Getting Ready for State

The regional contest season kicks off this weekend, which means that next week students and teachers will start registering for state. This year the state competition is Saturday, May 1 at Bellevue College. We're excited about this new location--it's a centrally located, easily navigable, compact campus, and the History Department is enthusiastically sponsoring the event.

But before you can get there, you have to register, and this year, we've moved to online registration for state (next year, regional contestants will register online, too). Registering online will allow you to choose your meal options, pre-order a 2010 History Day t-shirt, apply for special awards, and more. Go to our contests page, scroll down to "State," and read the information before you begin registering.

Please note that teachers must register before their students! For everyone, though, the process is the same: you'll create an account, choose a username and password, and be guided through the steps to register. As always, if you get stuck, contact us at historyday@wshs.wa.gov or 360-586-0165.

Oh, and once you're done registering? Get back to work revising your project!

Brief Credit or Full Bibliographic Citation? How to Choose, How to Use

Some colleagues and I have been talking about the correct way to use citations and credits in History Day projects. Particularly sticky, it seems to us, is selecting the correct form to use in a specific part of your project. In this regard, documentaries, web sites and exhibits cause the most hand-wringing among students, and the most aggravation among judges. So here goes.

Let's explore the concepts. The NHD Rule Book talks about using "brief citations, "credits," "full bibliographic citations," and "proper credit," for starters. It would be helpful, perhaps, to use one term to mean full bibliographic citations (the kind you use in your bibliography that help other researchers locate sources you used) and another term to mean brief credits, or what you use to indicate how viewers can find the full citation. So that's what I'm going to call them: full bibliographic citations and brief credits. The latter is essentially an abbreviated version of the former and helps viewers figure out where to look in the bibliography.

The question is what concept should be applied at what point in the project. In a documentary, for example, those brief credits should appear throughout, whenever you use something from another source. This includes pictures, film, art, slides, interviews, etc. Let's say you have an interview clip with Bill Gates as part of your documentary. When he appears onscreen, text that identifies him should appear at the same time: Bill Gates, CEO, Gates Foundation (or something like that). And that brief credit needs to be visible long enough to be able to read the whole thing. In the bibliography, I'd expect to find a full bibliographic citation of a personal interview with Bill Gates.

(Documentaries have the added requirement of a general credit list that rolls at the end of the piece. These often zip by so fast that they're impossible to read, a victim of students' desire to get the most out of their 10 minutes. But they really need to meet the same standard: displayed long enough to be readable by your average viewer. See Rule 6 [page 19 in the NHD Rule Book, rev. 2009/2010] for this category for further explanation.)

You need only display enough information in the brief credit to allow viewers to find the source in your bibliography. Or, put another way, you have to display at least enough information in the brief credit that viewers can find the full bibliographic citation in your bibliography.

Similar rules apply for exhibits. In the actual exhibit, a full bibliographic citation would be confusing, wordy and distracting. But you have to give brief credit for images, timelines, quotes, etc., so viewers know where to find the sources in the bibliography. So if you use an image of Chief Seattle that you obtained from the digital image collection of the Washington State Historical Society, I would expect a brief credit that reads something like, "Chief Seattle, courtesy of Washington State Historical Society" (providers of such sources often required specific credit language, so keep your eyes open for that). And then I would expect to be able to go to the bibliography and find the full bibliographic citation for that image. (You could also, it's worth noting, give the brief credit in the image caption; e.g. "This image of Chief Seattle from the Washington State Historical Society shows the dress typical of Duwamish leaders in the mid-19th century.")

And how about websites? Same rule applies. Let's say you use a video clip showing Thomas Edison working on the light bulb in his lab. Users have to click to view the video, so I'd include the brief credit right at that spot: "Click here to view Thomas Edison at work in his lab, courtesy of the Thomas Edison Museum and Archives." And--you know what's coming--I'd then expect to be able to click the bibliography page and easily locate the full bibliographic citation for that video clip.

So this comes down to parsing the sometimes confusing terminology employed in the NHD Rule Book, and--more importantly--thinking logically about what information will help your viewers. To my mind, that means brief credits during the documentary, on the exhibit board, and throughout the web site, with full bibliographic citations available in the bibliography.

It's easy to get hung up on how a brief credit looks, so think about how you--a bona fide historical researcher--would like to see it if you were using the project as a source. In other words, think like an historian. It'll help you navigate the brief credit vs. full bibliographic citation maze. Let me know how you make out.

Web Sites: How to Avoid Trauma and Triage

Regional contest deadlines are rolling by, and I'm happy to see dozens of web site entries on a dizzying variety of topics.

