The first steps towards building a historical time machine are underway south of the border. A group of American history educators have founded an ambitious plan to create the “Civil War Augmented Reality Project.”

This first time machine will be a literal window into the past. By taking advantage of smart phone and tablet computer technology, as well as their beautiful screens, the project team hopes to let visitors of Civil War sites see aspects of the past by holding up their computers and looking at them as though they were a window.

At one river crossing in Pennsylvania, visitors will be able to look through their virtual window at a bridge that was burned down during the Civil War to prevent enemy troops from making the crossing. As the visitor drives along the present bridge, their view will pan to reflect their moving position and a seamless image will augment their view outside the car.

This project is still in the planning – and fundraising – stages, but the organizers have big dreams for a complex network of activities aimed at teachers and Civil War tourists. In a few years, we might be seeing a lot more of these windows into the past.

You can keep tabs on this project at their website: http://acwarproject.wordpress.com/

By Adam Crymble

Keep it, sell it or release it to everyone?

Copyright isn’t a topic of which many young academics have a strong understanding. But, as a writer, it’s something to which you should pay attention. And you shouldn’t be afraid to assert your rights when it comes to assigning copyright when you publish.

Your copyright is your ownership over the fruits of your labour. You did the research and the writing, so you have a right to benefit from that writing. Copyright is the only thing that legally protects you from people who want to steal your work and make money from it.

The catch is, it only works if you don’t give it away carelessly.

When you publish something, the editor of the publication has to obtain your permission, and you can count on each publication having a set of rights that they require you to sign over in return for publishing your work. There are thousands of combinations of rights publishers can and will ask for. Here I’ve put together the four most common types: Publication Rights, Grant of Rights in Exchange for Compensation, Pressure to Relinquish Rights, and Releasing Rights.

PUBLICATION RIGHTS

First worldwide publication rights including in translation, and the rights to reproduce, transmit, distribute and translate in whole or in part, on magnetic, optical or any other form of electronic media or transmission, whether now in existence or developed in the future, including electronic transmission to on-line terminals and computer networks for searching, displaying and printing.

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These are the rights University Affairs magazine asked for when commissioning an article from me this past spring. In exchange for these rights, they wrote me a cheque. I still own the piece of writing, which means I can hand out copies of it to my students as long as I let University Affairs publish it first. They can republish it as many times as they like, in as many formats as they like. This agreement protects the publisher’s ability to make money from my article in exchange for the money they paid me.

Another article I wrote last year for a different publication had more stringent rights:

GRANT OF RIGHTS IN EXCHANGE FOR COMPENSATION

Work-made-for-hire: Writer acknowledges that the Work has been commissioned by the Publisher as a contribution to a collective work and that it shall be deemed a work-made-for-hire under U.S. copyright law. Against the possibility that the Work might be deemed, for any reason, incapable as a matter of law of characterization as work-made-for-hire, Writer hereby assigns to Publisher all right, title, and interest in and to the Work, including without limitation all copyrights throughout the world.

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This time, the publisher wanted to purchase all forms of copyright related to the article. Unlike the article for University Affairs, which I still technically own, another publisher now owns this, and I would have to obtain permission to reproduce it, as would anyone else. For these rights, I was again sent a cheque. In essence, I sold my rights to the work in the same manner a farmer sells his eggs and gives up any right to eat them afterwards. Even though it’s not as liberal as the deal with University Affairs, I was still fairly compensated.

A third model many small publishers attempt to use is as follows:

PRESSURE TO RELINQUISH RIGHTS

Once the editor has decided to publish your piece, the article may not be published in another publication without our express consent. Once articles are submitted, the rights belong to the publication.

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In exchange for giving away your rights entirely, these publishers will give you a variety of benefits, including “seeing your work published” or “a chance to win a prize in our annual draw” or even “a share of advertising revenue” which by the end of ten years may be worth upwards of 25 cents. If they’re an academic journal, they dangle the “line on your C.V.” in front of you.

These are the publishers you need to watch out for. Unlike more established publications, they don’t make enough money from subscriptions or advertising to stay afloat, so they can’t pay you for the rights they demand. They want to make money from your labour without giving you a tangible return on your efforts.

