World Wide Web

The past week saw the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the World Wide Web - a development that we now all take for granted but which has dramatically changed the way we communicate and search for information.

The following links provide information about the development of the World Wide Web. A link to the first www website is included in some of these articles. -

CERN statement - Twenty years of a free, open web

Happy birthday www - About computers

Birth of the web - CERN

Evolution of the Web - About computers

A timeline of the history of the world wide web

Articles on developments of the Internet -

Hobbes' Internet timeline

Internet history - Computer History Museum

Digitisation resource

The NSW State Records have a resource that contains useful information about digitisation as well as digitisation projects. Check the tag for digitisation in the blog, Archives Outside for  relevant articles. A recent post this month is part 1 of a series - Digitising your collection - Project Planning. Worth a look.

Backing up computers

More and more valuable information is now being stored on computers. This article from About computers is directed at home owners of computers but is also definitely applicable for members of community groups. The Dos and-Don'ts of PC Backups

Choosing a safe password

Today we need passwords for almost everything. This article in About.com Internet for beginners provides useful tips for creating a safe password - How to Choose a Good Password.

Web design - how to drive away your readers

About.com recently published an article How to drive away your readers  which includes a number of points relevant to historical society websites. Points to avoid include using impossible navigation on a site, not maintaining the site (outdated material), trying to use latest web tools without considering whether the computers of your readers will be able to use them and using too many images (particularly large images that take too long to download. As usual with About.com articles there are also links to other related articles on the topic. About.com articles do have adds on their pages but if you keep reading you will usually find relevant information.

CSS - Cascading Style Sheets

For those who prefer to design their own web pages using html, learning to use cascading style sheets can be a useful tool in the design of the website. About.com recently provided an introductory article on the topic of Cascading Style Sheets - Learn to love CSS - along with links to other articles on CSS in the About.com Web design / HTML section.

Photoshop tutorials

A recent post from About.com provides a link to a Photoshop Tutorial - How to Use the Levels Tool. The tutorial includes a short video plus written instructions. Although this is for Photoshop CS6 the information could be useful as a guide when using other versions of Photoshop or other photo editing software. Links to other Photoshop Tutorials provided in the About.com Graphics Software section can also be found in the article. - Photoshop Tutorials

Photo scanners

Like many people I have a collection of photographs that need to be scanned if I want to use them online or in other digital projects. Many of the coloured photos taken in the 1960s and 1970s are also beginning to fade and need to be copied now. Our home flatbed scanner has served us well for about 10 years but is now showing its age and scanning is a slow process. I was recently given a Kaiser Baas photo scanner to use when scanning loose photos and single A4 pages. This is a small device that scans images at a resolution of 150, 300 or 600 dpi. It scans colour or black and white items and saves the scanned image as jpg or pdf files. The device is easy to use - plug it in to a power supply, press the On button for a few seconds to turn on the scanner, begin to feed the photo into the device and then press the Scan button. Scanning each image takes only a few seconds and the scanned image is saved on to a SD card in the device. Two protective sleeves come with the unit making it easier to scan smaller items as well as keeping images straight during scanning.

Once the batch of scanning is complete use the USB lead to connect the photo scanner to the computer and then save the scanned images to folders on the computer as required. Scanned images can then be edited, if required, in a photo editor.

The small portable scanner works independently of a computer so would be useful for scanning photographs 'in the field' provided that there is a power supply. For such a project you would need to keep a list of image numbers on a sheet with space for brief information about the scanned image if the photo scanner was used to scan images at places other than at the home base. At the society rooms canning single photographs using a photo scanner could also be a task undertaken by one person while someone else uses the computer for other purposes.

Larger images than A4, images on boards and those in books would still need to be scanned on a flatbed scanner or photographed with a digital camera but a small photo scanner could be a useful tool for scanning single photographs.

VALA 2012 papers

The papers presented at the VALA 2012 conference held in February are now available online at http://www.vala.org.au/vala2012-proceedings/blog.

VALA looks at the use of information technology in a range of libraries and many of the papers provide useful information about the use of information technology in other collecting organisations as well.

The plenary sessions at the beginning and end of each day provide frequently provided an overview of changes occurring in the information world plus an insight into what may occur in the future.

