The Digital Preservation Guide from the Library of Congress provides some good guidelines which can be used to preserve content for digital projects- not only personal projects, but also academic or corporate.  If I were to create a digital project for my family history I would start by accumulating all the raw data I would potentially incorporate.  These could be documents, photos, videos, or any other artifacts I could use to establish a history.

The first step would be to go through the artifacts and short them into relevant categories, discarding the ones not of interest.  Many of the older photographs would need to be converted to digital, in which I would use a high resolution scanner to upload and save the files digitally, preferably saving them as a .jpeg or .tiff files.  My grandfather has old newspaper clippings which I would also like to include.  The same could be done with video using the appropriate software, but unfortunately my family has very few home movies.

Once the files are in digital form they should be individually labeled and put into corresponding file folders.  Folders could be based on person/family, time period, or item type (i.e. photographs, videos, articles, etc.)  I think I would create folders based on specific nuclear families and create subfolders within them based on file type.

Backing up the data is the most important part.  I would be sure to save the data on both my internal and external hard drive, and also create a copy on my parent’s drive, as well as another online such as on a website or saving to Google Dropbox.

There was certainly no scarcity of information in Roy Rosenzweig’s Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Age! I found the amount of information somewhat overwhelming, but thoughtfully and adequately played out.  This essay is one I think any scholar can benefit from reading, encouraging scholars to “keep up with the times” of technology, and facing the reality of the needs/benefits of digitization and also difficulties.  Below are a few things I took away from the article.

I found it was interesting that the author brought up how fear of loss is of much concern to historians and others preserving digital data, when the bigger issue is that digitally recorded materials may no longer be readable in the future.

Here is the key difference from the paper era: we need to take action now because digital items very quickly become unreadable, or recoverable only at great expense….The greatest concern is not over what has already been lost but what historians in fifty years may find that they can’t read.

For my final project I plan to l examine the history of nuclear weapons.  This graph is helpful because it shows the peaks in literature concerning nuclear warfare, weapons, and atomic bombs.  I took a look at Wikipedia’s History of Nuclear Weapons to get a better idea of where some of these peaks came from.  WWII and the Cold War seem to surround the majority of the information.  Here are some points of interest:

• 1942– Starting point.  Theoretical conference for the development of the atomic bomb, University of California, Berkeley
• 1945– WWII. United States bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan
• 1949– First atomic bomb testing by the Soviet Union
• 1952– United States “Operation Ivy,” first U.S. fusion bomb test
• 1962– Cuban Missile Crisis
• 1963– Limited Test Ban Treaty
• 1927– NATO plants Pershing II missiles in Western Europe in response to USSR missiles
• 1982– Protest against nuclear warfare in New York
• 1987– Protest against nuclear warfare in Nevada

For this practicum I wanted to show the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and the number of casualties by year.  Number of boots on ground were retrieved from the Federation of American Scientists, specific document found here.  Number of casualties were given by icasualties.org.

Graph 1:  I could not figure out how to make the x-axis to correspond to the year.  If this cannot be changed, it might be better to remove the horizontal axis category completely and add a description to signify the corresponding years.

Graph 2: I had the same problem as Graph 1.  In addition, I wonder if it would be possible to make two different scales for the two series, since casualties barely show on the graph and are only indicated by number.

To improve these graphs I would solve the unresolved formatting issues, and also include information through 2012 (permitting I can find it).  I found number of casualties for each year, but not the number of troops on found.  The FAS provided estimated for the numbers of troops on ground from 2009-2012, which made me think another interesting chart would be to show how the estimates showed the actual.

I rather enjoyed this reading because it gave us a glimpse at how work in academia is changing in the digital age.  Many of the prior readings, especially the ones from the textbook, were much more technical.  “From Babel to Knowledge” combined the technical aspects with practical application to show how/why digital research is useful, the status of such programs, and their potential for the future.  It was really cool to get a glimpse at the projects Professor Cohen has been working on, and it further enlightened me on the purpose of this course.

Starting out with the story of the Library of Babel was a good way to get the reader’s attention and ease into the subject.  In the syllabus finder section Cohen shows the advantage of creating a more specialized API for a specific purpose such as mining syllabi so that professor and students can enhance their class experience.  I think this is a great idea, multiple brains are always better than one.  Being able to find new course materials, such as readings and assignments, makes the class more enjoyable for both parties.  There are some professors who teach the exact same course year, after year, after year.  The problem with that is that readings can become dated and the professor is stuck into routine- grading the same assignments time and time again.  Having the ability to search syllabi and adopt new material increases the quality of a course and encourages professors to continue learning.  I liked that Cohen walked us through how he developed the program as well.  It made the thought of creating such a program much less intimidating.

The author expresses three lessons he has  learned through his research:

1. More emphasis needs to be placed on creating APIs for digital collections.
2. Resources that are free to use in any way, even if they are imperfect, are more valuable than those that are gated or use-restricted, even if those resources are qualitatively better.
3. Quantity may make up for a lack of quality.

PowerPoint has become nearly unavoidable in the modern world.  It is used by students, teachers, and corporations every day.  While PowerPoint is a useful tool for presentations, it is only useful when used properly.  Unfortunately, it is misused more often than not.  PowerPoint should only be used when it enhances the presentation rather than detracts from it.  Obnoxious color schemes and over-saturation of text and images distract the listener from the topic at hand.  The powerpoint should not of assistance to the presenter, should rather assist the audience by complimenting what the presenter is saying.

I cannot tell you how many presentations both by students and professors I have had to sit through and listen to the presenter read directly from the slide.  I honestly feel it is a waste of everyone’s time to conduct a presentation this way.  I could read the slides from the comfort of my own home and get the point.  One good piece of advice on powerpoint presentations in my Business Communications course is to only show the slide while it is relevant to what you are saying and revert to a blank screen while you present information before the next slide.

Based on Edward Tufte’s “PowerPoint is Evil,” Tufte would likely disagree with me and argue that PowerPoint is evil all of the time.  I do think it can be useful, but I see how it becomes evil more often than not.  I think Tufte brought up a good point in talking about it’s use in elementary schools.  Our writing skills are developed early on and I think it is important that children are encouraged to write in full sentences and be able to expand on their thoughts, rather than simplifying them into bullet points.  What I think he means by “respect your audience” is that a presentation is between you and your audience, not between you and your powerpoint.  We should not boggle down their minds with nonsense but rather take the time to become confident in what you are speaking about to the point that you have no need to use PowerPoint.  Peter Norvig does a good job mocking the flaws of PowerPoint and how it is misused in his Gettysburg Cemetery Dedication presentation slides, showing a tacky color scheme and how the minimalist text provides absolutely no advantage.