Of course, Willinsky would argue that having access to journal articles shouldn’t be a privilege, it should be a right. And I agree with him. I know that there are economic realities involved, but fundamentally, why should research (particularly research done by academics at public universities) be closed off from a member of the general public who wants access to it? As Willinsky brings to light, open access is really about public access to knowledge. The prohibitive cost of higher education in this country has already limited that public access to some degree, because it discourages people who don’t think that pursuing a degree in higher education is economically viable. Journals that are not open access have contributed to the high cost of education. Indeed, the exorbitant prices that university libraries currently have to pay for access to certain journals and databases is mind-blowing. I do realize that even if every journal became open access, everything would not immediately become free. There would still be a lot of costs involved, and assuredly the majority of those costs would still be paid by university libraries. However, open access would allow anyone from anywhere (i.e. non-university students) to read what they want to read.

Therefore, I agree with Willinsky’s argument that open access is a human rights issue- everyone deserves access to knowledge. So much of education is already closed off to the privileged few, journal articles do not have to be.

Therefore, I decided to take a pretty small data set and create a treemap. The data set I chose was a list of “controversies” surrounding the presence of African American players in Bowl Games located in Southern cities from 1940-1962. My data included the year, bowl name, name of the black player(s) involved, the team the black player(s) played for, the opposing team, the bowl location, and a brief description of what happened (i.e. the black player was or was not allowed to play in the bowl game). Once I uploaded the data (which only included 10 games), I created the treemap by using the bowl name as the major category. The results appear below. All in all, I think it is a pretty cool little chart. The user can immediately see the name of black player(s) involved, as well as get a sense of the chronology by looking at the color of the particular box (the darker the box, the later the event occurred…see the key at the bottom right of the screen). Moreover, if you click on any of the boxes, you can get all the information in the data set. However, for some reason, all the years are displayed with a comma (so 1946 becomes 1,946). I couldn’t figure out how to change that. Nevertheless, this little chart shows the potential that Many Eyes has for my project, because I think that images and charts could be a big part of my prospective site.

You will notice two things immediately. One, the name of the site stinks (I need to actually come up with something creative/descriptive). Two, the main page does not have any actual content. However, it does display the basic structure of the site, with links to the main pages of the site. First, there is an About page, which will eventually describe who I am, what the site is, and what it is trying to accomplish. For now, the only content it has is a brief note to let potential visitors know that the current site is just part of a project for this class.

I also created a Players page, which is the one page of the site that actually does have content. Ultimately, I would want this page to have an elaborate search tool where users could search for players by name, school, conference, or year. I would also have links to the various conference pages, which would feature tables similar to the one I actually created. That table displays the name of the first African American football player(s) at the schools of the Big 12 Conference, and the year in which they integrated the team. The goal, obviously, is to have a link to articles about every one of these players. For now, I mocked up a sample page for George Flippin, who played at the University of Nebraska from 1891-1894. The page is far from perfect (the image is not aligned properly), and the content is probably too long (I basically copied information I had written about Flippen for an earlier paper), but it will do for now. I also created a page for Edward Harvey, the first African American player at Kansas, but I only had time to put up his picture, not actually write any content.

Although I could easily identify the first black football players at 10 of the 12 Conference schools (both through prior research and simple internet searches), I could not identify the first black players at Oklahoma State or Texas Tech. Therefore, I wrote “Tell Me!” in the field and hyperlinked that text to my Contribute page. That page (which is now blank) will have a field where visitors to the site can enter in any information they may have about a particular player or school. Therefore, if a visitor actually does know who the first black player at one of those schools was, they can immediately tell me. As I have mentioned earlier, user contributions will be key to my site.

The final two pages I created were Sources and Timeline. The Sources page will feature a bibliographic index of all the scholarly materials I have come across relating to the integration of college football. The Timeline page will feature (what else?) a timeline of key events in the integration of college football. So the incident between Nebraska-Missouri that I describe on the George Flippin page would be added into the timeline. In fact, I ultimately envision that the incident would get its own separate page, and would be linked to from both the timeline and Flippin’s player page.

