>> Kathleen McGuigan:
Hello, everyone.
My name is Kathy McGuigan and
I, in the Professional Learning
Outreach Initiatives Office
at the Library of Congress.
And I'd like to welcome you to
this afternoon's session and
thank you for joining us.
I know it's been a long day,
but we have a great program on
innovations with digitized
newspapers, newspaper navigator.
So Chronicling America, a
database of over 16 million
digitized historic newspapers,
is a product of the national
digital newspaper
program itself,
a partnership of the
Library of Congress
and the National Endowment
for the Humanities.
Today, our educator
and residents, Jackie Katz,
will explore the collections,
thousands of digitized
historical newspapers
using an interactive map
and an image search application.
These tools allow the Rich
Chronicling America database to
be searched via time,
location and image.
The session is going
to explore the tools and
highlight innovative ways these
tools can be used in the
classroom. Participants will
have time to explore the
resources and develop
connections between the
collection and
your own classroom.
So we are recording
today's session.
If you choose to participate,
any of your comments or
questions will become part
of the library's collections.
A little bit about Jackie.
She is a high school
science teacher
from Princeton, New Jersey,
and she is serving as this
year's Library of Congress
Albert Einstein Distinguished
Education fellow.
This is a program that's
sponsored by the US Department
of Energy and provides an
opportunity for accomplished
K-12 educators
in the STEM fields
to serve in the national
education arena.
For more, I'll put in the URL
into the chat box.
Jackie has taught
biology and chemistry
at Princeton High School
for the past ten years.
She's built a research program
at the high school based on her
own experience with cell and
developmental biology research.
So I'm proud to hand
things over to Jackie.
>> Jacqueline Katz: Well,
thank you so much, Kathy,
and thank you, everyone, for
joining us for this webinar on
Innovations with
Digitized Newspapers.
I'm very excited to share
some of the things I've been
able to learn while being
a teacher in residence
at the Library of Congress.
But to get us started, I'd love
to know a bit more about where
everyone is tuning in from.
So if you don't mind pasting in
the chat, your name, where
you're from and what you teach,
you're not a teacher.
That's okay too.
Let's just see kind of
who's with us today.
Arkansas. Arizona.
Colorado.
Awesome.
Well, we're-- We got lots
of good representation
from all over the
place. I love it.
Lots of librarians.
Elementary school.
Grad students, former
educator and ESL.
Awesome. Great.
So this is just very helpful to
kind of know who's in the room.
And from what I've worked
with, with Chronicling America
and these innovative tools,
there's a way in for all
different groups of learners.
So I'm excited to to see what
you think of the resources.
So to get us started and
thinking a little bit about what
we're going to be dealing with
today, I want to focus in on
this map that you just saw on
the previous slide and give
everyone a second to make a
prediction about what these blue
dots on this map
might represent.
And it has a little something
to do with what we will be
talking about today.
How many newspapers per
area? Newspapers. Love it.
You guys are spot on.
Sharp even at 4:00
on a Wednesday.
I love it.
So we're going to dig
into exactly what this is
showing us, but we are
definitely on to something.
And today's webinar is, of
course, going to talk a lot
about newspapers.
So we're going to talk briefly
about what is included in
Chronicling America, which is
the database that Kathy gave us
a little brief intro to earlier.
And then we're going to focus
largely on the innovative tools
that exist for searching this
collection, as well as how those
tools can be used to inspire
and answer questions in the
classroom. So if
you're not familiar with
Chronicling America, that's
where we're going to start.
If you're a big chronicling
America fan and you've used it
a million times,
I'm totally with you.
It is like one of my favorite
resources at the library, and it
tends to be my first stop shop
if I'm looking to dive into
a new content area.
So I'm going to walk you
through a little bit of how I
use this tool, specifically how
I used it to plan for this
webinar. So this is the home
page, and like Kathy mentioned,
it is a repository of digitized
newspapers and you might not be
able to see this number in the
top left corner, but there's
about 20 million pages of
newspaper on this site, ranging
from a 1770 to 1963.
