Week #5
We opened up the class with a brief discussion on copyright’s which quickly transitioned into the ‘Why?’ slide/lecture. We discussed why we need to know our primary sources and be copy right compliant. Historical sources are fragmentary, the research is about collecting and combining sources to fill in the gaps starting with what are soldiers did in the war. We then began discussing primary sources which are directly about what you are studying. We went to the valley of shadows website and looked around for primary sources regarding the war. Some online primary source examples are American Memory, Google Books, and ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Later in the class we learned how to go to settings on google docs to see a translation using ‘OCR’ to see more clearly what our images say. We also watched a video on how google sends back search results, based on credibility, personalization, filter bubble, quality, algorithm, and other reasons. This led into us learning the best ways for us to search for details on our soldier using the web/ search engines. I found some interesting details regarding my soldier such as who led his regiment and a document saying some more specific details about his vitals. So far the project seems to be moving very smoothly and I figured it would be a little more difficult to find info on a soldier from 1.5 centuries ago but in reality it’s actually pretty simple. I’m sure more road blocks will come to follow but as of now it’s pretty simple.
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