Anyway, it is far from perfect, but I was excited that I was able to put something together that at least somewhat resembled what I had envisioned as my final website. Of course, I would definitely appreciate any comments/feedback from the class.

I love Google Books. I have used it a number of times in the past few years in doing research for my classes. What I really love about it is the fact that you can do a full-text search for a specific word or phrase in their entire library (books and other publications). That is really great when you are researching a narrow subject, like the integration of college football. Indeed, searching for “integration” AND “college football” brings you 888 results on Google Books. The fact that you can actually read some of these books immediately on your computer makes Google Books an invaluable resource.

So I was excited to explore Open Library, which I had never used (or even heard of), but is essentially the same sort of resource as Google Books: a digital library. For the sake of comparison, I performed the same full-text search of the Open Library database, using the terms “integration” AND “college football.” That search returned 0 results. I was pretty disappointed by this. So I went through the site and did some more digging. In the end, I came to the conclusion that Open Library is simply a less comprehensive version of Google Books. Because of that, I’m not sure why anyone would want to use it. I do like the overall design of the site, but that is hardly a reason to go to a site that is primarily a research tool. I’m definitely going to stick with Google Books.

For instance, see my earlier post on the “Ruth Knocked Out” picture. In that post, I present a two paragraph block-quote from a July 6, 1924 New York Times article. Is that “fair use” of the source? What if, instead of transcribing the article, I had scanned a printed out version of the article (accessed via Proquest) and uploaded the image to the blog? Would that violate copyright for the New York Times, or Proquest’s terms of use? Do the answers to all these questions change if we are talking about an article published in 1922 instead of 1924? Hopefully, I’ll discover the answers to some of these questions in class on Tuesday, though I would obviously welcome any thoughts in the comments.

In addition to newspaper articles, I also forsee some copyright concerns regarding pictures of college players that I would want to put on my prospective site. However, I imagine that I would mostly get these pictures from university archivists. Therefore, as long as I ask (and am granted) permission, I would think that I am free to put images on my site.

1. Abstract: To create a website about the integration of college football. The website will develop a bibliographic index of scholarly material related to the integration of college football as well as a database of notable black players at nearly every school in the country.

2. Need: People in this country are amazingly passionate about college football, yet they know very little about its history. They know even less about the fascinating and important history of the integration of the sport. The public ignorance of the integration of college football is largely due to the fact that there was no “Jackie Robinson” figure in the sport. Indeed, the story of Jackie Robinson breaking Major League Baseball’s long-standing color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 is one of the most celebrated and oft-told in sports history. It is a heroic story of how one man had to overcome racism from fans, opposing players, and teammates to break the walls of segregation that had existed in baseball for over fifty years.

The story of the integration of college football is quite different. No universal color line was ever established in college football; therefore the integration of the sport cannot be defined by a single moment or athlete. Instead, it was an eighty year process that involved countless, mostly forgotten, players. As far back as 1889, black players played on predominantly white university football teams in the Northeast and Midwest. Although they represented a small minority of the nationwide pool of players for many years, the presence of black football players on predominantly white college football teams was constant from the 19th century to the 1970s, when the last schools of the Southeastern Conference finally integrated.

Yet the presence of black players in a still overwhelmingly white sport was far from universally accepted; in fact, hostility toward black participation in college football was prevalent throughout much of the country for many years. This was most apparent in games between integrated and segregated schools. In such encounters, the racial concerns of the segregated schools ruled the day. It became customary for black players to be forced to sit out home games on the bench, and be barred from accompanying their teammates on road trips to segregated institutions. This practice of benching and exclusion would become known as the “gentleman’s agreement.” The “gentleman’s agreement” was very much a part of the sport until the 1950s.