And it's keyword searchable,
which is awesome.
So when I was planning for this
webinar, of course, my mind was
going lots of different places.
And since being at the
library, I've been very, very
interested in food and the
story of food and how I can
incorporate that in my biology
and chemistry classroom.
So naturally, what does one
search when you're thinking
about food and you're working
on a webinar in the morning,
you search oatmeal?
So I just started with
a very basic search.
On the search pages bar,
I didn't limit anything.
I looked in all states for the
entire date range available on
Chronicling America, and I
typed in oatmeal and go figure.
Lots of things came up.
Oatmeal is talked about a lot,
specifically in advertisements.
So pretty much all you're
seeing on this page are examples
of advertisements, many of them
for Quaker Oatmeal, which we
might be familiar with.
And I zoned in on this one in
the bottom right corner, mainly
because I've also been really
interested in agriculture and
I'm seeing this nod to
agriculture in the top heading.
So I had to click on it.
So when you click on one
of the search results in
Chronicling America, you
get more information about
what you're looking at.
So I was able to learn that
this particular advertisement
had been posted
on February 26th, 1911,
in the Evening Star,
which was a newspaper
out of Washington, D.C.,
and it was published
from 1854 to 1972.
So there was a lot of editions
of The Evening Star, and if I
wanted more information, I
could click the hyperlink in the
heading and read more about,
you know, the publishers and,
and the area that it was
distributed in, and
lots of good stuff. For
this particular project,
I didn't go down too deep
of a rabbit hole there,
but you definitely could.
So as I was reading
through this advertisement,
I was pretty interested
because there's a lot
of text on it and there were a
lot of interesting claims being
made, and we're going to share
this advertisement with you
to get a closer look at.
But for now, just know I
was very intrigued and I wanted
to know more. I wanted to know
if this was a typical type of
advertisement that was posted
for Oatmeal in the Evening Star.
So it's at this point that I
toggled over and use the
advanced search feature.
And I now wanted to search
specifically the Evening Star
newspaper. So this box of
selected newspapers has 3000
plus newspapers in it.
So if you're just doing a basic
search, you're searching
all of those newspapers.
But what I wanted to do was
look specifically for the
Evening Star, and I
was interested in seeing
advertisements that were
published between 1950 and 1963.
So I was able to limit the
dates, which is something
I didn't do in the
original search.
Right. The original
search was like
no holds barred, 1770 to 1963.
Now, I was getting a
little bit more specific.
Okay. And we're going to see
what this search turned up in
about a second. But I do want
to go back to that original
1911 ad that really
piqued my interest.
And I want to give you a little
bit of time to explore it.
So we're going to drop a PDF in
the chat that will help you zoom
in or you're welcome to kind of
explore the image on your
screen. But as you're taking a
look at this, I'd like you to
answer the question. Would you
purchase Quaker Oats?
Why or why not?
So give it a quick read over.
You might be pretty interested
by some of the things that are
being said. And then when you
feel ready, you can just type
your answer to this
question in the chat.
I love that. Who
wouldn't want to?
The good liver part was the one
that really struck me.
I was like, What
great advertising?
Good for the whole family.
Love it.
The bodybuilder. An
energy giving food.
Right? Definitely long by
current standards.
Good observation.
There you go.
I want the brawn and height I
was supposed to have gotten.
Right. There are so many great
lines in this advertisement
to suck you in, right?
So this was the first
advertisement that really,
really grabbed my attention.
And this was the one from 1911.
Brain worker? Yes.
It's very wordy, right?
But once you dig into it,
you're kind of hooked.
Right. And I was so...
intrigued to know, like
many of you are recognizing like
was this wordiness common?
Did it last for a long time?
Right. Was this a standard for
advertisements?
If so, like how long was this
a standard for advertisements?
Because I don't know about you.
These are not the
ads I see today.
