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Speaking of Podcasts...

In case George Mason's Center for History and New Media isn't your home page, today the Center inaugurated the podcast, Digital Campus.  Digital Campus is a biweekly discussion on "how digital media and technology are affecting learning, teaching, and scholarship at colleges, universities, libraries, and museums."

When is a photo not an artifact, but a design element?

Based on readings and discussion this week, it would seem that in visual representation, as in other realms, context is everything.  Is touching up a digital photo different from selectively editing historic text documents?  In document editing, the standard is minimal-to-no messing with the original.  Why?  In part, because it is important to know how people and individuals coped with spelling, punctuation, word usage at different times. We want to try to grasp their trains of thought, intellectual, cultural and emotional milieu. We definitely don't clean up prose to make writers look better or to standardize a document according to criteria not those of the author.

But we'll lift quotes for use in different contexts.   We'll reposition a handwritten statement into a word-processed version.  And we'll manipulate the form and flow of text for design projects.

Parallels exist between documents and photographs. Both are artifacts.  Regardless of condition, the content of original photographs provides a foundation for interpretive analysis.  If the provenance is known, e.g., whether the image has lain protected in an archive or willy-nilly in the bottom of a box in someone's damp attic, analysis of photographic technological processes and their effects over time has value as well.

But there are times and places when removing the blemishes of age, recoloring, and cropping serve a purpose.  It would just seem necessary to footnote that quite clearly.

Podcasting

This morning, NPR Morning Edition broadcast an interview with podcaster Rob Walch who manages podcast411, a website explaining, among many topics, who is podcasting, how to podcast, the basics of podcasts for consumers including "Flashing 12s."

This morning's discussion focused on whether money is to be made in podcasting.  The short answer is, no, not at this time for podcasters, but yes for those who provide the technology and publishing mechanisms for those podcasts.

How does this relate to digital history?  The top four podcasts, rated by hits, are educational.  As an example, the NPR story cited the highly-popular feed by Podcast Peer Award 2007 Finalist, Grammar Girl who recently discussed semicolons. Not usually a heart-stopper. Walsh pointed out that the broadcast made a dry subject interesting without sacrificing substance.  So we are back to design, or "packaging."  While we've recently discussed visual presentation, audio--soundtrack, lively scripts, etcetera--is a presentation element as well. 

Many museums already disseminate material through podcasts: Monticello is an excellent example of a variety of materials and approaches.  It seems to me, on first thoughts anyway, that podcasts offer another portal for disseminating "good" history and another gatekeeping methodology for quality control.  (Walch's website, by-the-way, categorizes 31 podcasts under history, some of which academic historians would undoubtedly question.)

Help, please:  I am having trouble with CSS in multiple browsers. I have clearly missed some basic information about how to negotiate this.  Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

"Do it yourself": challenging. "How To" websites: priceless

See http://www.smashingmagazine.com

Including, but not limited to  53 CSS techniques you couldn't live without

and

more than you ever though you'd want to know about rounded corners