The slow and steady process of the integration of college football is precisely what makes the integration of college football such a captivating subject. Historian Lane Demas has provocatively argued that the integration of college football was a process that “exemplifies the true struggle behind the story of African-American civil rights in the twentieth century.” In Demas’ view, the history of college football’s slow process of integration represents a welcome departure from the popular narrative employed by sports historians on the subject of athletic integration; namely, biographical pieces on professional “race heroes” like Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis. These stories, while undeniably important, cultivate an account of integration that is too simplistic—one person breaking down long-standing color barriers. In truth, integration in athletics, much like the integration of society at large, is much more complex. Both are processes involving countless, mostly anonymous people, and many ups and downs. (1)

There is no current website (at least not one that I can find) that examines the integration of college football. There is a clear need for a website that addresses this topic, and one that will hopefully bring greater public awareness about the integration of the sport.

3. Functionality: There will be two central features to the website. One, it will have a searchable bibliographic index of scholarly material related to the integration of college football. Two, it will have a searchable database of notable black players at nearly every school in the country. Notable black players include the first black players at a particular school, College Football Hall of Famers (that played pre-1960), as well as black players that were involved in “incidents.” “Incidents”’ range from racially motivated injuries that the black players suffered on the field, to instances where black players were withheld from a game because of the “gentleman’s agreement,” to instances where the “gentleman’s agreement” was waived, and black players were allowed to play against segregated schools. Ideally, the website would develop into a comprehensive resource on significant black players at nearly every school in the country. Because the database would be searchable, a user could go to a website and find all the notable black football players at a particular school. Moreover, I would want to group schools by their current conference affiliations, so that users could, for instance, look at black players from Southeastern Conference (SEC) schools. The website would also feature a few short essays about the history of the integration of the sport, to help give the user a “big picture” sense of what happened.

4. Audience: The site has the potential to attract a wide variety of people, from general college football fans and university alumni, to sports historians and historians of American higher education. Yet if the site is truly going to succeed, a key component of the audience would have be university archivists. The site would need to attract university archivists and encourage them to help participate in building a database of the notable black players at their schools. More on this in section 6.

5. Technologies: The goal of the site’s design is to be fairly straightforward and user-friendly, so it will probably utilize a simple HTML design (definitely no Flash). As mentioned, the website will also feature two searchable databases. One that can search bibliographic sources, and one that can search players by name, date, school, or conference. The site could also utilize Flickr for any photos of players I get permission to use.

6. User-contributed content: Because the goals of the site are rather ambitious, collaboration with university archivists will be absolutely essential. I would need to encourage archivists to help build the database of players. Initially, I imagine the best way to get this accomplished is through e-mail: directly asking them for assistance. In past projects I have done on the integration of college football, I have e-mailed university archivists with questions, and have generally found them friendly and willing to help. Here is an email that I sent to the archivist at Wichita State University about a player I was interested in:

Hello-

My name is John Cassara and I am a graduate student in the MA History program at George Mason University. One of the topics I am really interested in is the integration of college football.

In doing research on that topic, I came across a 1947 newspaper article that described how the University of Tulsa would not allow Wichita University (as it was called in those days) to use its black football player in an upcoming game between the schools scheduled to be played on November 1, 1947, in Tulsa. I discovered that Wichita’s black football player was Linwood Sexton, who actually played on the team from 1945 to 1947. I have found some basic information on him from doing Google searches, but nothing substantive.

Therefore, I was wondering if you might be able to provide me with some information on Linwood Sexton, especially on his football career at Wichita U. I am most interested in any information pertaining to situations like the Tulsa-Wichita game described above, where his appearance on the football team caused controversy, and he was forced to sit out of the game because of the exclusionary racial policy of another school. Also, I have assumed that Sexton was the only African American player on Wichita’s roster during his career (1945-1947), but do you know of any other black football players at Wichita during that time? Was Sexton Wichita’s first black football player?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and know that any response you give will be much appreciated.

