Digital History Project Podcast

The podcast is about the State of the Union Digital History Project, which analyzes the language used in all 224 President's State of the Union addresses. It shows how certain words have changed in frequency over time and how they are linked to different historical events. The project only focuses on 30 words, which is a limitation. Another project by Benjamin Schmidt maps the locations mentioned in the State of the Union addresses. The drawback is that the online publication only allows one free article view. The speaker suggests adding functionality to track the frequency of any word in the speeches. They also mention the Digital Worcester project, which aims to make historical materials accessible through digitization. The podcast concludes with an excerpt from the Digital Worcester website. The speaker is excited to learn more about the project and Worcester's history. Good afternoon, my name is Chris Slate and welcome to my podcast. Today's podcast is about the language of the State of the Union Digital History Project by Benjamin Schmidt and Mitch Frost. It was an interesting project that piqued my curiosity because it's about the different words used in all 224 President's State of the Union addresses and includes the speeches of all Presidents from Washington to Obama and it shows the frequency certain words are used. It contained graphs for each of the 30 words mentioned in the article and it was really interesting to see how the language has changed over time or how they began, then changed, and then came back again. One of the most interesting features of this project is that you can see when the language changes or evolves, it can be linked to different events in history. For example, the word freedom was not really used in the early days of our country, but after Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1941, and every President after him used it more and more. In fact, according to the Atlantic publication, Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan, and both George Bush's used it the most. Really interesting stuff in my opinion. This is the kind of thing that gets me interested and excited to see these types of trends over time. The only thing about this that is a downfall is that the article for the project in the Atlantic uses only 30 words as I mentioned earlier, and this particular publication wants you to subscribe to the online publication and only allows you to view one free article. In addition to the graphs that list every President, as I mentioned earlier, from Washington to Obama, several historians, in addition to Benjamin Schmidt, helped to interpret the data for certain words, such as freedom, public, children, currency, war, and the word her, and how they have evolved over time. I really felt that this was a good project, but it was very limited and only looked at 30 words. It would have been great if it incorporated more words and may have led to other patterns and also might have been able to tell us more about each individual President. Another project, also by Benjamin Schmidt, that used the same data from these 224 State of the Union Addresses, maps the locations around the world that are mentioned in each of the State of the Union Address, which made sense for different events happening in particular years. For example, in 1970, Vietnam was mentioned several times as the U.S. was in the middle of the Vietnam War. The biggest drawback to this project was that the Atlantic is a publication that wants you to subscribe to them, and it only allows you to view one free article. So when I went to look at the other project by Schmidt and then went back, I could no longer see the entire article, which was a real letdown. If I could change anything, I would probably want to add a type of functionality that allows the user to enter in any word they wanted to, and it would track over the 224 speeches the frequency of that particular word. And it really, and it was really limiting that the project only used 30 words. And so I would want to see and be able to interact more with the program, kind of with the end result being the colored graphs for each, you know, president's speeches. I really enjoyed these few digital history projects and love going to museums that have interactive exhibits and projects that allow you to see history come alive and feel that the more these types are incorporated into the retelling of history, the more groups of people can be reached. As far as these types of projects digitizing and allowing documents and exhibits come to life, Worcester has a lot to give. The Worcester Historical Museum, for example, as stated on their website, now has partnered with the WPI Humanities and Art Department to create a project called Digital Worcester. The site states that the Worcester Public Library has become a collaborator in the hopes of bringing rare historical materials to a bigger audience through the use of digitation. To conclude this podcast, I'm going to read an excerpt from the Worcester Historical Museum's Digital Worcester website about the project and its purpose. And I quote, DW's mission is twofold. One, to use digital technologies to make internet accessible historical materials that illuminate Worcester's rich past. And two, to develop compelling crowdsourcing applications to engage both local and national audiences in interpreting and analyzing big historical data relating to Worcester's urban industrial growth in the late 19th and early 20th century. DW brings together both materials scanned from the collections of the Worcester Historical Museum and from large online purveyors of digital content like Google Books, Internet Archive, and Half Eye Trust. With the contents of each volume fully searchable by keyword, DW makes it easier for you to discover your story. I can't wait to research more of this project, and I think it's a great project, and the city of Worcester's history is one that I would like to learn more about. Thank you for listening to my podcast, and I hope you enjoyed it.