So that's why I kind of went to
that advanced search feature and
looked for ads from the 1950s
and the ad that came up for the
night or one of the ads
that came up was this one.
So this is also in your PDF.
I'd like for you to take a
moment to look at this ad from
1959, again published
in The Evening Star.
You might definitely be
noticing some differences and
we'll dig into that, but I'll
be curious to know when you look
at this advertisement.
Does your opinion change?
Right. Many people were ready
to go out and buy some oatmeal
with the last advertisement.
Does this, you know, confirm
your opinion or does this make
you want to change
your mind in any way?
I do love that quote
about 12,000 physicians.
And we found that 4/5 of
regular oatmeal users.
Great. Thank you for dropping.
>> Kathleen McGuigan: This
is Kathy. I'm just going to
interrupt in the-- 
I just checked the PDF.
The full image did
not come through,
at least on the PDF
that I was looking at.
So I just put the URL into the
page specific to this item.
>> Jacqueline Katz: Awesome.
Thank you so much, Kathy.
Good point about
the lack of color.
The peaches don't look as
appealing as they could.
Cool.
Awesome. Thanks.
I agree. It still makes
me a little hungry.
It looks pretty good.
It seems like
they were way ahead
of the overnight oats trend
because it has like the Mason
jar situation going for it.
Variety is the spice of life.
I love it.
Good point. Right?
If you don't like peaches,
you might not be so
inclined to buy this oatmeal.
I love it.
Great. So, again, this is
something I would do with my
students, right? I'd take them
through the first advertisement
and then move on to the second
and then perhaps put them side
by side and ask them what they
notice and what they wonder
about these two advertisements.
And I have a feeling like we've
been talking about through the
chat, that some of the things
we've been observing might also
come up with the students.
So I want to give you a second.
Now that you're looking at
these advertisements side by
side, do you have any
noticings or wonderings
that you'd want to dig into?
Right. One is text heavy
and one has a huge photo.
Why?
Ah, this is a good point.
Like were these
fantastical claims?
Did regulations come into play?
Oh, interesting point, Annette,
that they say they're healthy,
but and they look appealing.
But there's way less
kind of support for that.
Oh, good question about the
printing technology.
Oh. Did the 1911
strategy stop working?
People's attention
span was shrinking.
Yeah. When did people
have to cite these claims?
As a science teacher
that's definitely something
that I would dig
into with my students.
Cool.
When did they switch from
illustrations to photographs?
That's a good question.
All the work that goes into
kind of taking photos of food
is pretty astonishing.
Right. Did it have something to
do with just the technology?
What happened to literacy rates?
I love that question.
Right. So there are so many
different directions you could
take this activity based on
what you're teaching
that particular day.
So we have many questions in
the chat that would be really
interesting and fruitful.
And I just came up with some
that I thought might pop up
amongst my biology students,
which are mostly high school
freshmen digging into
the scientific content.
Is it accurate, this idea of
fantastical claims and who was
sort of regulating that?
How has our understanding of
nutrition changed?
Are the things
they were claiming
in 1911 anywhere near true?
Did we think they were then?
What sort of
evidence did we have?
Did the political or social
climate of the time
affect the advertisement?
Were these advertisements
viewed by people
across the country?
We are looking at
what Washington,
D.C., Evening Star.
Was that a standard for
the entirety of the U.S.?
And then this was something
that came up when I showed the
ads to students while
prepping for this.
They were like, Why is the
mascot for Quaker Oats?
That mascot. Like,
what were they--
What was the company thinking?
Which I thought was an
interesting question.
So the questions you've placed
in the chat as well as some of
these questions can be answered
if we dive into the innovative
tools available at the library.
So that's what we're going
to focus on and the innovative
tools we're going to start to
look at right now I think are
really going to lend themselves
to this question of were these
advertisements viewed by
people across the country?
But they could
also lend themselves
to a lot of the questions
you've pasted in the chat.