The two papers about Trove presented on the Tuesday morning I found particularly interesting. Trove: the terrors and triumphs of service based social media is relevant for all collecting organisations wanting to use social media to promote their services- http://www.vala.org.au/vala2012-proceedings/vala2012-session-2-dellit - while Mining the treasures of Trove provided a different view of the possibilities of technology based research for broad themes - http://www.vala.org.au/vala2012-proceedings/vala2012-session-2-sherratt.

A number of people I know also recommended the plenary session on the Thursday morning on the Guiness Archive as particularly relevant for family history researchers - http://www.vala.org.au/vala2012-proceedings/vala2012-plenary-5-roche

I was only able to attend two half day sessions but having the papers available online allows those unable to attend on the day the opportunity to follow what occurred at the conference.

Presentation software

Presentation software such as PowerPoint is frequently used to provide additional information during information sessions, meetings, seminars etc. however not all presentations are successfully prepared or presented.

 Ten bad presentation techniques describes mistakes that can be made when using presentation software.

Further links in the article provide additional information to consider when using presentation software.

Online genealogy research

About.com has recently published a guide - How to find your family history using free web resources - http://websearch.about.com/od/peoplesearch/tp/family-search.htm?nl=1 which may be useful for those researching the history of their family.

Easy ways to learn HTML

When designing websites it is useful to have some knowledge of HTML - the code used to construct a webpage.

About.com has a section  on Web Design and HTML and has recently prepared a guide Cheap and easy ways to learn HTML - http://webdesign.about.com/od/htmlxhtmltutorials/p/learnhtml.htm?nl=1

The Old Bailey Project

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey - 1674-1913 - summaries of court cases in the City of London and the County of Middlesex were published regularly until 1913. The transcripts were to provide a true, fair and perfect narrative of the court proceedings. The City of London subsidised the publishing of the proceedings from the end of the eighteenth century. As court proceedings were increasing reported in newspapers the need for a sepaprate publication diminished. These valuable resources have been available  online since 2003 at http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/.

On 30 June, as part of the Making Public Histories series at the State Library of Victoria, Professor Robert Shoemaker (University of Sheffield) director of the The Old Bailey Proceedings Online Project discussed digital histories as a form of public history. He also looked at what the Project team learned from its users as well as how the media have used the site, in particular the UK BBC series Garrow's Law, now in its second series and the radio program,Voices from the Old Bailey. Shane Carmody (Director of Collections Access State Library of Victoria) discussed how dispersed digital resources are linked in local projects in Victoria.

Placing the Proceedings of the Old Bailey online was only the initial project. Subsequent projects utilising the resources of the proceedings include -

•  London Lives, 1690-1800: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis provides fully searchable access to 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.
• Connected Histories: Sources for Building British History, 1500-1900 provides access to eleven major electronic sources in British history
• Locating London's Past: A Georeferencing Tool for Mapping Historical and Archaeological Evidence, 1660-1800 will allow place name data from the Proceedings to be be mapped onto fully rasterised and georeferenced maps

 Crime in the Community: Enhancing User Engagement for Teaching & Research with the Old Bailey Online enabled us to carry out the first comprehensive analysis of site usage. A report was of analysis was published in 2010.

Shane Caromdy spoke about the digitisation projects at the State Library and also the shift from charging for the use of items provided online to making them freely available with users providing acknowledgement to the library.

Google Docs

Recently I have been having trouble with one of my computers so decided to try using Google Docs which I could access from any computer.

If you go to Google - www.google.com.au -  and then click the 'more' tab you will find a link to Documents.

Available resource options include Document, Presentation and Spreadsheets.

I have created a number of documents for projects and then printed or downloaded them into Word documents. Google Docs may not have all the features of the latest version of Word but the basic features are there.

For the last History Victoria Support Group seminar day, instead of using PowerPoint, I used the Presentation Resource to create the slides and then saved it to PowerPoint for use on the day as I did not have online access when giving the talk.

Advantages of using Google Docs include being able to access them anywhere there is a connection to the Internet. Documents can be shared with people designated by the creator of the documents.

Google Docs is one of several online tools available for creating documents etc. Such tools are worth investigating especially when working on a number of computers or working on a joint project.

Museums Australia Conference 2010

Interesting Times: new roles for collections was the theme of the Museums Australia Conference held in Melbourne from 28 September to 2 October 2010. Generally it was an interesting and sometimes thought provoking experience though by the end of four days I was definitely suffering from information overload. As well as plenary sessions each day along with parallel sessions and workshops more informal discussion sessions were available along with the opportunity to visit a number of collections.

The official opening was held on the Tuesday evening at Melbourne Museum where, after the speeches, we were able to view the Science and Life exhibitions in the ground floor galleries. Interactive features often support the displays and as some of the techniques used in the exhibitions were later discussed  at some conference sessions it was useful to have seen and tried them. This was, of course, the first of many networking opportunities at the conference.

The MAPDA Awards reception was held on the Wednesday evening at the State Library of Victoria. The awards are presented for excellence in design of museum materials including reports, invitations, posters, catalogues, web design etc. There was also opportunity to view the current exhibition, 'til you drop, in the Keith Murdoch Gallery - an exhibition on shopping in Melbourne - as well as a very quick look at the exhibitions in the galleries which I must revisit when there is more time.

The closing reception on the Friday evening was at the soon to be reopened Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne providing an opportunity to view this collection.

The Conference Dinner, which I didn't attend, was held at the National Gallery of Victoria.

I attended two workshops in the Leigh Scott Room in the Baillieu Library outside of which was a display from another University of Melbourne collection on dentistry as practised in earlier times in Australia.

As well as at the conference sessions a number of other opportunities were provided to listen to speakers. Melbourne Conversations held at BMW Edge at Federation Square on the Thursday evening included speakers from the conference including Stephen Heppell, Michelle Hippolite and David McFadden as well as Adrian Franklin discussing the topic, Museums and collections: Are they telling the stories of a diverse society?

There were also two question and answer sessions - xCHANGE - held in the Student Bar, perhaps not the best location for hearing what was going on. These informal sessions, providing further contact with some of the conference speakers, were each chaired by Amanda Smith or Derek Guille from 774.

The opportunities presented by the use of technology in museums to enhance exhibitions as well as for communication were discussed in a number of the sessions that I attended and as time permits I will add posts about some of the papers and issues discussed.

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 9)

Comments continued
Equipment

• Recently purchased a computer – now need to decide what to do next
• Our computer is 7 years old – only Word Pad program
• Old computer & software – we have had help and guidelines, but not enough people
• Only two volunteers use the computer which is old
• Old group with no computers – I’ve just joined and am very interested in upgrading the society
• Group only uses computer for administration
• Need special equipment – large scanner
• Our major problems are training, organisation of equipment & fear of the unknown. Unfamiliar equipment is off-putting

 Finance

• Society has plans to purchase a computer, but no money for one
• Not much money, not many volunteers, no interest in computers by many

 Other

• Backlog of 50 years
• More time would be good
• Difficult to meet professional standards
• Computers used mainly for display and cataloguing
• No access to the internet
• Handful do large numbers of all the jobs about the place – we are slow oldies and too busy – upheavals and new people change things too much – struggling with images, all in fact

A success story

Our story is probably not unique among the Historical Society Network but a brief history of our computer usage might be appropriate at this time.

With the introduction of the RHSV Local History Database we made an application to the local council for a grant to cover hardware and the DB TextWorks software.

We were successful and purchased 4 second hand computers which were connected on a wireless network and now share a Society purchased photocopier as a network printer. Two of the PCs have local printers attached, two have A4 scanners attached and the Printer/Scanner/Fax is also shared on the wireless network.

Recently we have added another 2 PCs of similar specification and we now have 6 PCs on the network. All the PCs are Pentium 4 and run Windows XP and the Open Office suite of programs.

Over the last few years, using these PCs and software, we have been able to increase the quality and quantity of our publications. These range from a 12pp walk book to the most impressive, a very professional looking, 220pp A5, digitally printed paperback.

