Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Valentine's Day Greetings

Although mystery surrounds the origins of Valentine’s Day and the man the day was named for, it is undeniable that the sharing of Valentine’s greeting cards has become one of the most popular customs of Valentine’s Day in the United States. This custom has developed over the centuries and continues to expand.

The first Valentine’s greeting may date back to Saint Valentine himself. According to one legend, Valentine, while imprisoned and just before his death, sent a note to his jailer’s daughter whom he had fallen in love with and signed it ‘from your Valentine.’ The oldest known valentine still in existence, which dates back to 1415, is a note from Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife. It is currently in the British Library in London, England.

In the 18th century Valentine greetings became more popular in Great Britain and the United States. By mid-century, in Great Britain it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection and hand-written notes. This custom spread to the American colonies where they created hand-made cards with lace ribbons, cupids, and hearts. In Great Britain, due the advancements in printing technology, by the end of the 18th century written letters began to be replaced by printed cards. In a time when it was not seen as proper to directly express emotion, these ready-made cards made the expression of emotions easier.

In the 19th century the sending of Valentine’s greeting cards again gained in popularity and ease. The lowering of the postage rate increased the popularity of sending Valentine’s greetings. In the 1840s, Esther Howland of Worcester, Mass. made and sold the first mass-produced Valentine’s greeting cards in the United States. She was said to be inspired by an English card that she received.

Americans have not slowed down in sharing Valentine’s greeting cards ever since. According to the Greeting Card Association, 25 percent of all cards sent each year are for Valentine’s Day. Regardless of what people know about the origins of the day, both hand-made and mass-produced cards are shared on Valentine’s Day in large amounts.

Valentine's Day Challenge Commentary

The legends and the ambiguity of the origins of Valentine’s Day and the man behind it makes writing a history of the day more difficult. The history of valentine’s greetings also has some ambiguity. There are many sites, both professional (CNN and History Channel) and amateur sites that have information about the history of Valentine’s Day.

The reliability of some of the websites seemed questionable. I used information from the historychannel.com, infoplease.com by Pearson Education (an article which had an author), and Wikipedia thinking that, like it said in the articles assigned for this week, the page would be checked because it is a high traffic site-especially this month. Other sites that I found through Google had interesting and relevant information, but it was not clear who was behind them and the overdone graphics and the ads made them look amateur and unreliable. Some of the sites had conflicting information about the history of valentine’s greetings, including dates and the materials used for the cards, and other aspects of Valentine’s Day.

Many of the sites that I searched lacked citations. The Wikipedia page on Valentine’s Day had the most citations and it said that it needed more. Especially concerning the origin of Valentine’s Day and who Valentine was, much of the information was “according to legend” and there are many versions which makes writing an essay more difficult especially without the use of scholarly sources to use as a reference.

This was a good exercise to see the range of material, reliability, and scholarship (or lack there of) that can be found on one popular topic for free on the internet. This exercise revealed the gap between what historians use as reliable sources and what is in the public domain on the internet. For this topic at least there seems to be a lack of identifiably scholarly work available for free on the internet. I found it difficult to get started because of the conflicting origin stories and the questions of reliability.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Chicago History Museum Web Review

Chicago History Museum (http://www.chicagohistory.org/) Created and maintained by the Chicago History Museum, Chicago, IL. Reviewed February 8-9, 2008.

The Chicago History Museum website’s audience will be potential museum visitors, teachers, students, and researchers. The site provides information about the museum- though not a lot about the individual artifacts in its collection-useful materials for teachers, homework resources for students, and a catalog of its manuscripts, photographs, and books and other online resources for researchers.

The website has both good and bad aspects of usability. On the positive side, there is a Spanish language option which makes it more accessible and most of the information that a visitor would expect on a museum site can be accessed from the homepage. On the negative side, every time the user goes from page to page on the main site a message pops up asking the user to run an add-on from the site; though it is not clear what the purpose of this add on is. Also, the search function on the site is not useful for finding information and the site is lacking a sitemap which can make navigation easier. One of the online projects requires Quicktime, so this project is not accessible to those who do not have it or want to download it. Many of the links opened in a new window which can be good so the user does not have to keep clicking back to return to a page, but it can also be an overwhelming amount of windows open at one time.

The exhibits section provides a brief description of the permanent, current, and upcoming exhibits at the museum though it does not include images and descriptions of the individual artifacts. The site does not include online exhibits in this section. The collections section also gives a brief description of the different areas of the collection though it is not searchable online. This section provides a limited amount of specific information about the museum’s artifact collection to potential researchers. The easiest way to search on the site is by using the Encyclopedia of Chicago. The entries are written by scholars from universities (though it is not clear if they are students or professors), newspaper contributors, writers from the CHM and the Newberry Library, and freelance writers. The contributors and their institutions are listed on the site. The encyclopedia also includes maps, historical sources, and special features that include interactive interpretations. The new media of the web allows the users to search the Encyclopedia of Chicago more easily and it lets the Encyclopedia include interactive maps and photos, and links to other related materials which enhance the entries.

The research section includes an online catalog and online resources such as links to other research sites and to online projects, which are collaborations between the museum and Northwestern University that use the museum’s collection. These online projects highlight the artifacts held on specific topics better than the collection and exhibition sections do.

The education section will be useful for teachers because it includes information about field trips and lesson plans. The classroom materials are for grades 3-12 and were developed and used by local school teachers. The materials include online and downloadable lessons about a variety of topics in Chicago and American history. There are also homework resources for students. The kids and family section provides information about children’s exhibits at the museum, online games, and fun facts.

The presentation of the website is consistent on the main pages with the logo and the color blue. The site does not use moving images or many images at all. On some of the projects that are collaborations with other institutions, the setup of the page is different and the CHM logo is not there. The Chicago History Museum was formerly the Chicago Historical Society and some of the pages still include the CHS logo. The online projects and the Encyclopedia of Chicago (2005) are not updated. On the homepage the upcoming events section is updated and “Chicago History Minute” which features this day/month in history changes daily. The site does have links that connect its sections although some of the links on the kids & families page connect to the same page which is unnecessary.

The CHM site uses the new media of the web to enhance the Encyclopedia of Chicago with searchable, interactive, and linking features. Researchers can also search the site in order to get a better idea of what the museum has before going to the museum research center. The web also allows the CHM to collaborate with other institutions in projects such as the Haymarket Affair digital collection which presents and makes searchable the museum’s holdings concerning the Haymarket Affair.

The Chicago History Museum website provides many research and education resources. The site could be improved by adding a sitemap for easier navigation, by providing more information about the exhibits and individual artifacts, and making the artifact collection searchable by keyword or name.