Daniel J. Cohen

History books fall into 3 categories. Pure factual: names, dates and places. Facts organized into stories that resonate not only in the past but also now. And somewhere in-between. This book unfortunately is in-between. The author does a pretty good job of telling the history of math through the Victorian age. But he fails at making it more than that. The most interesting thing that the book purports to talk about is how people's faith was affected, and while there are the stories, nothing that scales. I was expecting to be "wowed" but instead ended up in "meh" territory.… (mehr)

This is a short book, compiled by editors Cohen and Scheinfeldt, consisting of about 50 essays and fragments exploring the shortcomings and future of the modern university. The authors have a special concern about the impacts of new technologies. It's well worth your time to read.

About half of the material recasts discussions which began decades ago. These include considerations of the structure of academic curricula, interdisciplinary scholarship, the value of the liberal arts, the nature of teaching, and the nature of the academic institution. Other parts resemble Government 2.0 discussions about ways to interact and what interactions are appropriate. A handful of chapters cover topics which come more directly from current academic concerns about the role of technology in education and research. Some of these chapters summarize the current state of the discussion; a few move it along.

The book's quality is generally high. This is primarily an effort from the humanities wing of the academy; the hard sciences and other disciplines seem to have had no participants, though it's likely they have similar concerns. (This likely reflects the editors' networks, not their interests.) There's no discussion of the ways these essayists' concerns might differently impact various sizes and types of schools, nor about the different issues which might be faced by private and public institutions. Nonetheless, the best contributions are excellent, and justify the work.

Evidently there's a paper version of this book in the works, but at this time it's available only in electronic formats. An online HTML version is available here, while epub/mobi/PDF versions are available here. And there's a website--which you really ought to investigate.

A good discussion. If you're interested in the future of academia, you should read this. And pitch in.

This review is also posted on a dabbler's journal.… (mehr)

Digital History is an introduction to the issues involved in creating an educational history website. Roy Rosenzweig and Daniel Cohen the authors and, respectively founder and director of research projects at the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) are the obvious people to write this guide. After showing just how new the New Media, the internet, is they show several examples of what can be done on the web. From national projects like the Library of Congress’s American Memory project to personal ones such as Jim Zwick’s Anti-Imperialism website and multi-national projects like the International Dunhaung Project we see the range of possibilities and learn that regardless of our resources we can create an interesting and popular site.

Once the range of possibilities on the internet has been established the book moves on to practical matters. Design, software, hardware, to hire or do-it-yourself are all discussed as is how to attract traffic to your site and how to gather data for sites like the September 11 Digital Archive and the United Kingdom’s Moving Here. The short history of copyright in the chapter Owning History is worth searching out on its own merits. The legal considerations involved in putting photographs, music and documents on the web are covered from an educator’s viewpoint with a warning that commercial sites will be held to different standards.

This is one of the finest practical histographies I have read and, from what I can see it is one of the most up to date. With a topic as fast changing as the internet that is no small accomplishment. The book seemed like a quick read. I say, “seemed”, because I have never seen the physical book and have no idea how long it really is. The entire book is available on line at CHNM, which is where I read it. The electronic version of the book is laid out in a way that struck me as ingenious. Every word of it is accessible on one page from inside a window. Each chapter is broken into sections and it all is accessible with little need to scroll down the page. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in doing web-based history.… (mehr)