Sincerely,

John Cassara

The emails that I will send out to university archivists will essentially be the same, though I will obviously say something about the fact that I am building a website. As the site progresses, I could envision building the player pages as wikis, and inviting university archivists to help edit/add to the information that I have. Obviously, that would also allow other users (other sports historians, passionate amateurs) to help build the site.

Note:
(1) Lane Demas, “Beyond Jackie Robinson: Racial Integration in American College Football and New Directions in Sport History,” History Compass 5, no. 2 (2007): 675-690.

What I found is that the date of the photo (and thus the users who seemed to verify that date) is WRONG! The collision actually took place during the first game of a July 5, 1924 doubleheader with the Senators…a day (and two games) earlier than what is currently listed on the photo page. Per p. 23 of the July 6, 1924 New York Times:

[It] happened in the fourth inning, when Babe made a valiant effort for a long foul from Joe Judge’s bat, which just sailed over the wall into the crowded seats. The Babe ran into the pavilion parapet with the full force of his body, and dropped unconscious to the grass. Uniformed policemen ran to his assistance and kept back the crowd that seemed disposed to leave the chairs and get a close-up of the injured warrior. Several photographers happened to be on the spot and snapped the Babe as Trainer Doc Woods ran up with the water bucket and the little black bag of first aid preparations.
At first it was thought that Ruth had been knocked out by a blow from the concrete on his chin, but it was soon discovered that he had been knocked out by a jolt in the solar plexus. His left leg was also hurt at the hip.
[Yankee manager Miller] Huggins wanted Ruth to quit, but he insisted upon staying in, and got a double in the sixth…

Obviously, this Times quote provides all the information anyone would ever want about this incident (by the way, Ruth amazingly played in the second game of the doubleheader as well…though he went 0 for 3).

Anyway, this episode proves that fact-checking is always required when it comes to user contributions. Hopefully, someone from the LOC will not just blindly accept the information provided by their Flickr commenters. It also shows that although the web is a democracy, those that have access to the best information have a distinct advantage. As a GMU student, I have access to a proprietary database (Proquest) that your average internet user would not have access to. The internet is not an entirely level playing field.

Clearly though, the key audience members of my potential website would be university archivists. Indeed, I need to both attract university archivists to my website and figure out a way to encourage them to collaborate with me. That is because the two primary goals of my prospective website are to determine who the first black football player(s) was at a particular school, and to share information and stories about the men that played a pivotal role in the integration of the sport. To accomplish either of these goals, archivist collaboration would be absolutely essential, especially for smaller schools.

Reading Chapter 5 of Digital History definitely gave me a lot to think about in terms of building an audience, but I haven’t really pinpointed a way in which I could ensure university archivists would come to my site. The only real idea that I have had so far is to send out e-mails to the university archivists of the hundreds of schools that I am looking at. Doing so would obviously take a lot of time, even if I simply sent out the same generic message in each e-mail, because it would require looking up each individual e-mail address. Can anyone think of a more efficient way to reach my intended audience?

Nongqawuse

Nongqawuse was a Xhosa prophetess whose visions were central to the “Xhosa cattle-killing crisis of 1856-1857,” an event of great importance in South African history. There was relatively nothing in the discussion tab of the page (other than noting that the article is part of WikiProject Africa and WikiProject Biography). Moreover, the page had only undergone four revisions. The page was created on April 16, 2007, and then revised twice, with the most recent revision coming on July 2, 2007. Then a Wikipedia bot revised the template of the page on June 26, 2009. Therefore, the information of the page has gone untouched for well over two years.

That there have been so few edits of the Nongqawuse entry is hardly surprising, as the Xhosa cattle-killing is not a subject that commands a wide audience. However, I was relatively surprised that there had not been more edits of the page by South African historians because Nongqawuse is definetly a controversial figure in terms of what extent she can be considered “responsible” for the Xhosa cattle-killings. In another graduate history class, I had to read J.B. Peires’ The Dead Will Arise (listed as a reference on Wikipedia), and Peires’ interpretation of Nongqawuse is certainly considered controversial. That the Nongqawuse Wikipedia page is so sparse, and has gone unaltered for so long, suggests that many historians are still ignoring Wikipedia, or at least, not actively contributing to it.