I'm not so happy, though, when I get a web site URL that has problems. Here are the two biggest issues we're seeing:

1) The web site was not constructed at the NHD Weebly Portal. A number of students have gone to weebly.com directly, set up an account, and created a web site. They're lovely, they're interesting, but they're not rules-compliant. How can I tell? The sites constructed through the NHD Weebly Portal all have numeric URLs, something like http://12345678.nhd.weebly.com.

If your site has a descriptive name--http://laurenssite.nhd.weebly.com--you didn't go through the portal. In which case I have good news and bad news for you.

The good news is that it's not too difficult to reconstruct your site at the NHD Weebly Portal. Go to www.nhd.org, and click on "Start Your Web Site Entry at the NHD Web Portal." This is the only way to create an NHD web site. Really.

The bad news is that you have to recreate your site from scratch. Regular Weebly sites can't be copied over to the NHD Weebly Portal. I've heard from students in this predicament, though, that reconstructing their sites wasn't too bad.

So double-check: look at your web site URL. If it's numeric, you're probably safe (read number 2 below to be sure). If it's not, create a new account at the NHD Weebly Portal and reconstruct your site there. It's the only way your site can get evaluated by judges.

2) Sites aren't published. When you create your web site using the NHD Weebly Portal, you spend lots of time constructing it. When you're ready to take a break, you click in the upper right corner of the screen: either "Publish" or "Close." You must publish the site in order for it to be viewable (by your teachers, your friends, History Day judges). Publishing saves your work, too.

So don't just close your site when you're done working on it; publish it! And don't worry: the numeric URLs that identify NHD sites mean that it's highly unlikely anyone will stumble across yours.

Let's review: Your eight-word mantra for web sites is, Use the NHD Portal and publish your site. Now go check that you're doing it right!

Designing Exhibits: Telling a Story Visually

Exhibits are one of the most popular History Day categories. According to the NHD Rule Book, the standard is a museum-quality exhibit. But what does that mean, exactly?

Think about the last time you visited a museum. When you enter an exhibit, you should immediately see its title—that tells you what the exhibit is about (the topic). There is often a panel of text under the title that explains what the exhibit hopes to convey, and perhaps even what it hopes viewers will learn—this is the equivalent of its thesis. They tell viewers what to expect as they enter the gallery.

Exhibits are often divided into easily navigable parts. Once viewers read the title and introductory text, they will begin to walk through the gallery. It's crucial that the internal logic of the exhibit is evident, and that it's easy for viewers to find their way through it.

So, for example, let's say you're visiting an exhibit about national parks in Washington State. The title is "Washington's Crown Jewels," and the introductory panel tells you that the three big parks in Washington were created in different eras and represent different views about the environment. By understanding the forces that shaped each park, we can learn how environmental philosophies have changed over time (thesis).

You might reasonably expect a three-part exhibit, with sections on Mount Rainier, Olympic and North Cascades national parks (main ideas). And within each section, you might reasonably expect to see the story of each park divided into nearly identical subsections: perhaps something like "Creating the Park," "Environmental Viewpoints," "Political Realities," and "Lessons from the Park." At the end, when you are about to leave the gallery, there is likely to be a panel or two that summarizes what you've seen and discusses its importance—this is the conclusion, and it must focus on the historical significance of the topic.

The parallels to the three-panel History Day exhibit are apparent. Exhibit designers carefully consider everything that could potentially be included in the exhibit, and they must be strict about excluding anything that doesn't relate directly to the exhibit's main idea or thesis. It confuses the viewer and muddies the message. That goes for not just panel text, but captions, labels, images and artifacts. It's tempting to include a fact or image that is just really cool, but if it doesn't clearly connect to the thesis, pitch it. (It's hard, I know.)

As you get ready to put your History Day exhibit together, keep these design tips, courtesy of Ohio History Day, in mind:

• Spacing: Think about negative space (blank areas on the board). Is it even? Is there enough?
  
• Image selection: Choose visually interesting images and make sure they help advance the story you are telling.
  
• Labels: Keep them short, sweet, and simple. Write them to be read aloud.
  
• Interaction: Think of ways to keep your audience actively engaged in your exhibit: puzzles, flip ups, etc.
  
• Quotes: Think about the length and interest of the quotes you choose. Think about which ones best illustrate your thesis. Think about holding the viewer's interest—are they really going to stand there and read thirty long quotes?
  
• Creativity- Have fun! Think of different ways you can use the board to support your main idea.
  
• Fonts: Choose fonts that are easy to read, and make sure they are large enough. If you are reducing font size to fit more on your board, you've probably got too much on there. Review content and eliminate accordingly.
  

We've got some helpful worksheets about exhibits on our website—check them out!