizations to submit testimony on behalf of their organization and users. Send testimony that speaks directly to the positive benefits of NHPRC funding for your state or organization. Specific instructions on testimony are at the end of this action alert.

Email your written testimony to: FS.Approp@mail.house.gov

House Appropriations Committee, Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee

Fax or email the chair of the Subcommittee to express your support for restoration of NHPRC funding (at $5 million) as part of the National Archives budget. If your representative is a member of the Subcommittee, fax, email, or call him/her and ask for support of funding restoration for NHPRC. In your letter or call, speak to the specific benefits of NHPRC for your state/organization/users. The more your Congressperson understands that his/her constituents are affected directly, the more convincing your message will be.


Republicans:
JoAnn Emerson (Chair, MO)
Rodney Alexander (LA)
Jo Bonner (AL)
Mario Diaz-Balart (FL)
Tom Graves (GA)
Kevin Yoder (KS)
Steve Womak (AR)

Democrats:
Jose Serrano (NY, Ranking Minority)
Barbara Lee (CA)
Peter Visclosky (IN)
Ed Pastor (AZ)


Guidelines for written testimony:

• Do not exceed 5 pages, double-spaced, single-sided, 12 point font, at least one inch margins
• State in the first paragraph the agency, program, amount of money involved in the request (i.e. National Archives, National Historical Publications and Records Commission, $5 million)
• Name title, institutional affiliation at the top of the page
• Submit as a single pdf document
• Email to: FS.Approp@mail.house.gov

The Ads that Could Have Won George McClellan the Presidency

FlackCheck.org created these very funny imaginary negative ads, supposedly from George McClellan when he ran against the president in 1864. Enjoy.

The Spokane Ghost Sign Project, an Experiment in Public History Pedagogy

[Update: Bonus Research Tip about using Google Street View added 3/9/2012, see the bottom of the post!]

[The following are assignment instructions for some of my Public History students. As I was typing them up I though--"Hey, this might make a good blog post."]

The Spokane Ghost Sign Project is an experiment in crowd sourcing a community history project with a few simple, free digital tools. The project goal is to create a interactive visual record of Spokane's ghost signs and their history. The educational goal is to introduce public history students to some basic digital and research tools, including Flickr, Google News Archive, city directories, Sanborn maps, and archival research.

Advertisement from 1907 Spokane city directory.

A ghost sign is a sign, usually hand-painted on the side of a brick building, for a business that is no longer around. (For the purposes of this assignment any sign for a closed business counts as a ghost sign.) These signs can persist for decades after a business has vanished and are often the only visible record of the institution. This Flickr pool provides some examples, including quite a few in Spokane. Ghost signs are major uninterpreted historical objects in our public spaces--and we can't have that! So let's interpret some.

The assignment is straightforward enough: Find some ghost signs, take pictures, research the history of the business advertised in the sign, and put the results up on our own Flickr pool. This is the first time I have given this assignment but I think it will be fun and will sharpen your public and digital history skills.

Historian want a cracker? See the Sanborn map image below.

Step 1: Find and photograph some ghost signs. When hunting for ghost signs look for old brick buildings--the older and more run down the better. In Spokane the old warehouses along the railroad tracks retain a lot of ghost signs. You might also explore the edges of downtown where the buildings are less likely to have been restored and repainted. Also try the near Spokane Valley and north of the river.

Bring 1) a decent camera with a zoom, 2) a notebook and pencil, 3) a map of Spokane on which you can take notes (print off a few pages of Google Maps?) and a 4) pocketful or quarters. Your cell phone camera is probably not up to the task buy any $100 point-and-shoot with at least a 3X zoom should do the trick. Take your time and try to get a good clear shot. Experiment with photographing from different angles for a more interesting shot.

Do not trespass to get your photograph, stay on the sidewalks, and do not get run over by a car. The latter will result in an automatic F. 

Step 2: Research the history of your businesses. Your goal is to write a couple of paragraphs, not a research paper, but you need to get the information right. Think of the 5 Ws--who what when where and why? There are many resources for researching local history, here are a few of the best for this assignment:

Sanborn map detail for Washington Cracker Co.