So. If you visit the
Chronicling America Home page,
you can get, of course, very
distracted with the search
feature and go down
many rabbit holes.
But you may miss this link for
maps and visualizations on the
side panel. And it's these maps
and visualizations that can be
incredibly useful in answering
these innovative questions that
you and your
students come up with.
So if I click on this tab for
maps and visualizations, one of
the maps I'm going to see
is that map we saw at the
beginning, which people
accurately predicted shows
the distribution of newspapers
across the country.
And each blue dot is a
different publication.
And I just want to point out
that the screen grab I have
right now are publications just
between January 15th, 1911 and
January 15th, 1912.
So you can restrict this
visualization by date.
So I was interested in
digging into that first
advertisement and trying to see
if it was similar
across the country.
So I looked at all the
newspapers published across the
country in the year of 1911,
and since my first ad was from
Washington D.C., I was like,
all right, let me think about
another big urban area.
And I settled in on New York.
So I clicked on one of the blue
dots in New York, and I found
out that in 1911, The New
York Tribune was also being
published, and I could
have kept looking at other
publications using the toggle
arrows in the right corner of
this pop out box.
But I settled on starting with
the New York Tribune.
So I went back to my
Chronicling America Home page
again, use the
advanced Search feature.
But instead of the Evening Star,
I went for the New York Tribune
and I again searched
oatmeal and I found our same
good old ad telling us about
the the benefits for your liver
if you eat Quaker oats.
I also found an additional ad,
equally wordy, slightly
different text, but there was
definitely some overlap
between the two. So...
Perhaps I would have my
students dig into similarities
and differences.
Perhaps they could dig into the
populations in New York and
Washington. How did they
compare and how did they
contrast? So this was just one
way to use an innovative tool to
help answer one of my
innovative questions.
Right. Were these
advertisements viewed by people
across the country?
I could dive deeper into this
question with a similar tool.
Another visualization.
And this particular
visualization shows ethnic press
coverage across the U.S.
between 1609 and 1963.
So if my question is, was this
viewed by all people, it's not
only a geographic thing, but
different communities are going
to gravitate towards different
newspapers, even if they live in
the same geographic area.
So this second data
visualization is a way to dig
into this question of all
people a little bit more
with your students.
So when I went down my
particular rabbit hole, I was
curious to know about
publications that were geared
towards Latin
American art audiences.
So I clicked on Latin American
in the toggle bar here and
limited my bubble map.
And basically the size of the
bubble represents the number of
issues that were published for
that particular newspaper.
So again, because I was just
kind of testing out the waters,
I searched this newspaper
in Texas to see what sort of
oatmeal advertisements existed
there, and the newspaper was
called La Prensa.
So when I went back to my
advanced search and looked
specifically in this newspaper
and searched for oatmeal,
I found zero Quaker oatmeal
advertisements, which I thought
was interesting and could
prompt a lot of interesting
conversations with my students.
I actually saw very little
conversation related to oatmeal.
So...
Basically, the one thing
I did find was this
oatmeal biscuits
recipe that did pop up.
But of course I would need to
do further digging to see if
Quaker really wasn't
advertising in these papers.
I would definitely
need more evidence
before I could make a claim.
So again, these data and
visualizations which are linked
to right on the chronicling
America Home page are very
useful tools to help you answer
these innovative questions that
students might come up with,
and they themselves are
innovative ways to view
historic collections.
Right? This is not some card
catalog of historic newspapers,
right? This is taking that
information and visualizing it
in a different way so that you
can answer and even ask
different questions, which I
think is really cool and really
powerful. And it will help
students see that there is this
cross talk between, you know,
history and historical documents
and computer science and data
and how we look at these things.
So I think besides giving us a
lot of content to discuss in the
classroom, it's
exposing students
to different tools that
exist to explore the world,
which is super cool.
So we have some
innovative questions.
We've looked at a few
innovative tools, and now we're
going to look at another
innovative tool to help us
address a different question.
