History on the Internet

In a Rush to Modernize, MySpace Destroyed More History

June 17, 2013

By Ian Milligan In 1963, despite community opposition, New York City’s Pennsylvania Station was torn down. It was an age of modernism, old being wiped away for new. Afterwards, some of the sails went out of that movement: there was renewed interest in architectural preservation, added hesitation when it came to the wholesale destruction of [...]

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Historians and Digital History: Why Do Academics Shy Away from Digital History?

June 5, 2013

By Paul W. Bennett The Internet is finally beginning to penetrate historical practice. At the recent North American Society for Sports History (NASSH) Conference, held May 24-26, 2013 at Saint Mary’s University, Douglas Booth and Gary Osmond provided a fascinating primer on the impact digital history is starting to exert on a field like the [...]

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Active(ist)? History on Wikipedia

May 28, 2013

By Jonathan McQuarrie Recently, I spent some time with Daniel Sidorick’s fantastic monograph Condensed Capitalism: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century (Ithica, 2009). Among the timely observations made by the work is the vital point that a managerial effort to enforce efficiency through the threat of outsourcing is hardly [...]

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4 Years of ActiveHistory.ca

May 27, 2013

We’re proud to announce that ActiveHistory.ca has been blogging about why history matters for more than four years! Ever since our first anniversary back in 2010, we have celebrated the achievements of the past year, and this year is no exception. Our body of contributors and guest writers has grown larger and more diverse, while the [...]

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Active History at the National Council on Public History Conference

April 22, 2013

By Jim Clifford Four ActiveHistory.ca editors and a larger number of past and present contributors attended a major public history conference in Ottawa last week. It was a great opportunity to share our website with the North American public history community and to learn about new projects here in Canada and in the United States. Many of [...]

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Yahoo! Commits Crimes against History – A Call to Wake Up!

April 15, 2013

By Ian Milligan (previously posted in two parts on ianmilligan.ca) Yahoo! succeeded in destroying the most amount of history in the shortest amount of time, certainly on purpose, in known memory. Millions of files, user accounts, all gone. – Archive.Org (click through for the GeoCities archive) As if it was a bad April Fools joke, April [...]

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Mapping the World: Perspective, Artistry, and Map Making

March 4, 2013

By Krista McCracken You ask for directions from a friend. They respond by drawing you map. The map you are given is hurriedly scribbled on the back of a napkin. At the time you graciously thank them for the effort. But, when you have to actually use the map you realize the jumble of crossing [...]

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Exploring the Old Canadian Internet: Spelunking in the Internet Archive

February 11, 2013

By Ian Milligan If you do recent history, you run into problems pretty quickly with archives. Chronic underfunding means that many recent acquisitions sit, awaiting cataloguing. Donor restrictions are often still in place, and – probably most importantly – much of this material is still not archived as it isn’t always thought of as history [...]

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History on Steroids: How a Local Community is Using New Media to Explore its Past

January 31, 2013

By Glenn McKnight The Foundation for Building Sustainable Communities (FBSC) has launched its own War of 1812 commemoration project in Oshawa, sponsored in part by the Government of Canada with a combination of tried and true presentations and displays along with some added “muscle enhancers.” FBSC is known for its Oshawa Remembers audio recordings of [...]

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A Web of History: How Digital and Social Media is Changing Heritage Awareness in Toronto

January 28, 2013

By Jay Young A common cliché of our time is to observe that the internet has made us more connected than ever. Although historians might question the accuracy of this statement, the web, social media, and smart phone apps have allowed new opportunities for engagement with historical artifacts, stories, and landmarks. One only has to [...]