Early developments of History Online: Lynn H.Nelson and Donald J.Mabry, 1990-1991

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“As far as I understand, you are suffering from being in advance of your times; you may be fortunate that you haven’t been crucified. You can rely on the fact, however, that you’ve been investing in the future of the profession, and that should become clearer and clearer every year.”

LynnH. Nelson and Donald J.Mabry’s participation to the birth of Digital History on the Web

Donal J. Mabry

My post written in September 2012 to remembering Lynn H. Nelson offered the occasion to meet one of the earlier correspondent of Lynn, Donald J. Mabry, now Emeritus Professor at the Mississippi State University. Don was the creator of the first history FTP (File Transfer Protocol) internet site in 1990 which became later, using the World Wide Web, the Historical Text Archive and is still active today (1990-2013) !

 

Lynn H.Nelson

Creation of a history network of digital historians before the web: “Stuff and Chatter“, an email from Lynn H. Nelson (Kansas University) to Donald J. Mabry (Mississippi State University), the 2nd of September 1991

From @CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU:[email protected] Mon Sep  2 14:20:37 1991
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Date:    Mon, 02 Sep 91 12:10:35 CST
From: “Lynn H. Nelson”
Subject:  Stuff and Chatter.
To: djm1

Hello, Don;

The problem is, of course, to convince the computer illiterate that workingon and with telecommunications is something more than a hobby. Since they arethemselves afraid to admit their own ignorance of anything more than a wordprocessing program, they cannot admit that more sophisticated use has anythingreal to do with scholarship or teaching.  My own strategy has been to give themthings. My chairman had off-handedly given me permission to do whatever Iwanted with technology. He became a convert the day after I told him that I hadgotten a terminal connected in the room next to him and that he had beenreceiving the daily China News Digest for the past two days. I have had tocourt, or, perhaps better, seduce other faculty with the promise of personaltutorials behind locked doors. Now I have gotten their students on line andcan offer to help the faculty to use the system as an aid in directing theirstudents.

How well I am succeeding will be reflected in the assessment of the SalaryBoard. If I canget the Salary Board to make a positive statement about tele-communications, we can use that as an example perhaps to sway other departments. We really won’t get very farunless those people who undertake to learnenough to direct telecommunications development for their departments arerecognized and rewarded. As far as I understand, you are suffering from beingin advance of your times; you may be fortunate that you haven’t been crucified.You can rely on the fact, however, that you’ve been investing in the future ofthe profession, and that that should become clearer and clearer every year.

I would be happy to try to establish some principles of integration, providedyou retain final say.

1. The main instrument of integration should be a single catalogue listing thetexts in ra and malin. Each entry should be separated from those preceding andfollowing by a double hard return. Each should provide a site denominater andaccess number, such as r42, followed by a note as to whether the file iscompressed. It should list the transmission and uncompressed size of the file,the author and title of the piece. When possible, these data should be followedby a short description of the piece containing as many precise terms as possible.

An entry might look like this: m14 zip 10/24K lynn h. nelson lhnelson@ukanvmuses the sources of the “chronicle of san juan de la penya” (1372) to listaragonese and navarrese historicalworks 1103-1200, particularly pedro jimenez de rada, la carta pergamea, and minstrel songs and poems. concludes that native historiography was primarily oral.

Such entries are expandable, can be searched by PC word processor features, andcould be adapted to a more sophisticated search program if the catalogue grewlarge enough. If successful enough, one might secure a grant for some graduatestudent aid in adding abstracts to those items lacking such descriptions.

It is unlikely that a union catalogue will ever get ahead of the RAM capacityof PCs, which is growing constantly. It could easily get beyond the 300K dailytransmission limit, but, by listing in accession order, the catalogue couldbe compiled in 300K sections, and everyone would know that the last cataloguecontained all the new material.

2. All text materials should be ZIPped, and both sites should keep unZIP programs and full explanations available.

Many of the minority of historians presently using telecommunications areunfamiliar with handling compressed files, but their ignorance is of no benefitto them and the use of compressed files would be a great advantage to thegrowth of an FTP network dedicated to the archiving of historical materials.It would allow more rapid transfer of data, the use of larger bundles, and –most important — would be an important consideration in conserving storagestorage space.

3. It would seem most productive to build text collections in accorrdance withIBM standards. I should think that it would be possible to establish a medialsite where MAC users could unZIP their data and from which they could downloadin their normal fashion. In any event, the great majority of users will haveaccess to PCs for sometime in the future, and the trand for the next few yearswill by to produce porgrams to enhance compatability and increase the access ofMACs to PC data.

4. Once our format is established, we should make it our business to encourageothers to establish sites to join the network. Part of this encouragement willderive from example, but it would be a great help if we were to have a step–by-step guide from approaching your institutional computer folk to setting up directories and access. It would help us a great deal if we could have a couple  of more members as soon as possible, so we both might think of some enthusiastic people.

5. The last immediate question is what our relationship to Thomas Zielke andHISTORY should be. Such a venture as we propose needs a base of support, preferrably one in which library and computer personnel are well represented. HISTORYmeets that need as well or better than other lists, and a FTP network might enhance its stature and membership. Since you will be at the head of this enterprise, however, you will need to work closely with Thomas, most particularlysince Thomas might be able to arrange for a couple of European sites to joinus. I should imagine that you would be able to define your relative spheres ofjurisdiction quite easily.

This thing has already gone on far too long. I’ll leave it here for you toconsider during what leisure you have. I will turn my thoughts to how tourn my thought to those people from whom we will want to collect materials.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Lynn

Serge Noiret

I am a public historian, "History Information Specialist" at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. I obtained my Ph.D. in… Read more

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