FYI: Google Teacher Academy in Seattle this summer

A heads-up to my readers in the public schools: Google For Educators: "The Google Teacher Academy is a FREE professional development experience designed to help primary and secondary educators from around the globe get the most from innovative technologies."

I wish I could apply to this event but it is for K-12 teachers only. The teacher academy is part of the larger Google for Educators initiative, which includes classroom tools, activities, and what looks to be a pretty active teacher discussion group.

The first thing I did in my digital history course this quarter was to make every student get a Gmail address so as to unlock the other free Google resources, and every week we use Google tools from Blogger to Google Earth to Picasa to a dozen other resources. It would be fun to attend a Google-run workshop to pick up some tips on bringing it all together.

Northwest History Goes Mobile

Did you know that Blogger has a mobile setting? It will automatically detect when someone reaches your blog via a mobile device and format your blog accordingly. Details here.

This discovery is a spin off of my spending that day at the Museums and Mobile virtual conference. It was my first virtual conference and it was very well-done. Much of the conversation was about apps--native versus web apps, iOS versus Android, developing them in-house versus hiring someone to develop your institution's virtual presence.

A lot of the technical models on display were big solutions for big museums. Form some committees, hire a developer or a firm, choose an OS, get the right voice talent (I kid you not), secure copyright, etc. Tens of thousands of dollars and year later, you have something spectacular. But I couldn't see where I or my students fit into the models. At one point I tweeted something like "Where is the Blogger for mobile?"

A quick Google search later and I found that Blogger had anticipated my need. One click and I was done. You can view this site in its mobile version here. I am excited about the possibilities. Perhaps we can use Blogger to create a mobile tour of a historic district? (You can now geotag posts as well, so it seems possible.) Use Blogger to generate the HTML to appear in the place marks on a Google Map or Google Earth?

Briefly Noted

Some things that I wish I had more time to explore:

• Memento is an experimental "time machine right in your web browser . . . [to] . . . explore content from a date in the past" according to the Library of Congress.
  
• Google Earth 6 is turning heads (see above)with its scary-good integration of street view into the virtual world. But not all the street views available in Google Maps show up in Earth yet.
  
• Building on Google Earth 6, HistoryPin allows you to "pin your history to the world" by inserting historic photographs into the street view. I am so going to do this with a class.
  
• Did you see where the FCC came out today with a very strong statement of support for net neutrality? Change I can believe in.
  
• ...and I have been meaning to tell you all that my employer, the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives, is tweeting. I mostly write the tweets, and so far they have focused on exploring the 92 million digital objects in our collection. I may be a while. Follow us here.

What Happened to Google News Archive Search?

Update: Paul Jeffko of SmallTownPapers (which looks to be worth checking out) points out that Google does have a page listing all of their digitized newspapers. Thanks Paul!

I have been pretty enthusiastic (giddy, really) about Google's project to put historic newspapers from Spokane and other cities online. Though this has been an incredible resource in my local history courses, it was never easy to get to the historic newspapers, with the search function buried several layers down in the advanced menus at Google News.

The, sometime late this summer, Google News was redesigned and the ability to get to the historic newspapers disappeared! The good news is that the newspapers are still online and the search function for them still exists, you just cannot navigate to it from the Google News site. So, dear reader, here you go:

Google News Archive Search - Advanced Options

I have no idea why Google buried the link or what this means for the future of historic newspapers at Google. The official Google News Blog is silent--though maybe if I combed through the About News Archive Search pages I'd find out.  If you have any rumors or speculation, feel free to share them in the comments.

["Auto Carrying Giant Potato..." from the Spokane Daily Chronicle, June 22, 1915 p. 2.]

Google Docs in Plain English

I am surprised at how many of my students and colleagues don't know about Google Docs. I do a lot of collaborative writing projects (mostly grant proposals) and Google Docs has been a tremendous boon. This Common Craft video shows what Google Docs is good for:



But just recently I discovered another power of Google Docs, the ability to publish your document as a web page. Now when I create materials for my students I do it in Google Docs and publish it as a web page. Rather than upload a Word doc to Blackboard, I just post the link. If I need to make changes I do so in the Google Doc and click "save" and the web page is automagically updated--without having to go into the clicky monstrosity that is Blackboard. Some examples are the readings schedule for my public history class and my handout on How to Integrate Quotations into historical writing.

Historic Spokane Newspapers Online!

Wow--when did this happen?

Google and the Spokesman-Review have scanned and placed online a huge run of the Spokane Daily Chronicle. It appears that they have digitzed the paper from about 1890 through its demise in 1982. The articles are full text, searchable, and free. They are also deeply buried, so pay attention boys and girls.

