Difference between revisions of "OutHistory:Helping Us To Think Historically"

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Entry in progress by Jonathan Ned Katz
 
Entry in progress by Jonathan Ned Katz
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As of 2-8-08  12:38 pm
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As of 2-19-08  12:38 pm
  
  
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To my mind, the main, identity-determining, defining purpose of OutHistory.org is to foster a historical understanding of human sexuality and gender.
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To my mind, the main, identity-determining, defining purpose of OutHistory.org is to foster a historical understanding of human sexuality and gender, and specifically of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual history.
  
  
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OutHistory.org is a website in development about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, in particular, and sexual and gender history, in general.  
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Ideally, the site should encompass the history of heterosexuality as well as homosexuality, the normative and the deviant, the straight and the queer, because all these categories of human sexual and gendered experience depend on, reflect, and illuminate each other.
  
  
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Ideally, it should encompass the history of heterosexuality as well as homosexuality, the normative and the deviant, the straight and the queer, because all these categories of human sexual and gendered experience depend on and reflect each other.
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At its best, this site should encourage us to think deeply and critically about the passage of time as it effects the history of human intimacy and alienation, of human sexual and gendered relationships. It should also encourage us to think about the historical evidence of such relationships, and how we research it and analyze it.  The site should help users undersand what it means to understand LGBT, queer, and heterosexual life in the perspective of society and, especially, time.
  
  
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At its best, this site should encourage us to think deeply and critically about the passage of time as it effects human social relationships, about alienatation and intimacy in those relationships, about historical evidence.  The site asks what does it mean to understand LGBT, queer, and heterosexual life in the perspective of society and, especially, time.
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==Time==
  
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As a formal Internet-based institution, OutHistory includes elements of an almanac, archive, article, bibliography, book, encyclopedia, library, and museum, but it is not identical to any one of these.  As a history website, time is of the essence for how OutHistory.
  
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OutHistory should help us ask and begin to answer questions about the erotic acts and feminine and masculine behaviors, the sexual and gendered feelings of people within social structures over time.
 
  
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As I write (February 19, 2001) the the identity of OutHistory as a history site is not as clear as it should be.  We are still striving to clarify what distinguishes OutHistory as a history site, concerned primarily with time and social structures, from an archive site.  What OutHistory is, and what it does will become clearer as it develops its own historical life and identity over time.
  
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As a formal Internet-based structure, OutHistory includes elements of an almanac, archive, article, bibliography, book, encyclopedia, library, and museum, but it is not identical to any one of these.
 
  
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==Questions==
  
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As, specifically, a history website, on this site time is of the essence.  What that means -- what this history website is, and what it does -- will become clearer as it develops its own historical life and identity over time.
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How can OutHistory creatively represent sexuality and gender in time, and help us think more clearly about eros and femininity and masculinity as historical?
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How can OutHistory creatively represent sexuality and gender in time, and help us think more clearly about eros and femininity and masculinity as historical?
 
  
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Are there ways that OutHistory can, in its ordering and reordering of its structure, functions and content, help us to think more creatively about sexuality and gender as temporal-social phenomena?
  
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Are there ways that OutHistory can, in its ordering and reordering of its structure, functions and its content, help us to think more creatively about sexuality and gender as temporal-social phenomena?
 
  
 
This entry is intended to open a public discussion on the issues raised. Please use the Discuss function on the top of the page yellow bar to add your comments. Thanks.
 
This entry is intended to open a public discussion on the issues raised. Please use the Discuss function on the top of the page yellow bar to add your comments. Thanks.
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==How Does OutHistory Now Represent Time and History?==
 
==How Does OutHistory Now Represent Time and History?==
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Search: OutHistory now provides several ways to search its content by time.
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Timelines: OutHistory now provides users with several manually created Timelines on particular areas of its content.
  
  
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By default, the “Article title matches” are sorted by “Time,” and if they don’t have a date, alphabetically.
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By default, the result of a generic Search, “Article title matches” are sorted by “Time,” and if they don’t have a date, alphabetically.
  
  
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“Article title matches” can also be sorted by the user by “Title,” which should make them appear in alphabetical order of the title.
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“Article title matches” can also be sorted by the user by “Title,” which should make the title list appear in alphabetical order.
  
  
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It’s Timely!
 
It’s Timely!
  
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Liberating the LGBTQ Past to Understand the Present & Inspire the Future
  
 
===Research other history websites===
 
===Research other history websites===
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:: * [http://www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/intro.html "The Lost Museum": A website about Phineas Taylor Barnum's American Museum, New York City (1841-July 13, 1865)]
 
:: * [http://www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/intro.html "The Lost Museum": A website about Phineas Taylor Barnum's American Museum, New York City (1841-July 13, 1865)]
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:: * [http://historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/makesense/ "Making Sense of Evidence" (helps students and teachers make effective use of primary sources; provides strategies for analyzing online primary materials, with interactive exercises and a guide to traditional and online sources. “Scholars in Action” segments show how scholars puzzle out the meaning of different kinds of primary sources, allowing you to try to make sense of a document yourself then providing audio clips in which leading scholars interpret the document and discuss strategies for overall analysis)]
  
 
:: * [http://historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/manypasts/ "Many Pasts" (documents in text, image, and audio about the experiences of ordinary Americans throughout U.S. history. All of the documents have been screened by professional historians and are accompanied by annotations that address their larger historical significance and context)]
 
:: * [http://historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/manypasts/ "Many Pasts" (documents in text, image, and audio about the experiences of ordinary Americans throughout U.S. history. All of the documents have been screened by professional historians and are accompanied by annotations that address their larger historical significance and context)]
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There are no categories listed at the bottom of this entry, but categories appear.  What's going on?
 