And the next tool that we're
going to look at is actually the
product of a cool division at
the library that you may or may
not have heard of
before, called LC Labs.
And I'm not sure if Eileen
has joined the call yet.
But she is a member of LC
Labs who has helped me to
explore a lot of the cool tools
that come out of this division.
And basically, LC Labs is kind
of an incubator, and it's an
incubator that tests different
tools that can be used to help
the public interact
with the collections
at the Library of Congress.
And one way they do this is by
harnessing expertise
from all over.
And one program is the
Innovators in Residence program,
where very skilled humans in
the world of technology and also
in the world of history come to
the library and dream up
cool ways to visualize...
the collections.
And one product of the
Innovators in Residence program
is this tool we're going to
look at now, which is called
Newspaper Navigator, and it was
created by the 2022 innovator in
residence, Benjamin
Charles, Jermaine Lee.
And I think he's actually
on the call today.
So when these technical
questions come up that I cannot
answer, perhaps he would
chime in and tell us
some of the backstory here.
But Newspaper Navigator is a
really cool tool that lets you
search the images
from the newspapers
in Chronicling America.
So instead of focusing in
on the text, you could focus
in on the images.
And that could be really,
really useful, especially if
you're working with
younger students.
And some of the text in a
newspaper article might be
challenging for them.
So this could be a cool kind of
first stop shop to bring in some
primary sources that are
accessible for younger learners
or non readers or whatever
population you're dealing with
in your classrooms or
learning environments.
So just to kind of go back to
our questions list here of
possible questions we might ask
with this specific innovative
tool, I think it would be
really cool to explore this
question about why was this
particular mascot chosen?
Right. And if you're not
familiar with the mascot of
Quaker Oats, this is
what he looks like.
He's looked this way for quite
some time because this picture
was pulled from an early 1900s.
Advertisement.
And if you have seen any Quaker
products recently, you know,
he's pretty much
stood the test of time.
So I was curious
to know, like was...
Was this advertisement the
product of seeing a similar type
of image associated with
Quaker individuals in the press.
This was the question
I wanted to know, right?
Was this an easy link to images
people had been seeing and
associating with groups of
humans that identify as Quakers?
So this is where Newspaper
Navigator was like the perfect
tool to use.
So I went to the search page on
Newspaper Navigator, and
when you first log in to
Newspaper Navigator, again,
like Kathy mentioned
in the chat,
we're going to share
these slides with you.
And Newspaper
Navigator is linked.
It is also on the left hand bar
of the Chronicling America page,
if you want to go
directly from there.
And when you open up the site,
you can watch a very helpful
video that explains to you a
bit about how this was created
and how it can be used.
But I'm going to walk you
through my process of using it
for this particular question.
So what I did was I went to the
search bar and again, without
limiting anything, I searched
in all locations
from 1900 to 1963,
which is the data set that
this particular tool pulls from.
I searched Quakers.
And a whole bunch of images
populate in my screen.
And these images were basically
identified because the captions
associated with them
mentioned Quakers.
So some of these images might
be in the wheelhouse of what I'm
looking for. But if the word
Quaker was used in any other
context, rather than just
describing the group of
individuals who prescribe to
this particular religion or
group, it might not be
what I'm looking for.
So what I started to do was scan
the images and get more
information about them, because
if you click on the image,
you can select to get more
information and I can find out
what date this image was
published, the paper it was in.
And I can also get the
caption from the image.
Sometimes when the software
sort of transcribes the text
from the original caption, some
wording weirdness happens.
But you can still see
that this Dr. Powell
was born of Quaker credentials.
So this seemed like an image
that was in line with what I was
looking for. Right.
What were the visual cues
people were seeing at the time
that could have
inspired the mascot?
And of course, I could have
gotten way more information
by seeing the full
issue or learning about
the Saint Louis Republic.
Something I love for
my students is this
site this button, because it
not only helps them realize
how to site images, it reminds
them that that's something
they should be doing. So that's
a really, really cool tool.
