Photo From The Heart of the Alleghanies; Or Western North Carolina
Available at GoogleBooks
Available at GoogleBooks
I am a historian. A working one to boot. I teach, write, and work in a history museum. I am routinely on the lookout for old historic books and archaic ideas. Specifically, my research interests include turn of the twentieth century Appalachia. Not necessarily the hillbilly Appalachia but rather a more dynamic Fin de Siècle Appalachia. I have relied upon GoogleBooks more than once to read a hard-to-find, out-of-print 19th century book on Appalachia. I spend a lot of time on GoogleBooks.
However, GoogleBooks is not perfect. And there is a lot of debate about how their digitization project fits into copyright and intellectual property laws, especially among academics (See NY Times article, Google's Pnan for Out of Print Books is Challenged.) While most of the books I look for are in the public domain, as I expand my research to include the interwar years and even LBJ's Great Society, it becomes clear whether or not Google will continue to be useful to me.
To make a short story tediously long (as we historians love to do,) and am frequently on the look out for new sources of historical evidence. To this end, WikiQuote and WikiBooks seemed promising enough.
"There are no facts, only interpretations."
~Friedrich Nietzsche, Notebooks, (Summer 1886 – Fall 1887), Available on WikiQuote
WikiQuote is exactly was is sounds like. It's a wiki full of quotes. What makes Wiki Quote different from other quote archives and databases such as BrainyQuote and ThinkExist is WikiQuote's commitment to accuracy and provenance. Basically,when you search for a quote in WikiQuote, not only do you get the author and text of the quote, you get the date, publication from which it came, and associated links to WikiPedia and other Wiki projects. WikiQuote offers extensive coverage of films, books, TV shows, religious texts. Basically, when you find a quote you like, you have available to you a preponderance of information.
The downside of WikiQuote for a mountain historian? Well, keyword searches for Appalachia, Mountaineer, and moonshine did not yield any better results than competitor sites. Which is to say, not a lot. Still, if you find a topic that is better covered, WikiQuote is the best quote database out there as far as I can tell.
A plate of Risotto. Photo taken by Kobako
Published here under a Creative Commons License
WikiBooks was not as useful for my own research as I had hoped. Keep in mind that I am not giving a blanket thumbs up or thimbs down, but rather evaluating both projects according to mine own and any reader who may be interested in a "MtnHistory" blog.
Unlike GoogleBooks, WikiBooks is a textbook repository meant to dovetail with WikiVersity. This means that, rather than hard to find, out-of-print, and public domain books, WikiBooks only features textbooks. A perusal through the history section yielded precious little for 19th century American history, and nothing at all in 20th and 21st century histories. Nary a book could be found on Appalachia.
However, non-historical texts that caught my eye included the WikiJunior project, particularly the Solar System book. Also Cookbook seemed decent. While it does not offer the eye candy one can find on the web and in foodie blogs, it does offer solid instruction on proper techniques as well as international and historical perspectives on food. If you are interested in a topic that WikiBooks covers, you are free to download copies of books to your local machine for offline reading.
Consider starting your own book(s) on topics of interest- it has to start somewhere, becomes material for your resume, and gives you a nice, single place to build it up. Every article on wikipedia, of the tens of millions, started with something. I've started 2 or 3. It only takes a little, but will improve over time. There might be a couple others like you out there!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea D.I. What platform would you recommend? WikiBooks is only for text books.
ReplyDeleteI also checked out Wikibooks, and I think it just lacks people like us to update it appropriately. I looked at my interests, namely literature, and found less than I expected. I think some professors and teachers out there need to start assigning some projects on this. That would get the job done!
ReplyDelete