There are no categories listed at the bottom of this entry, but categories appear.  What's going on?
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==Time and Time Again: Developing OutHistory's Identity as a History Site==
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{{Unprotected}}
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==Notes in Progress==
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History sites/archive sites:How is a history site different from an archive site?
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:A history site helps users think historically, aids them in understanding people, their actions, and events in the perspective of time and social context. An archive site is interested in letting users know of all the materials archived and get access to them indifferent ways.
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How can an LGBT history site help users understand the larger social context of people and events in LGBT history?
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History websites: What are the ways that existing history website help users think historically about people, their acts, social structures?
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MediaWiki and time: How do MediaWiki-based sites like Wikipedia categorize people and events according to time?  Let's make a list of all these ways.
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Representing time: How do history sites represent time using the means available via a website: textually, visually, audibly?
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==Bibliography on Creating History Websites==
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==History Website Links==
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American Social History Project
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New York Historical Society

Latest revision as of 12:26, 15 June 2011

Creating an Internet Site on Sexual and Gender History

Entry in progress by Jonathan Ned Katz As of 2-19-08 12:38 pm


OPEN ENTRY: This entry is open to collaborative creation by anyone with evidence, citations, and analysis to share, so no particular, named creator is responsible for the accuracy and cogency of its content. Please use this entry's Comment section at the bottom of the page to suggest improvements about which you are unsure. Thanks.


Introduction

To my mind, the main, identity-determining, defining purpose of OutHistory.org is to foster a historical understanding of human sexuality and gender, and specifically of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual history.


Ideally, the site should encompass the history of heterosexuality as well as homosexuality, the normative and the deviant, the straight and the queer, because all these categories of human sexual and gendered experience depend on, reflect, and illuminate each other.


At its best, this site should encourage us to think deeply and critically about the passage of time as it effects the history of human intimacy and alienation, of human sexual and gendered relationships. It should also encourage us to think about the historical evidence of such relationships, and how we research it and analyze it. The site should help users undersand what it means to understand LGBT, queer, and heterosexual life in the perspective of society and, especially, time.


Time

As a formal Internet-based institution, OutHistory includes elements of an almanac, archive, article, bibliography, book, encyclopedia, library, and museum, but it is not identical to any one of these. As a history website, time is of the essence for how OutHistory.


As I write (February 19, 2001) the the identity of OutHistory as a history site is not as clear as it should be. We are still striving to clarify what distinguishes OutHistory as a history site, concerned primarily with time and social structures, from an archive site. What OutHistory is, and what it does will become clearer as it develops its own historical life and identity over time.


Questions

How can OutHistory creatively represent sexuality and gender in time, and help us think more clearly about eros and femininity and masculinity as historical?


Are there ways that OutHistory can, in its ordering and reordering of its structure, functions and content, help us to think more creatively about sexuality and gender as temporal-social phenomena?


This entry is intended to open a public discussion on the issues raised. Please use the Discuss function on the top of the page yellow bar to add your comments. Thanks.


How Does OutHistory Now Represent Time and History?

Search: OutHistory now provides several ways to search its content by time.

Timelines: OutHistory now provides users with several manually created Timelines on particular areas of its content.


Search (generic)

If a user searches, for example, for “transgender“ content, that search yields “Article title matches” and many “Page text matches.”


By default, the result of a generic Search, “Article title matches” are sorted by “Time,” and if they don’t have a date, alphabetically.


“Article title matches” can also be sorted by the user by “Title,” which should make the title list appear in alphabetical order.


<PROBLEM 1: The matches do not appear in alphabetical order, although they change their order. A title starting with “Transgender” appears above a title starting with “Pauline.” How the titles are ordered is now unclear.>


<PROBLEM 2: When “Article title matches” first appear, sorted by Time, the active Time function is blue or purple and the non-active Title function is black. In order to sort by “Title” a user has to click on “Time.” This is very confusing and counterintuitive.


POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Both the Time and Title functions should by default appear as active, but they should be distinctly different colors. The primary function, Time, should remain blue or purple, and the secondary function could appear in red.>


NOTES for further clarification

Alternate TITLE: OutHistory: Time, Sexuality, Gender, and the Web


How can the site be creative in helping people think historically about sexuality and gender, intimacy and alienation.


How to establish OutHistory’s identity as, specifically, a history site? How to distinguish the site from an encyclopedia like GLBT, which has historical entries, but is not organized to stress history and time?


Part of the problem is creating ways to encourage users to see the content of OutHistory in specific historical contexts.


Part of the problem is how to present the available ways of searching and seeing the content as historical.