So what I can also do with this
newspaper navigator software is
add images to my collection.
So you see right now that this
has the red box around it with
this little star
that's telling me
I've added it to my collection
and I can continue to sift
through the search results
and find things that are in
line with what I'm looking for.
Another awesome feature of this
that I find super helpful as a
content teacher who has now
been kind of tasked with
infusing computer science into
my classroom is the fact that
there's this tab called
Train My AI Navigator.
So. I live in a state and teach
in a state currently where
computer science is a hot
ticket item and it's important
for our kids to become
familiar with it.
And sometimes I'm grasping at
straws for how to infuse that
into my classroom.
And I know sometimes colleagues
have a similar sort of wariness,
but this is one awesome way
because if you click on this
Train My Navigator, you get a
little behind the scenes of how
this tool is actually working
and how an algorithm essentially
works in a search
engine like this.
So basically what you get to do
in this tab is tell the program
that's doing the searching what
you are in fact looking for and
what you're not looking for.
So basically what I was able to
do is say these pictures of
individuals who are actually
Quakers are what I am looking
for. I put them in the positive
box and then I go through some
of my search results and find
things that I wasn't really
looking for, like this
picture of a globe.
There were some like
architectural pictures that were
not really what I was
intending, and it just kind of
got looped in because of what
the caption was saying.
So now basically what I'm doing
is I'm saying,
"Hey, search tool,
I want pictures that look like
these things in the top,
but not things in the bottom."
And then I can click
Train My Navigator.
And what I'll see happen is that
my results become more of like
what I was expecting
or hoping for.
So now the tool is not only
searching the captions, it's
searching for visual
similarities between the things
in my positive box and the
things in its data set
that it's pulling from.
And like what a cool
conversation to have with
your students about what's
going on under the hood when
they're searching online and
they can actually see what
happens to their search results
as they train their navigator.
And they could do
this multiple times.
They could add more and
more pictures to the plus
and the minus box.
And I think that's so cool.
And I think a whole host of
questions about the nature of
the search tool itself might
emerge in the classroom.
Right. Regardless of the fact
that we were trying this to
answer this, why was the mascot
chosen for Quaker Oats?
Right. Now, we're dealing with a
whole other piece of complexity,
but again, super user friendly.
So once I trained my navigator
a few times, I pulled up a few
images and I was able to
download them directly from
Newspaper Navigator, and I put
them up next to my Quaker Oats
man. And I would now have my
students think about this
question. Why was this mascot
chosen for Quaker Oats?
And they might point
out some similarities.
They might point out some
exaggerations.
In the advertisement, we might
be able to tap into, you know.
Ideas about bias or, you know,
certain things that could have
led to certain visual
appearances in the
advertisement. And I think it's
a whole another level of
conversation to be had in my
biology class that could be
really engaging for students
and really help them pick up
those media literacy skills
that are incredibly
important as well. Right.
So we're exploring lots of
different things by interacting
with these innovative tools
that are available through the
Library of Congress, right.
The data visualizations,
Newspaper Navigator.
So I really think there's a lot
of different directions
you could take this program.
Now. So those are just kind of
a few ideas that I had to go
down this oatmeal rabbit hole.
But like you all suggested
before, there are many other
questions that can be asked by
you, the teacher, or questions
that might come up
from the students.
So there's just a few
more here on the screen.
So how has the information
surrounding a historical event
changed over several days?
How have events, individuals or
groups been viewed through
different perspectives?
What was everyday life
like during the time of
a certain historic event?
What biases exist in the
coverage of an event?
And how have advertisements
changed over time?
Which is really kind
of where I dug in today.
But I'd like to kind of
pause for a second.
I know several people launched
some possible questions before,
but I'd love to know if there's
anything you would potentially
add to this list.
Now that you know about
these tools, right?
So you know that the map of the
historic newspaper exists.
You know that the map of the
newspapers tailored to different
ethnic groups exists.