If you see this on a website or from a magazine publisher, either negotiate the copyright, or run away. Most editors should be completely satisfied with the promise of “First worldwide publication rights” that lets them publish it first and reap the rewards of any buzz the article creates. If they aren’t happy with that, they’ve got ulterior motives and you shouldn’t be afraid to ask why they don’t want you to be able to reproduce your own work in exchange for nothing.

I’d suggest you should also be wary of academic journals who demand full rights to your work. Academic journals are vehicles for disseminating academic knowledge. For a journal to require you to transfer ownership of the work to them, thereby preventing you free access to further disseminate the work is against the best interests of you and of those who could benefit from your knowledge who may not have access to the journal. In this case, the fourth option may be the best:

RELEASING RIGHTS

Author hereby releases this article under an “Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported” license.

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The fourth model, and the perhaps best suited to academia, is to release the rights under a Creative Commons License.  There are several different Creative Commons licenses, which provide flexible solutions to granting various rights, while protecting others. You can read more on the various option on the Creative Commons website, but to get you started, you might consider an “Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported” license.

This license lets anyone publish your work anywhere in the world (UNPORTED), as long as they don’t make changes to it (NO DERIVATIVES) and they attribute the work in the manner specified by you, but not in any way that suggests that you endorse them or their use of your work. (ATTRIBUTION)

If you are dealing with a non-commercial publication such as a not-for-profit journal or website, you could change your license to an “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported” which would disallow use by anyone out to make money.

The advantage of a Creative Commons license is that everyone knows how the work can be used without having to track you down and ask you directly. As the original creator, you will always have the right to republish or change the work, and your publisher can negotiate terms, which allow them to achieve all their publishing needs without taking anything from you.

Take some time to learn about the various copyright options out there. And don’t be afraid to assert yourself. Publishers need writers just as much as writers need publishers. Don’t be taken advantage of. And if you’re going to give your work away, make sure the cheque’s in the mail; if it’s not, give the work to everyone.

Protect Your Copyright by Adam Crymble is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

It’s not every day you see a job posting for an Active Historian, but that’s just what the Network in Canadian History & Environment (NiCHE) is looking for.

NiCHE is an international network of people interested in the study of Canada’s environmental history / historical geography. They are currently looking to fill a 2 year position: “Project Coordinator” to help manage the day-to-day operation of the network and to facilitate projects that engage a wide audience with Canadian environmental history.

The full job description can be found on the University of Western Ontario human resources page. Questions about the position can be sent to the NiCHE director, Dr. Alan MacEachern (amaceach@uwo.ca).

Like I said, it’s not every day you see a job posting for an Active Historian. Today is a special day.

Deadline to apply is June 24, 2010.

As an undergraduate history student, I wrote a lot of essays and exams meant only for my professor’s eyes. Despite the tremendous effort that went into crafting these works, they now exist only as PDFs on my personal computer where I secretly hope some future historian will find them and be fascinated by my analysis of the Chanak Affair or Red Clydeside. The whole concept of creating something useful was foreign to me.

While working with NiCHE this past year, I was fortunate enough to be involved with a group of students working towards a useful endeavour in the name of history. The group project involved the students of the UWO M.A. Public History program, who created three environmental history lesson plans based on the Ontario curriculum for grades 3, 4 and 6. Unlike my undergraduate essays, these students had to come up with innovative ways to engage elementary school students with history while also making sure the package was attractive for teachers.

The team put the finishing touches on the lessons a few weeks ago and they’re now in the hands of EcoKids, a program run by Earth Day Canada that focuses on environmental education. EcoKids will host and disseminate the lessons to its large subscription base of teachers from around the world.

Classes who use these lesson plans will be engaged with beautiful primary-source artwork, creative games and activities and even a lesson that brings rote learning back to show students what it was like to go to school in the past.

If you had have told me a few years ago that we could get a group of history students to create a project that would potentially be used by thousands of students around the world, I’m not sure I would have believed it. But here we are.

A special thanks to the M.A. students who worked so hard to bring this project together. I’d invite you to take a look at their blogs and if you like what you see, hire them!