The path to the newspapers is: Google News => Advanced News Search => Archive Search => Advanced Archive Search. At the last page, be sure that you enter Spokane in the "source" box.

I had a lot of fun trolling the archives for Spokane history, A search for "Chief Joseph" before 1920 (to screen out articles about Chief Joseph dam and such) turned up some wonderful primary sources, such as Old Foemen Met Again .Chief Joseph And General Howard Sat Side By Side--Famous Red Warrior Talks to Young Folks. The 1904 article reports that Joseph gave a speech to the graduating class of Carlisle Indian school. Also of interest were Spirits Helped Chief Joseph Outwit Whites, Says Indian, and an article entitled Howling In The Hills. The latter is something of a racist rant by the Chronicle devoted to complaining that the some regional tribes were planning a powwow, "a copper-colored carnival of dancing, horse-racing, gambling, getting drunk, and painting the forest a primeval a bright carmine tint, spotted with purple and vermilion."

Surprisingly, the Chronicle seems not to have reported Joesph's death, which occurred on September 21, 1904, six months after his Carlisle speech.

Some other finds include this account a 1912 Spokane speech by Theodore Roosevelt, an 1898 story about a doctor arrested for performing an abortion, and a 1908 editorial about a development plan that would alter the falls on the Spokane Falls.

We are lucky indeed, as Spokane appears to be one of only a handful of cities available for free in the Google News archive. A bit of thrashing around in the archives reveals digitized historic content for St. Petersberg, Florida and a bunch of newspapers in New Zealand that seem to have been digitized as part of an independent project and are merely indexed via Google.

(Hat tip to the often-useful Eastern Washington Genealogical Society blog for discovering this resource.)

Google to Digitize Newspaper Archives - NYTimes.com

According to this article in the NY Times, Google is set to begin digitizing back issues of newspapers to add to its Google News Archives Search feature. "Google said it was working with more than 100 newspapers and with partners like Heritage Microfilm and ProQuest, which aggregate historical newspaper archives in microfilm. It has already scanned millions of articles," according to the Times. Google will handle the digitization for free and Google advertisements will appear alongside the search results.

It is not clear if the digitized articles will be available for free. Currently Google News Archives Search includes both free and pay-to-view articles. A quote from the editor of the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph--“We hope that will be a financial windfall for us.”--seems to indicate that the articles may not be free.

Frankly I was not even aware of Google News Archives Search until I spotted this article, though apparently it has been around for two years. There is not that much there yet--it indexes the New York Times archives, but those articles are already available from the newspaper website for free. And the Google News Archives Search links to the Times articles don't work--du'oh! Other links lead to paid archives at newspaper websites or to commercial services such as NewspaperArchive.com. In fact a search for "Spokane" limited to newspapers before 1880 turns up only New York Times and NewspaperArchive.com articles.

Google News Archives Search could eventually expand into something useful. It would be nice to go to one place to search across different digital newspaper collections, even if many of those searches led to walled subscription sites. You could still order microfilm of a newspaper once you identified it via Google News Archives Search, or go to a research library that held subscriptions to the digital database. Or even, God forbid, pay for the article you need!

But so far Google News Archives Search does not even access many existing digital newspaper sites. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the Chronicling America sites for example do not seem to be included. Google News Archives Search is a very beta project so far.

Mary Latham's Pessary and other Google Patents

Here is an overlooked digital tool for historians--Google Patents Search. Incorporating 7 million patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the database has sophisticated search features at the Advanced Patent Search page. So what were the inventive residents of early Spokane patenting?

Well, Mary Latham developed a pessary. "My invention relates, primarily, to means of supporting the womb in that disarrangement of the organ known as 'prolapsus uteri,' or to prevent movement of or shock two said organ," Latham reported. Some types of late-19th century pessaries (though not this one) were sold as medical aids but actually used as birth control devices. This was especially common after the Constock Act of 1873 made it illegal to send contraceptive devices or even information through the mail. (This NY Times review article, "The Secret History of Birth Control" is a good overview.)

What else were Spokanites inventing? Lots of farm equipment. A watch fob fastening device. A device to the head still when surgery is performed. A toilet designed "to prevent the escape of noxious fumes." A complicated toy horse. A water-powered machine gun. And most amazing, a 1900 patent for an automobile "adapted for use as a pleasure vehicle ... or may be used as a gun carriage by using a suitable armor plate."

The best of these old patents are the elegant and sometimes goofy line drawing of the inventions. I think that students would delight in these. Patents are also a good way to explore local history--even most small towns will show a patent or two over the 200 year history of the Patent Office.