• City directories for Spokane go back to the late 1880s and up to the present. The bulk of the directories are devoted to listing the name, address and occupation of every person in the city, but they also include business listings in the back, along with advertisements. Take a guess at when the business might have existed and start with a directory from that year. The directories are a little confusing at first but you will soon get the hang of how they are organized. You will find nearly-complete runs of Spokane directories at the Eastern Region Branch of the State Archives in Cheney, at the Northwest Room of Spokane Public Library, and in the Joel E. Ferris Research Library at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. The directories can tell you what years the business existed, other places it might have been located, sometimes the business owners and where they lived, and what goods and services the business might have dealt in. Bring your camera because you might find an interesting illustration or advertisement.
• While you are looking at city directories take a few minutes to examine some Sanborn maps for your block. These are incredibly detailed block-by-block maps that were made of American cities, beginning in the late 1800s, to help insurance companies estimate fire insurance liabilities. Look at the example of the Washington Cracker Company building on this page--it is a wealth of information. Collections of Sanborn Maps fro Spokane are available at the Northwest Room and at the Joel E. Ferris Research Library int he MAC.
• If your building is on the Spokane Register of Historic Places you are in luck. The Spokane Historic Preservation Office has some valuable online resources, include a list of all designated properties in Spokane. Watch for the words Nomination (PDF) at the bottom of the property description because for some properties you download the historic register nomination form, which will have all the information you will need.
• Old newspapers may have information about your business. We are very fortunate in Spokane because the Google News Archive has scanned most of the historic newspapers for our town and put them online. Searching it is a bit tricky--try using complete phrases, limiting the years of your search, and entering "Spokesman" in the source box or "Spokane" in the place box. Take your time and learn how to use this resource. If you find a striking headline or advertisement for your business, do a screen capture and save the image.
• Good old archival research is productive and fun. The Northwest room of the Spokane Public library has many old street view photographs, clippings files, and other possible sources of information, as does the Joel E. Ferris Library at the MAC. Hint: People who are nice and polite to the archivists often discover more information.
• Finally, there is THE GOOGLE. There is tremendous interest in local history out there, and often a Google search with the name of a company plus Spokane will turn up a newspaper article, a webpage, an old postcard, or other historical gem.

Step 3: Edit your pictures for maximum impact. I like the free Google product Picasa for simple photo editing, but you can use whatever you prefer.

Directories often include valuable illustrations such
as this. Click here to see the present street view.

Step 4: Load your picture(s) and your short history of the company to our Flickr pool, Ghost Signs of Spokane. You will have to establish a free Flickr account and then ask to join the group. I will approve your membership and you can upload your photos and descriptions. Note: When you load your photographs to Flickr I strongly encourage you to use some form of Creative Commons licensing. Ta da! You have documented community history.

Bonus Research Tip: (added 3/9/2012) It just occurs to me the Google Street View is a very useful tool for this project. With GSV you can "drive" down nearly any street in Spokane and scout ahead for ghost signs, or at least for neighborhoods of old brick buildings that are likely places for the signs. You could also use GSV after you find a sign if you misplaced the address. Here is one ghost sign viewable on GSV downtown (it is for the Grand Coulee Hotel and is far more readable in person than it appears here), and here is a little one on the side of a building in the East Central neighborhood.

Friends and students, this is my first time through with this assignment, so be sure to report any difficulties or make suggestions in the comments section. 
 

Please fight for Spokane History

Spokane's historic preservation community is making progress in the fight to save the Jensen-Byrd building. Monday night the Spokane City Council will vote on a resolution asking WSU to reconsider their plan to demolish this Spokane landmark. We need your help!

1. Please attend the City Council meeting and speak in support of the Jensen-Byrd. The meeting is at 6 p.m. Monday, February 6 at the Council Chambers at 808 W. Spokane Falls Boulevard. Preservation opponents will be there in full force so we need to make our voices heard.
   
2. If you cannot attend, please take a moment to email WSU President Elson Floyd and (politely) express your displeasure about his decision to raze a Spokane landmark. Instructions here, and do not forget to CC the Spokane Preservation Advocates.
   
3. Use other modes of communication to spread the word and to let WSU know how unhappy you are with this decision. Post a polite note on the WSU Facebook pages--the WSU Spokane page, and the main WSU page.

What should you say? The SPA has a good set of talking points at their website. The additional point I would make is that saving the Jensen-Byrd is also in the best interest of Washington State University. A re-purposed Jensen-Byrd building would provide life and character for the currently very sterile and uninteresting Riverpoint campus. And it would avoid the huge hit that WSU will take to its reputation if the building is razed.

Last week I took around the Jensen-Byrd--it is much more impressive in person than photographs can convey, but I took some pictures anyway: