This week, I got the chance to do something extremely fun. That being? I got to make a timeline of Japanese history. I always find that when I have the freedom to do projects on topics I find incredibly interesting I am much more motivated to do it, who would have guessed? However, with a much larger digital project also centered around Japan on the horizon this was a very good warm up to what was to come. I decided to do a broad timeline as opposed to a smaller more focused one, due to the fact that my project later in the year is going to be an introductory podcast episode to Japanese history. In that episode I’ll touch on and explain a bit about the major Japanese time periods, so this was a good primer.
The one main problem I had in making the timeline, was my inability to put ‘B.C.E’ for the Jomon and Yayoi Periods, so as a result it seems like the Jomon period, the prehistoric period of Japan is actually the latest one. But, other then that, the one part I found to be tedious was manually inputting all the dates, however, and also condensing down information to not be overwhelming was a challenge as well. As someone who does very, very extensive research, and ends up with way more material then I could possibly use, picking out and trimming fat off of my material is something that to this day I struggle with. For example, my first draft of my Senior Seminar paper on the Meiji Restoration was near 50 pages, and it needed to be trimmed down to 25-30. Each page I cut out felt like I was picking between my favorite child. However, I recognize that in a project like this, it’s going to be view by a much more casual audience. I want my work on Japan to be aimed more towards people who have an interest, but are intimidated by much larger academic texts.
I’ve found that many texts on Japan are just that, very thick and academic. I’ve found very few ‘casual’ historical books or projects on Japan, so that is what the main goal of my work is hopefully going to be. I want to give the people who do have an interest in learning about Japan a way to dip their toe into the academia of the subject, which could then springboard them into more detailed research. To do that, I need to learn to condense information to be more digestible for the average person.
Now, besides making timelines, crowdsourcing was the main focus of readings this week, and it seems to be an answer to many of the main issues we’ve discussed in class. I count myself as a very practical person, I’ve been the one to bring up the issue multiple times in class, ‘who’s gonna pay for it?’, ‘do we have the money for it?’. These are questions that while I wish didn’t exist, unfortunately do. I never considered crowdsourcing to be a way to lower costs and speed up the rate of transcription, but the more that I’ve thought about it, the more it makes sense. It made me think about how, I am signed up for the national archives website which lets regular people transcribe documents.
I haven’t done it much lately, but when I first signed up I did spend time transcribing documents, and I did it for free. The one problem, however, is that crowdsourcing relies on the enthusiasm of regular people. This, however, as shown in the article is offset by just how excited people can get about history.
I believe that history is seen as an ‘Ivory Tower’ kind of discipline. I think to the dozens of movies and TV show that depict the historian of adventure groups as the nerdy one with glasses who’s always saving the day or giving warnings that too out to be true with their knowledge and wit. At other times, they appear as the hero, like Evie in The Mummy, who with her knowledge of Egypt saves the day. Even in my own life, when I tell people I’m a history major they go ‘Oh so you must be really smart then’. Now of course, how smart someone is varies wildly, but this is something I can see that is mentioned in the article. With it being seen as an ‘ivory tower’ kind of discipline, it makes people more eager to engage with projects like this.
The biggest draw of crowdsourcing that was discussed, is getting people to engage deeper with the material. Whether you’re a man who feels he is family with the writer of a civil war diary, or like me you read translated stories of old samurai, engagement is a huge part of helping people fall in love with history. Gamification was a word that was brought up a lot, and I am of the mind this is a very good thing. As I state a lot, my love of history came from video games, if I hadn’t explored Ancient Greece in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, if I hadn’t interacted with it, then I very well may not be a historian.
Engagement is the key to helping people fall in love with history. It was how I was able to fall in love with it, and with something as simple as letting people engage and transcribe old materials we can help foster a further love of history. I know dozens of people who if given the chance for example to transcribe old documents from WW2 would jump at the chance, they’re intelligent people who while not history majors, have enough of an interest to the point where I know they’d jump at the opportunity to do something like this.
And you never know, perhaps if they get the chance to transcribe, if they were crowdsourced, just like how the people in the article fell in love with the Civil War, people can fall in love with history through other digital projects.
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