You know that
Newspaper Navigator exists.
Would you add any additional
questions to this list
by knowing that those
tools are possible?
We give everyone a
second to think about it.
Oh, how you
corroborate the claims
made by historical newspapers?
I love that.
It might even be interesting to
see, like, can you find support
across multiple newspapers?
Right. If you look at coverage
across multiple places, are they
telling the same story?
Does training the AI Navigator
give it biases
in later searches?
Well, that's an
interesting question.
Ben, I don't know if you're
still out there and if you have
an answer to that one.
>> Benjamin Lee: Yeah,
that's a great question.
Let me go ahead and pull it up.
So my understanding and sorry,
actually, I realize I've lost
the question in the chain.
Jackie, would you
mind repeating it?
>> Jacqueline Katz:
Sure. It says,
does training the AI Navigator
give it biases
in later searches?
>> Benjamin Lee:
That's a great question.
So the way we've designed it is
try to keep it fairly enclosed.
And sorry, I can
turn my camera on too.
Hi, everyone. Keep it in closed
so that basically when you're
doing one round of training,
it's pretty isolated to the
specific topic. So in this
case, for Quaker individually,
and then you can actually click
a button to add a new navigator
and start effectively
a separate search.
So hopefully these are
sort of disentangled.
But if there are any specific
use cases, I'm more than happy
to talk about them in detail.
>> Jacqueline Katz:
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Oh, I love this question about
how has the vocabulary used to
describe different groups of
people, events or ideas changed
over time or by region?
Awesome.
Oh, good to look
specifically in your state.
I love that. A
place based question.
Right. Are there regional
differences in the portrayal?
These are all awesome,
awesome questions.
And just to point out a few
more resources that might help
you address these
questions, right?
This question about like, are
there regional differences for a
specific-- for coverage
of a specific event?
There are some tools,
additional tools that we haven't
focused on today that exist to
help you and your students
answer those questions.
And one I definitely want to
point out are the research,
the recommended topics guides
that exist on
Chronicling America.
So again, if you're on the Home
page in the left hand bar,
you'll see recommended topics
and what you can find there
is a list of topics, right?
So the 16th Amendment or a
specific presidential election.
And what will happen is if you
click on these topics, you'll
get a whole range of
articles about them.
So you can do those comparative
type studies from these
recommended topic compilations.
Or you could go back
to the visualizations
we were looking at and create
your own compilations, right?
It could be a really
interesting question to ask
students of like, do you think
there's other important articles
that should be added
to these compilations?
Which articles would
they have chosen to add here?
Could be a very interesting sort
of activity to work
on as a class.
And then these questions
about different perspectives,
which I love, are really,
really important ones to
recognize because any sort of
communication, it's important to
realize what audience
it is tailored for.
So there have been recently two
really useful blog posts about
using Chronicling America to
search for different target
audiences, specifically African
American newspapers as well as
Native American newspapers.
So really great resources.
Again, when we give you this
PDF, you'll have access to all
these links, which
will be really cool.
And thank you. Kathy is
dropping some of those important
links in the chat.
So like, I think most of
you are recognizing. Lots of
innovative questions can come
out of using these innovative
tools yourself or introducing
these innovative tools to
students. Because as a high
school teacher, I'm just excited
by the questions that the kids
would ask as they're interacting
with these very innovative
representations of historic
collections, which
is really very cool.
So I do want to give
a little bit more time.
I know we were able to squeeze
in that one question and
and Ben was awesome enough
to give us that answer.
But I do want to open up the
floor to any other questions.
If you have questions about any
of the tools we talked about,
any of the teaching ideas, feel
free to drop those in the chat
and we could try to
get you some answers
before we wrap up for today.
>> Kathleen McGuigan: Or if
you prefer, you can unmute.
We have an intimate
enough group.
If you don't feel
like typing it all out,
please feel free to unmute.
>> Jacqueline Katz:
Oh, good question.