• Tim O’Grady
• Sara Sirianni
• Jordan Goldstein
• Dana Johnson
• Shelagh Staunton
• Catherine Caughell
• Braden Murray
• Rebecca Rahey
• Megan Arnott
• Tasha Di Loretto

Photo credit: “Atlas, it’s time for your bath” by woodley wonderworks. Creative Commons licensed.

Photo Credit: David Dennis, creative commons licensed

By Adam Crymble

Thanks to a successful workshop held in Vancouver last month, the Popular Publishing Writer’s Guild has added a new Western Canadian chapter. The guild is a support network of new scholars who are trying to engage a wider public with their research and ideas through newspapers, magazines or online.

Every five months, the group holds an internal call for participation that encourages members to draft a submission for an editor of a popular publication. The group offers feedback and encouragement when requested – though some members have submitted content directly to editors on their own.

Originally the group consisted of a handful of members who attended the first Popular Writing workshop in London, ON in the fall of 2009. That group managed to publish six articles out of eight attempts in various Canadian publications out of the first call and many of the Active History editors are part of the team. For some participants, it was their first ever popular article.

Now they’ve got some friendly competition from the folks out West who will be holding their own first call for participation this month. Some may suggest this will once and for all settle the East vs. West dispute. We in the guild like to think everyone wins when academics engage the public.

Right now, membership is limited to people who have attended one of our Popular Publishing workshops. We don’t claim our guild is responsible for our members successes, but we’re pleased to be expanding and hope to have more content out for the world on a regular basis.

Some of that content will be coming your way in the form of new or revitalized blogs. At the Vancouver workshop, co-organizer Dr. Sean Kheraj led a popular session on “Controlling your Google” and has convinced at least one of the participants to start blogging.

Read what the participants had to say about the event (two of whom started their blogs after being converted at the workshop):

• Merle Massie, University of Saskatchewan, History
• Sean Howard Atkins, University of Alberta, History & Classics
• Lauren Wheeler, University of Alberta, History & Classics

If there are other similar groups out there working towards the same goals, I’d love to hear from you. And if you’d like to learn how to set up a similar group with your friends or classmates, drop me a line and I’m happy to help.

Thank you to the Network in Canadian History & Environment (NiCHE), The History Education Network (THEN / HiER), Canada’s History Magazine and the University of British Columbia for their support bringing the last workshop together.

What if my supervisor disagrees with what I write? What if someone in the community sends me a nasty email? What if the editor ignores my article?

There are plenty of excuses young historians turn to when they convince themselves not to write opinion pieces for the newspaper. But, there are even more good reasons why they should: what if it makes government reconsider policy related to my research? What if I can convince Canadians to think differently about a topic for which I am passionate? What if my research makes a tangible difference because I put it where people would read it?

An opinion piece – sometimes called an “Op-Ed,” is a great way for a young Canadian historian to engage the general public. I’m not talking about a letter to the editor; instead, an op-ed is generally a 500-1000 word essay that addresses a timely and newsworthy issue, which appears in the editorial section – frequently “Op”posite the “Ed”itorial. Any Joe Schmoe can write a letter to the editor; when selecting an op-ed, editors generally seek someone with expert knowledge. And that’s just what academics are.

Historians certainly do contribute to our nation’s editorial pages; perhaps Jack Granatstein is most famous for his contentious essays about Canadian history. But it’s good to see that there are plenty of young historians finding their way into the papers as well. Recent UWO history PhD student Mark Humphries had an op-ed in the Globe and Mail last summer about the lessons Canada could learn from the 1918 pandemic when dealing with the Swine Flu outbreak. When Mark chose his dissertation topic – the response to the Spanish flu of 1918 – he surely could not have predicted the oubreak of H1N1, but he did recognize the opportunity to apply his research to a contemporary problem and for that was rewarded with a large national audience.

• Mark Humphries, “Lessons from the 1918 pandemic: Focus on treatment, not prevention“, The Globe and Mail. July 24, 2009.

More recently, another UWO PhD student, Ryan O’Connor, has been tearing up the editorial pages. Ryan researches the birth of the environmental movement in Toronto and has published three articles since November, twice the Charlottetown Guardian – his home province, and once in the London Free Press in a joint editorial with fellow student, Jeremy Marks. The three essays address issues relevant to his research and Canadian history and are a good example of how others can turn what they do into something the Canadian public can benefit from.

