Jenny Reeder

In my quest for fonts, I actually found one titled “Type this.” I had no idea that I would find such a fascination with fonts. I could spend hours playing. Laura Veprek shared with me a great site with free fonts: www.dafont.com, and I found the perfect calligraphy font for my site. I wanted to create a biography page, the first of many, hopefully, for my larger Mormon Women’s History site. My first page, which fulfills the type assignment, focuses on Eliza R. Snow. For the headline, I wanted to find a font that matched her own handwriting. I pulled out a photocopy of a holograph letter and matched a font almost immediately. I’ve been playing around with headers and pull quotes in her font, which obviously I’ve made into images because no computer is going to have this font. I’ve realized, though, that this font comes with difficulty–it’s hard to read. So I’ll improvise and use sparingly. Check out my efforts here: Eliza R. Snow.

Laura also shared a fabulous color blender site. I can put in two colors and the site will blend them with up to 10 colors in between. It’s beautiful–and great fun to play with shades.

I have to acknowledge a very helpful tutoring session from Jeremy Boggs. He is an amazing designer and had some great ideas. My favorite part, though, was seeing his type assignment for Clio 2. Just seeing his learning curve helped me to realize that I’m ok–that I can learn and practice and get the hang of this.

I am intrigued with Manan Ahmed’s discussion, The Polyglot Manifesto. He raises some important esoteric questions about identity, community responsibility, and public responsibility. But I am most intrigued with his ideas about historian as translator or interpreter. As I commented on Bill’s blog, I believe that digital history changes the way we do history. I think the connection between “past-ese” and “present-ese” is one that we cannot take too lightly. Can we really “toggle” between the two, to borrow Ahmed’s phrase?

I like to hope we can. And yet as I anticipate dealing with job searches and how I will figure out how my skills can match the needs of whatever department, I question how it will all add up. Does my ability to use digital media make me a better historian? Or am I learning how to appeal to the popular masses? Do the two connect? Does plodding through somewhat technical and foreign reading on CSS help me do or interpret history better, or does it help me present history better? I honestly think both skills are vital. And that is exactly why I am pushing and pulling along, trying to piece together the meaning of CSS and design. I have important history to do and I want to know how to present it.

Finally… with the help of my teams… here is the link to my web portfolio. I know you’re all waiting with baited breath…

I started in grand admiration of Jennifer Levasseur’s web portfolio, mainly because it was clean and seemed relatively simple (props to you, Jennifer). I followed her link, but then ended up changing obviously color, images, and text. With the help of Laura, we cleaned things up a bit.

I decided to make my portfolio a part of my larger website without the link between the two. I’m still working on the solid identity party, but I did want to make a connection with my spirit-mentor, Emmeline B. Wells, whose picture is in my header.

Last semester we discussed the power of hyperlinks, and I was thrilled at the possibility. I quickly realized, however, that while links are an inherent strength of the Web, scholarly footnotes prove problematic. Although Jenny Lyn Bader cites the power of “clickability,” I agreed with Misha that frenetic button-pushing can lead to attention deficit disorder. While the non-linear, individual-oriented user can control the direction of information-seeking, the scholar loses. Footnotes and hyperlinks are not the same. Rather, as Gertrude Himmelfarb noted, we lose accountability when we lose footnotes.

I’m intrigued by the different ideas of how to deal with scholarly footnotes. I think my favorite option by our own Professor Petrik is the popup. I love the concept of an explanation visibly available, right next to the text in question. I like the idea that I can control the popup according to my own interest–I read some; I leave some. I feel strongly about being able to print the document with the footnotes in place. I think the sidebar is tricky–some footnotes are extremely long and would take up a lot of sidebar.

It’s all about usability and accountability…

I must admit: when I first read Luke Wroblewski’s comment about the importance of a succesful website to “establish lasting emotional ties,” I was perplexed. I wrote in my margin, “Does a website establish lasting emotional ties?” After just a few paragraphs, I quickly changed my mind. And now I want to learn how to use my personality–or the personality I want for my website–to attract my audience.

Websites have a definite feel. From professional to amateur, from warm to cool, from active to calm–color, space, font, shapes, style, texture–all communicate personality and emotion. Donald A. Norman mentions the connection between the emotional system and the cognitive system. I love the idea that the way I present my website can incite visitors to think more creatively. “Happy people are more effective in finding alternative solutions and, as a result, are tolerant of minor difficulties.”