Napoleon Bonaparte

The Wikipedia entry for Napoleon, quite obviously, has attracted a lot of attention. The history tab reveals hundreds of revisions, though the page has remained unedited for nearly a month (the last update was August 29, 2009). There is also a very lively discussion page that features debates about various aspects of the article. Yet it is unclear whether the dozens of people who write on that page are historians. In fact, several people make a point of saying that they are not historians. Again, I wonder how much historians really particpate in constructing these Wikipedia articles. It seems that enthusiastic amateurs dominate the discussion tab.

Michael Jackson

Admittedly, the King of Pop is not a traditional “historical topic,” but with his untimely passing this summer, he certainly became a major topic of conversation. An extremely controversial figure throughout his life, he somehow became even more controversial in death. I imagined that his Wikipedia page would reflect that controversy, and would have a lively discussion tab, and would have undergone hundreds of revisions.

It is safe to say that I was correct. As soon as you look at the discussion tab, you can immediately see that this is a very contentious article. Wikipedia lets visitors know that this is a “controversial topic that may be under dispute,” and thus encourages readers to “keep a cool head” when commenting on the page. There are 28 archived pages of discussion on the Jackson entry, and the topics range from discussions about the instruments he played to his sexual proclivities.

Not surprisingly, the history of the page reveals that it has undergone constant revisions. The article history from June 2009 (Jackson died on June 25), shows that the page went through literally hundreds of revisions per day in the immediate days after his death. Though some of these updates/revisions were a result of new information regarding Jackson’s demise, the majority seemed devoted to removing inaccurate and/or disrespectful information that was produced by “trolls.”

This brings me to a very important realization about Wikipedia. Obviously, inaccurate information on Jackson’s (or Napoleon’s) page would immediately get noticed, because there are people that read and update those pages on a daily basis. However, if I edited the Nongqawuse page and included some inaccurate information, it would probably go undetected for days, weeks, and maybe even months. That is really dangerous considering that a history student is probably more likely to accept anything on the Nongqawuse page at face value precisely because she was an obscure historical figure– the student assumes that the information on there was written by a specialist. On the other hand, one generally reads a Wikipedia page about a celebrity like Jackson with a more discerning eye because of the likelihood that trolls have recently tampered with the page. Therefore, if a few trolls were really determined to mess with Wikipedia, they would tamper with less-trafficked entries.
(Please don’t do that trolls).

Therefore, I did some searching on the evolution of web design, and came across a few interesting sites that I thought were worth sharing with the class. The first examines the fifteen year history of Yahoo’s homepage. If you click on the first screenshot, from 1994, it will expand the image and open a slide show so you can trace the evolution of the design. Like the author, I feel that the earliest design was actually the best: it was clean and simple. Indeed, as the design got more complex, the website became cluttered and difficult to navigate (this is surely part of the reason why Google has come to dominate the search engine world…it has maintained its elegantly simple design). I’m interested in how others feel about the evolution of Yahoo’s design.

I also came across a fascinating blog post on the “evolution of the front page.” The author examines the evolution of both the analog (newspaper) and digital (website) versions of the Los Angeles Times front page. In this case, I feel like the web design actually improved over time, and that the current home page is fairly user-friendly.

Of course, what is really interesting about this post is seeing just how much the front page of the LA Times newspaper changed from 1881-2003. The newspaper industry needed a very long time to figure out what design principles worked and which didn’t. Though we often lose sight of it, the internet really has not been around for very long. Web design is still evolving; people are still trying to determine how to construct a clear and effective site. Has web design improved over the last ten years? Probably so, but maybe not to the extent that one would assume. Some websites, like Yahoo’s, have probably gotten worse over time.