So now we have a question
from Jennifer in the chat.
I'm curious about
your experience
reading image captions.
How hard were they to read
and how well did the OCR work?
So from a user standpoint,
for the most part
I was able to...
Get what I needed out
of the meaning of it.
And by being able to link back
to the newspaper itself, I could
then get a better, sort of
grasp on it without any of the
extraneous text.
I don't know, Ben, if you're
still out there and care
to kind of give us a little bit
more insight about like that.
OCR on the caption.
>> Benjamin Lee: Definitely.
It's a great question, Jennifer.
Thank you. I would say
that the OCR, it actually varies
quite a bit depending on what
specific newspaper you might be
looking at. And this has to do
with the long history of how
these various newspaper titles
were accessioned and which state
level partner ended up
digitizing them, and also to
what extent the OCR engine is
familiar with the language and
all of these factors.
But I would say that doing
a sort of keyword search and
clicking through some example
images, it becomes pretty clear
which titles or which time
periods tend to perform
better than others.
>> Jacqueline Katz:
Thank you.
While we wait to see if there's
any more questions in the chat,
I just want to point
out one more thing.
We were very lucky
to have Ben to kind of
give us a little
bit more insight.
But when you do get these
slides shared with you, I do
have a few different resources
to help you learn a little bit
more about the Newspaper
Navigator tool, especially if
perhaps you're a computer
science teacher.
There's lots of open source
information about how something
like this can be created.
And I'm thinking some of our
tech savvy students might be
particularly interested in
learning more about this.
Awesome. Thank
you. So let's see.
We got another
question in the chat.
Are there previous talks or
resources on helping students to
complete independent historical
research projects?
How would you leverage the
existing tools for that?
Well, these are great
questions. Kathy,
I'm not sure if you might have
more knowledge of if there's any
previous tools on
the LOC's website
that might be useful here.
>> Kathleen McGuigan: So yeah,
I'll put a link in the chat
to the recordings
from our past webinars.
I don't think there's something
as specific to science research,
but certainly there are plenty
of resources to take a look at
using primary sources for
historical research so that can
be expanded to all of the the
topics, but I'll put that link
to the recordings in the chat.
>> Jacqueline Katz:
Thank you, Kathy.
Awesome. And I mean,
I just think--
I work with high
school students.
If I were going to kind of
unleash them on these tools,
I do think chronicling is a
great place for this to start,
because sometimes
loc.gov in general
can be a bit overwhelming
for adults.
Not even students.
So I think that this is a great
place to start, especially
some of those recommended
topics might be a good place
to start the research process
that's not too open ended where
students can start to explore
and build out their questions.
Might be a pretty cool place to
start with students and just
kind of see where it goes.
But I think that might
be a manageable spot.
Awesome. Oh, and
a net great plug.
This is an excellent point.
The data that was used to
to build Newspaper Navigator
is available. So
if your students...
were computer programming
savvy and wanted to see what
they could do with those
data sets themselves,
those collections of images
from historic newspapers.
They are definitely available.
Awesome.
Cool.
>> Kathleen McGuigan: And
in case anybody missed it
in the chats, I
placed the slides
from today's presentation.
So if you didn't get a copy of
it, you might want to scroll up
in the chat.
>> Jacqueline Katz:
Thank you, Kathy.
But of course I will hang on...
If there's any additional
questions that might come up,
but I really do thank you for
joining us and all the great
conversation. I'm definitely
saving all of these questions
that were populated in the chat
because I think they're
so interesting and I'm
very curious to see...
How students might
interact with them.
Oh, awesome. Thank you, Eileen.
>> Kathleen McGuigan: Jackie,
thank you for a great program
and thank you all
for attending today.
I will be sending out an email
later this week
with a recording.
It will be the
unofficial recording
and you will get
an update on that.
And we'll stay on for
a few more minutes,
but we'll end the recording now.
Thank you so much
for joining us.
>> Jacqueline Katz:
Thank you.