And part of our problem is categorizing more content by time categories to make it searchable that way.


Manually created timelines

The Timeline on the Age of Sodomitical Sin is the most developed. JNK also started a manually created Timeline on Transgender History. Wikipedia also has manually created timelines. Study them.


Is there any way that Timelines can be created by the software if proper coding is added to the content? See below. We are supposed to have that capacity already, I think.


Advanced search via "More"

(A) "Timeline search" <PROBLEM (not working properly>

(B) "Time era" search <PROBLEM (not working properly)>


Time content on OutHistory

The "Contents" page refers to "Time" content on OutHistory and points users to:


"Browse by Century" or "Browse by Decade".


If you Browse by Century or by Decade you get a list organized alphabetically by the title.


QUESTION: Is there any way to have these lists appear chronologically?


These searches are made possible by adding categories specifying centuries and decades. For examples:

(Note the categories should be listed in the Category lists at the end of the list after the alphabetical listings, in ascending order from earliest to latest.)


QUESTION: Do we need to code or categorize more entries so that they are listed when you Browse by Century or by Decade? If so, let’s make that a priority for an intern or us.


Wikipedia and Time and History

Wikipedia has additional ways of categorizing and searching by time that we can adopt and publicize on OutHistory. Let’s investigate and understand these.


Wikipedia:Timeline Main listing: List of timelines


Main categories: Category:Timelines, part of Category:Chronology


Main articles: Timeline and Chronology


Main article: Wikipedia:Timeline standards


For help with embedding EasyTimeline timelines in Wikipedia, see mw:Extension:EasyTimeline/syntax.


WikiProject Timeline Tracer is making an effort, as of January 2008, to seek out and standardize timeline and chronological references.


See also the Featured list criteria and Wikipedia:Lists as style guides, and relevant Featured lists such as Timeline of chemistry and Narnian timeline as examples.


Also: On Wikipedia see any month, day, year, decade:


For example, June 1

1930s

1952

1800

1900s

19th century

ALSO:

Category:Organizations established in 1969.


OutHistory slogans stressing time

Time is of the essence

It’s About Time!

It’s Timely!

Liberating the LGBTQ Past to Understand the Present & Inspire the Future

Research other history websites

See what they do creatively to help people view their contents as temporal, historical. Create an annotated list of history website and other relevant websites.

List of important history websites

American Social History Project

Consulting/Contract Work
Digital Projects
* "History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web"
* "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution" (essays, images, documents, songs, maps, a timeline, glossary)
* "The Lost Museum": A website about Phineas Taylor Barnum's American Museum, New York City (1841-July 13, 1865)
* "Making Sense of Evidence" (helps students and teachers make effective use of primary sources; provides strategies for analyzing online primary materials, with interactive exercises and a guide to traditional and online sources. “Scholars in Action” segments show how scholars puzzle out the meaning of different kinds of primary sources, allowing you to try to make sense of a document yourself then providing audio clips in which leading scholars interpret the document and discuss strategies for overall analysis)
* "Many Pasts" (documents in text, image, and audio about the experiences of ordinary Americans throughout U.S. history. All of the documents have been screened by professional historians and are accompanied by annotations that address their larger historical significance and context)
* "Picturing U.S. History: An Interactive Resource for Teaching with Visual Evidence"
* Reviews of History Websites from the Journal of American History and its online companion History Cooperative.org (see below)
* "The September 11 Digital Archive" (uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath; 150,000 digital items, including 40,000 emails, 40,000 first-hand stories, 15,000 digital images. In September 2003, the Library of Congress accepted the Archive into its collections, an event that both ensured the Archive's long-term preservation and marked the library's first major digital acquisition. See also: "Ground One: Voices from Post-911 Chinatown"
* "Student Voices from World War II and the McCarthy Era: An Oral History Website"
* Websites for Teaching U.S. History and Social Studies (see especially: "Sexuality")
"Who Built America?" Documentaries
"Who Built America?" Textbook


HistoryCooperative.org

Research what has been written and published about history websites or history on the web

Create a bibliography of that those writings.


There are no categories listed at the bottom of this entry, but categories appear. What's going on?


Time and Time Again: Developing OutHistory's Identity as a History Site

OPEN ENTRY: This entry is open to collaborative creation by anyone with evidence, citations, and analysis to share, so no particular, named creator is responsible for the accuracy and cogency of its content. Please use this entry's Comment section at the bottom of the page to suggest improvements about which you are unsure. Thanks.


Notes in Progress

History sites/archive sites:How is a history site different from an archive site?

A history site helps users think historically, aids them in understanding people, their actions, and events in the perspective of time and social context. An archive site is interested in letting users know of all the materials archived and get access to them indifferent ways.


How can an LGBT history site help users understand the larger social context of people and events in LGBT history?


History websites: What are the ways that existing history website help users think historically about people, their acts, social structures?


MediaWiki and time: How do MediaWiki-based sites like Wikipedia categorize people and events according to time? Let's make a list of all these ways.


Representing time: How do history sites represent time using the means available via a website: textually, visually, audibly?


Bibliography on Creating History Websites

History Website Links

American Social History Project

New York Historical Society

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