[This group now also has 3121 records in the Victorian Local History Database]

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 8)

Problems

• Time – 116
• Staff– 99
• Finance – 56
• Inadequate training – 47
• Inadequate equipment – 40
• Inadequate guidelines – 22
• Other* – 25 

 *Lack of interest, inadequate space and aging volunteers frequently cited

Comments
Availability of volunteers

• Limited number of volunteers
• Recruiting people to be involved or commit to projects is sometimes difficult
• Hard to find people interested in historical research – even their own properties
• Availability of data entry operators – age of membership
• Finding volunteers with appropriate skills
• Insufficient number of volunteers computer literate
• Limited time availability for those with limited skills
• We always need more suitably skilled volunteers
• Just commenced cataloguing project and currently training new volunteers
• Had heritage volunteers – great

Age of volunteers

• Age of membership mainly seniors – multiple community commitments
• Most of our twelve members are elderly
• Membership of 15 members, mostly elderly – secretary does all the computer work – membership numbers declining – four moved recently to aged care
• Majority of members past retirement age – most do not have computers or computer skills – those with computer skills, skills limited – many will not even turn on the computer to look at the database despite it being set up for easy access
•  Members in the 75+ age group – they have a go

Computer literacy

• Lack of interest in members learning how to use a computer
• People – not enough researchers or computer literate people
• Computer literate active members (lack thereof)
• Lack of volunteers – due to age find computers a challenge – don’t retain computer skills learnt
• Not many confident (computer) users in the older generation
• Only the secretary is computer literate plus webmaster

Building

• Inadequate space (3)
• Inadequate space – our space is storage – desperately need an office space area
• Room not big enough for more than three
• Facilities inadequate – cold! No plumbing, telephone, internet – but not enough people to warrant it?
• Difficulty of heating premises in winter
• Space / area needs upgrading & fitting out to be used – currently work is done off-site
• Society meets in neighbourhood house where no storage allowed
• Access to the building difficult at night

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 7)

Funding sources for IT projects

Purchase computer hardware from:
Society funds - 93
Council grants – 49
Other grants – 52
Fundraising – 38

Purchase computer software from:
Society funds – 89
Council grants – 31
Other grants – 40
Fundraising – 32

General running costs for computer projects from:
Society funds – 112
Council grants – 15
Other grants – 9
Fundraising – 40

Grants from other organisations included:

• FAHCSIA - Dept Families Housing Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
• Volunteer Small Equipment Grant
• Museums Australia (Victoria)- Building Better Museums
• PROV Local History Grants Program
• Bendigo Bank
• Esso
• Local op shop

A number of groups obtained second hand computers from other organisations.
One group purchased a computer using funds donated by local Councillor.

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 6)

Groups with their own email:
Yes – 76
No – 88

Groups tend to use web email services such as Hotmail / Live (11), gmail (10), Yahoo (3), dcsi (1).

Some use email provided by an Internet Service Provider including Optus (7), Bigpond (6), Australis (3), chariot (2), Vicnet (2) or a webhost portal such as Ausvic (1).

Some use email attached to the domain name of the organisation.

66 groups use the email of a member for society business.

20 groups did not indicate using email.

Members of groups with email
14 groups reported not knowing how many members had email addresses, though one reported that they were now collecting the information.

Data provided as numbers of members using email

Some groups however reported a high percentage of members using email.
Other figures provided were one group each with 60, 65, 70 and 90 members using email, 3 with 100 members and one with 220.

Some groups provided information as number of members – other groups provided information as percentage of membership.

Data provided as percentage of membership

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 5)

Websites

Groups with their own website
Yes – 92
No – 71

Website hosting:

• Vicnet sites – 37
• Sites with own domain name (some of these possibly hosted on Vicnet) – 34
• Attached to websites of another organisations – 7
• Part of website of parent body – 4
• My Connected Community sites – 4
• Blogs as websites – 3 (Blogger and Wordpress)
• Community guide websites (2)
• Spaces.live.com – 2
• Google sites (1)
• 50webs (1)

Groups with webpage on another site

Yes – 27
No – 52

21 groups reported having a page on website of another organisation but did not have their own website

Help for website development
Help requested to develop a website: 18
Help requested to maintain a website: 16

54 of the respondents without websites of their own did not request help to establish or create a website.
33 of these respondents indicated that they did not have a presence on any website.