• Ryan O’Connor, “Cornelius Howatt at 200“, the Charlottetown Guardian. February 6, 2010.
• Ryan O’Connor & Jeremy Marks, “Copenhagen is PM’s Big Chance“, London Free Press. December 13, 2009.
• Ryan O’Connor, “Bring Prince Edward Island back to the land”, the Charlottetown Guardian, November, 25, 2009.

If there are other good examples of history graduate students writing op-eds, let me know. And if you’re interested in learning more, check out the Network in Canadian History & Environment’s Popular Writing for young historians workshops, with which I and other members of the Active History team have been involved. There, you’ll find some good readings to get you started in writing for a popular audience.

• ‘Reaching a Popular Audience – Vancouver: March 26, 2010.

Photo credit: “Newspaper and Tea” by Matt Callow.

By Adam Crymble

Ever since burglars learned to perform effective aerial assaults, society has been in a downward spiral (see photo). It’s unsettling to know that someone can fly in, sneak down the chimney and make off with all your hard-earned space credits. Good thing at 122 years old, you’re now considered middle aged and have some time to recoup your losses before retiring to the moon.

Historians often study what people in the past were like, but few stop to look at what they thought we’d be like. Stepping in to fill that role is St. Paul, Minnesota based writer, Matt Novak, who has kept a blog, Paleo-Future: a look into the future that never was since 2007.

With each entry, Novak guides readers onto a brief sojourn into the past where they can look forward at what our own society might have been. Inspired by a childhood trip to Disney’s out-dated “Tomorrowland” exhibit, Paleo-Future uses copies of primary sources and brief commentary to engage readers, many of whom may have grown up during the 50s, 60s and 70s, when the majority of the predictions showcased on the blog were first made.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Novak says his most popular posts are those that are “wildly inaccurate.” This no doubt includes entries such as the 1949 article in the San Antonio Light newspaper, which predicted we’d soon see the city of New York entirely roofed over. The would-be development was touted as an ingenious way for scientists to provide “climate to order.”

Even stranger is a 1960 Chicago Tribune prediction that forecast we would soon have “Man-made balls of fire” in the sky that provided 24-hour sunlight. Novak rightly placed this entry in the “why the hell would you do that?” file.

But not all prophesies were out in left field; a few actually hit fairly close to the mark. Futurists writing for the Washington Post in 1910 envisioned a portable telephone, which would allow women to call their husbands after work and request that he “stop at the butcher’s on the corner and get some liver and bacon.” I’m not sure about the liver, but otherwise that sounds bang on.

So, who’s reading? Well, according to Novak, his most loyal following are academics. “I get a lot of emails from people asking about using material from my site for their classes.” This is despite the fact that Novak has no formal historical training and left school 3 credits shy of a degree in journalism.

Even if the subject matter is not for you, what Novak has created is an excellent model for historians looking to engage an online audience using primary sources. Following his recipe for a blog could help you set up your own successful project, so let’s look at a few of the nuts and bolts:

• A Unique Narrowly Defined topic. Novak believes this is the most important characteristic of any would-be online project. “People visit my site because I am typically offering things that you can’t already find online.”
• Engaging Primary Sources. Each post starts with a photo or copy of a primary source and where applicable, a transcription of the important parts. Whenever possible, try to include visually appealing material. The key word here is engaging.
• Brief Contextual Commentary. Novak includes his own thoughts with each entry, providing important context. Don’t assume your readers have the same historical interpretation skills as you; your job is to facilitate their experience. Keeping the commentary brief means less work for you and less time spent by your readers, who might be turned off by long posts.
• Consistency. While Novak isn’t maintaining the two posts per day rate he did when he first started, he still makes sure his readers have something new to read from time to time. New content on a blog is vital to building a community of readers.

Is this type of work important for academics? Novak thinks so:

I think that the best thing that historians can do is research like hell and present something to the world that is otherwise difficult for people to access. That’s really one of the things that gives me hope. I truly believe that technology can improve people’s lives and that we’re moving in the right direction as a species when we feed this beast known as the internet; our collective brain.