As I read Wroblewski, I realize that I want my site (certainly a work in progress) to be cooler (rather than red–I want to focus on the soothing, calmly invigorating parts of Mormon women’s history rather than inciting the strange, negative, highly conflicted aspects); personable (I want images of real women from a bunch of times, ages, races, etc.); with sort of an older feel (I want my site to be clean but to feel a connection to the past, with sort of grainy sepia photos).

I am reminded of the importance of understanding audience. Wroblewski continually refers to appealing to audience, to being consistent and clear for the audience, to meeting audience expectations, getting the correct message to the audience. There is clearly a connection between the site’s emotional draw and returned use.

Now… as to how to accomplish these emotions… I’m still working through Charles Wyke-Smith’s Stylin’ with CSS which provides great technical information…

History has told us very little about women; judging from its pages, one would suppose their lives were insignificant and their opinions worthless. . . . But although the historians of the past have been neglectful of women, and it is the exception if she be mentioned at all, yet the future will deal more generously with womankind, and the historians of the present age will find it very embarrassing to ignore woman in the records of the nineteenth century. –Emmeline B. Wells, “Self-Made Women,” 1881

I shall try to present them in their terms and judge them in mine. That I do not accept the faith that possessed them does not mean I doubt their frequent devotion and heroism in its service. Especially their women. Their women were incredible. –Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail, 1964

The history of the women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as Mormons, is rich and complex. Family, friends, community, and church were their binding force. Mormonwomenhistory.org aims to provide a meeting point for information relating to that history. Primary documents illustrate various experiences, both individual and institutional, with links to secondary analysis. A detailed timeline and brief biographies of both well-known and lesser-known women illustrates the complexity, the social network, the political and cultural activity, and the far-reaching influence of women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their national and international contexts. And a forum creates a virtual community of scholars and the interested public. (more…)

I have created a website using HTML (1) and CSS (2). I registered a domain and a host account (3) with CHNM. I also threw in a little Javascript (4) with my Simile timeline. With some special help from a few friends, I’ve embarked on a project that I hope will continue well past this semester. While I’ve pulled this together for now, I expect to put in a lot more work and time to expand each page with additional information, images, documents, etc. I’ve got colleagues who are eager to add to the site and publicize it in multiple forums. We’ll see what happens…

The magical site is www.mormonwomenhistory.org

After taking the STAR Photoshop class, I have fiddled around with a few digital images.

Original version: notice tree in the middle and sort of double exposure of nurses on the right classof-1910-1912.pdf

Cleaned up version: Points to those who figure out the two arms I had to copy and paste onto the nurses whose arms were totally distorted, and from whom they came… I left the ghost woman in the window on the upper left… 2classof-1910-1912.pdf

Here’s another go at it–this one is an old letter that I had as a scanned photocopy. I saved it as a pdf, then photoshopped it. Old: 1886-letter.pdf New: 1886-letter2.pdf.

And, for the sake of my 7-year-old nephew in Parker, Colorado, who asked me to help him out with a Flat Stanley project, I utilized my photoshop skills as seen here:

Blogs, blogs, and more blogs. I have obviously created this blog, and I’ve actually been so taken in by the blog excitement that I’ve created a personal, non-academic blog, found here.

I’ve also started a family history blog for all the family history we’ve done. Now, when I say started it, I mean that I have all the ideas and such, but not much has been posted. I plan on working with my mom’s cousin who has tons of stuff to work with on our genealogy. It’s going to be great.

I am a big believer in Zotero.  And it’s not just because I’ve worked on it at CHNM. I think that it really is the wave of the future. I’m just glad I’ve learned about it at this point in my doctoral education and academic career.

I usually underline and heavily annotate my books while I read. I have started to create a summary of each chapter in the back of the book, and notes from book reviews in the front. But I have not had an in-depth program to collect all this data.

I have created my own Zotero collection with folders on American history, Women’s history, Religious history, and Mormon history, with a sub-folder on Mormon women’s history. I have also created folders for every class I have taken, both in my MA program at NYU and here at Mason. I have added notes to each book with the first note giving a brief summary of the book and additional summary notes for each chapter. Sometimes I’ve even included a note with notes from book reviews.

I think these notes and tags will allow me to prepare for my orals and minor field statements as well as provide important bibliographic information for writing papers and chapters for my dissertation. I think this will save me incredible amounts of time and energy. I’ve already gone back and entered in quite a few books from past readings