I have, for now, finished my Scalar project, which has been an interesting process. Starting with two presidential letters to two separate Nations, almost a century apart, if fleshed out this project would go into greater detail about the goal and the historical context of these two letters.  My real objective here was to take this opportunity to try out Scalar and get a sense of what you can do. I actually found it, on the surface, an easy interface, but with so many details and so many steps at each detail, the process became difficult without initial guidance (thanks, James!). It is definitely not always intuitive! But after a while of playing with it, I was able to navigate the different aspects of Scalar, only having scratched the surface, of course, of what it can do, compared to some of the beautiful examples we have seen. In my small example, I tried to choose different forms of media to see how Scalar dealt with those, as well as some narrative. I also wanted to better understand the idea of paths between pages and how that would work. I have begun each path with an image of the original letter, then a portrait of that president, then a map of the Native territory in question. I added a final interactive map to see how Scalar would deal with that. If this were a true site with the public in mind, there would be way more text and more explanation and smooth shift. I could never completely figure out how to set up a table of contents, but I’m sure it’s not hard if explained. As is the goal, I do feel now I have a sense of Scalar and what someone might try to do with it. I really like it a lot, actually, and if I were working with it more consistently those small details that irked me would become second nature.

Map of North American Colonies ca. 1770

I’ve just finished working on a small-scale Scalar project using a paper I’d presented five years ago at the annual meeting of the Western History Association (WHA) in Denver, Colorado. I’ve done nothing more than use my introduction, rendered it as a page, and then use several different Scalar features to enhance content or provide sidebars and citations. It might seem like a pretty modest transformation, but I already see where I might be able to create a reading experience where one has as much or more access to scholarly apparatus than with traditional print, as well as going beyond references to afford additional support to the reader.

Yet what struck me most was the challenge or necessity to write in a way which might work both on the printed page and in a scalar project. In short, I needed to be able to “chunk” this paper into meaningful sections — there was no entitled “Introduction” before I undertook this project — but also not lose the qualities of the long-form for print. Much of this seems akin to what JSTOR has begun to explore in its examination of the future of the monograph as a scholarly form.

For my project, I have chosen to look at two letters from Rauner’s collections. One is a letter from George Washington to the chief of the Iroquois Confederacy, encouraging them not to take sides in the Revolutionary War. The second letter is one from Andrew Jackson to the chief of the Sioux Nation, basically introducing himself and encouraging their fealty to the United States of American and its government. Both letters are interesting for their snapshot of American history in a myriad of ways. Washington’s letter reveals his recognition of the power of the Confederacy as a player on both sides of the war, and his appeal is couched in paternalistic and grandiose language. Andrew Jackson’s letter is very interesting to me, and one which I need to understand more fully. Even more paternalistic and condescending, Jackson’s appear to the Sioux nation while president seems to intimate forward thinking on Jackson’s part as the westward expansion began to encroach on Sioux territory. I will discover if this letter was written prior to the Cherokee’s Trail of Tears or after, but it certainly appears Jackson is moving beyond his removal of the local southeastern tribes. These two letters are so interesting in regard to their place in American history, and their illustration of the perspective of the American government towards the indigenous populations.

More to come! I am new at using digital tools in research and look forward to seeing how these narratives fit into online resources, and which tools are most effective. Feels good to be a total neophyte 🙂

Hey everyone,

I’ve been behind with my DDRP efforts but wanted to make amends with a series of posts about what I have been doing. As you might recall, I wrote a pretty ambitious proposal, one informed by a larger project on Puma concolor in North America. Now, I don’t want to abandon the possibilities described in my proposal, but it became apparent that I need a more discrete focus.

And I think I’ve found one in the confluence of cartoons, news reports, and license plates.

One of the first things I came across in the course of my digital newspaper research was a cartoon from the Boston Globe during the 1950s mocking Vermonters for their conviction pumas — catamounts, to use the regional term — might still haunt the Vermont woods. At that time, pumas had likely abandoned Vermont about a century earlier. (See Fred Copeland, “Vermont’s Panther is Getting Around again,” Daily Boston Globe (1928-1960) Dec 07 1952: 1. ProQuest. 24 Aug. 2017 .)

But as I did additional digital newspaper research, I saw other instances of stories from Vermont — and about Vermont and Vermonters — encountering pumas. And there was a none-too-subtle tone behind some of the stories which suggested incredulity, sometimes even tripping over into sarcasm. Suddenly, I had the kind of question which delights historians of human-animal relations: What was going on that puma sightings were apparently important to Vermonters, but an object of humor to others?

And, then, I stood downtown one afternoon, looking at a car and its Vermont license plate, and realized this was a still more durable phenomenon: the Vermont conservation plate with its puma made plain how durable this association remains. An association evoked a century — or a century and a half? — after pumas were extinct in the Green Mountain State.

The focus narrows. The wheels turn slowly …

Wendel is helping me learn how to do this thing, so this is my test. I have enclosed an up close and personal portrait of one of Wendel’s cats, Stripey.

Thank you for your patience, Wendel’s friend Ridie

Here’re links to some of the WordPress resources I’ve mentioned:

WordPress.org
https://wordpress.org/

WordPress.com
https://wordpress.com/

WordPress at Dartmouth:
https://sites.dartmouth.edu/

Dartmouth Library record: Lynda.com (tutorials)
http://libcat.dartmouth.edu/record=b5374084~S3

WordPress Tutorials:
https://www.lynda.com/WordPress-training-tutorials/330-0.html

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