I’m inclined to agree, so I’ve decided to make my own prediction for the year 2030: all historians will have engaging video blogs, complete with smell-o-vision, where they share their ideas with millions…on the moon!

You can find Paleo-Future at http://paleofuture.com

Adam Crymble is the web editor for the Network in Canadian History & Environment and writes a monthly column for Active History.

By Adam Crymble

As I’m writing, there are only a few hours left in 2009. Last year marked the 400^th anniversary of the founding of Quebec. This year, again an important Quebec anniversary came and went, but most English speaking Canadians probably didn’t even notice: the 250^th anniversary of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham during which General Wolfe wrested New France from his adversary, Marquis de Montcalm.

If you grew up in the Canadian education system, you almost certainly studied this battle. And, if your experience was anything like mine, you were told that on September 12, 1759, the brilliant strategist, Wolfe, sailed his ships back and forth in front of the city of Quebec, tiring out the French soldiers who had to march to and fro to keep their eyes on the British. Then, when the French were all tuckered out, Wolfe landed his ships, rushed up the bank to the Plains of Abraham and defeated a French army, claiming New France for Britain. Oh, and while he was at it, he was mortally wounded, but was kind enough to pose for this famous painting by Benjamin West:

I had always assumed the whole thing took about 8 minutes.

Imagine my surprise this past summer when stumbled across Canadian author and historian Christopher Moore “live-blogging” the siege of Quebec, which started almost eighty days before the famous battle. During the siege, the British artillery decimated the city of Quebec and terrorized its citizens, many of whom died as a result of the constant bombardment.

While I’m shocked and appalled by my ignorance of Canadian history, that’s not what I’d like to focus on here. Instead, what I think is important was the novel way Christopher Moore attempted to tell this story.

During this past summer, Moore posted an entry per day to his blog that outlined what had happened in the siege on that day 250 years ago. A typical entry was only a few paragraphs and tied together primary sources with contextual commentary by Moore. When available, Moore used British and translated French sources to give perspectives from both sides. The entry from July 4^th read:

July 4, 1759: With the British siege forces moving into place facing the city, Foligné, a diarist within the city of Québec, reports that Montcalm this day issued a declaration that all within the city who could not serve the armed forces or were fearful should leave for Trois-Rivières or Montreal immediately.

Alone it does not tell us much, but together with the 72 other posts in the series, the reader gets a pretty comprehensive survey of the siege. It wasn’t perfect; there were dull days, or days when I wished I could have had a few more details, and in a few cases I found it difficult to visualize exactly where events were occurring because of my limited knowledge of the small towns in that area, but overall the format was successful.

What’s most novel about the approach is that it acknowledges that most events in history took time to unfold. By making us wait for tomorrow to see what happens next, Moore has forced us to experience the unknown just as the people who lived through the siege had to do 250 years ago. Thankfully, we’re spared the terror and uncertainty, but the suspense remains.

Perhaps unintentionally, Moore has also presented a different option to teachers who have to teach their students about events such as the Siege of Quebec. By breaking the lesson down into its individual days rather than broad themes, and by making each unit small, teachers can let students experience an event over several weeks or months, rather than condense it into a day or two. This takes pressure away from students who might other wise feel they must memorize names and dates, while asking them to instead engage with a range of accessible primary sources.

This slow method also gives the reader or student time to let their ideas percolate. Much like in real life, students can build attachments to the various actors through frequent meetings over time, instead of feeling like you’re at a cocktail party where you’ll be tested in one hour on five interesting facts about each new person you’ve met.

The posts are still available on Moore’s blog, categorized under the tag “Quebec Siege.” It will take a bit more discipline to read only one post per day, but even if you read the whole collection, you’re in for a good survey.

If there are other good examples of live-blogging historical events, I’d love to hear about them, and I hope Christopher Moore is busy expanding his Siege of Quebec series and turning it into a book which takes readers through the siege in more detail. His experiment with “live blogging” is a good example of a historian attempting to engage an audience – an idea too often overlooked.

You can find Christopher Moore’s blog at http://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/

Adam Crymble is the web editor for the Network in Canadian History & Environment and writes a monthly column for Active History.