The project is under certain time constraints, meaning that it will have to be completed by the end of the summer. Fortunately, the plan is to build a multi-component site that will include both a static exhibit space and an ongoing, in-progress blog: it will be transparent about the fact that the research is still incomplete. Our objective as researchers and museum professionals is to provide an ongoing commentary on how historical archaeological research is conducted, and how we draw the conclusions that we do from material and historical documents. This is an approach that I have tried to take in all of my digital engagement pursuits, but this will finally provide a dedicated space for that to happen with the dissertation project.

Most importantly, however, is that HSMC is using this site as an opportunity to begin working with the local community. We are currently engaged in establishing these relationships and working on a process by which we can make the site a collaborative effort. I imagine that for the initial launch, due to the time constraints, community involvement will be in a more advisory capacity. However, because it is a website, the exhibit and the way it is used can be changed, added to, and modified to meet the needs of the public. I hope that this digital space will be used as a resource for the African American community in a number of ways, and that it helps to build stronger relationships between the museum and the community.

At any rate, stay tuned for more updates on this project as it begins to unfold. I am very excited about its possibilities and to begin working on it!

The software itself, however, comes with some limitations: namely, that walking around an object at the perfect speed, and hold your iPhone at the same height and angle is not easy. So, Arqball is in the process of raising capital through Kickstarter to build turntables, which they call a “stage” (see below). By placing the object on the stage and flipping the switch, the object rotates at the optimal speed for Arqball Spin to capture the object from all angles. The iPhone sits alone, on a tripod (I’d recommend picking up a Glif, too), and doesn’t move. The friendly folks at Arqball overnighted me one of their prototypes, and I spent the weekend at Historic St. Mary’s City making “Spins” of various objects from the lab. In short, I think this is a great tool, that archaeologists will find useful, both from analytical and cultural heritage perspectives.

The free app currently only works on the iPhone, although I am assured that an Android version will roll out sooner rather than later. Also, they are working on a way to make the software compatible with DSLR cameras that have video capability. The app itself is easy to use, and the process of creating a spin is quick: set the object up on the turntable, align your iPhone on the tripod, flip the switch, and hit the record button. It takes a few minutes, and then presto, you have a spin. You can then share the spin on all your favorite social services. You do want to make sure you provide a background that is the same color as the stage: in most cases this is white, but you can place a flat surface on top of the stage that matches the background, in case you want to go with black or orange or whatever. Currently within the app, you can zoom in and move the image and add a title and notes to the image. You can also immediately share the image on all your favorite social media sites.

The spins are housed on Arqball’s own system. Rest assured, you maintain rights to the product. Spins can be spun on iPhones and iPads with your finger, or on the web with your cursor. You can also embed these spins in websites (as demonstrated below), making them a great tool for digital engagement purposes. Storage is free for 25 uploaded spins, although you can capture as many as you like on your phone, or $4.95 a month for unlimited share spins: an negligible fee when compared to the overall costs of 3D technology. They also offer custom enterprising plans, which may be ideal for some of you museums out there.

The turntable is a fairly simple product. About 3 inches tall and five inches in diameter, it is made of durable materials. While I wouldn’t drop it, I would be fine carrying it in a bag in the field. Since mine was a prototype, it didn’t have a bottom. It runs on 5 AA batteries, meaning it is a portable device. It has a tiny on-off switch, and the speed is calibrated for the optimal picture. My only concern regarding durability is the switch: it sticks out, and I imagine it could snap off easily. Otherwise, it seems like a sturdy piece of equipment.

I used the turntable on a number of artifacts at the labs at Historic St. Mary’s City. We started off simple, with a pitcher that had been mended together. Set up was easy, the spin was easily executed:

Things got more challenging, however, when I tried to spin objects that had no flat or solid base. A 3D rendering of the Jew’s Harp, for example, is not very exciting when laid on the turntable: it is more or less a 2D object that’s spinning. Figuring out how to make it stand up was tricky, and I’m not entirely satisfied with how it looks using foam. I’d much rather figure out a way to make the object “float” by using the whitespace function. This means that I need to find a way to make completely white or solid color supports, possibly from modeling clay or something like that.

The 3D application, however, is still phenomenal. The best example of how this provides utility that regular photos doesn’t is the spin of the Native American pipe bowl. No 2D photo will be able to capture the entire design on the bowl. A spin, however, allows you to see and examine the entire design as it wraps around the bowl. This could be helpful, therefore, both as a digital museum display, but also as a research tool. Consider how often people post images through list serves of various artifacts from all different angles: a spin would let an archaeologist quickly share an artifact with another across the country. An additional feature that is coming in the next app upgrade, labeling, will make this product even more applicable to digital heritage. This will allow labels to be added to spots on the object, that appear and disappear as the object rotates. Imagine being able to highlight the various parts of a wine bottle or design motifs on ceramics: it would make teaching about these objects more tangible (see what I mean here).

There are also some applications for field use. Fortunately for me, Historic St. Mary’s City currently has active excavations going on at the Anne Arundel site, where the museum’s new research labs and visitor center will be located. I stopped by, unannounced, to test the stage in a way that it isn’t advertised to be used: as a panorama tool. I jerry rigged a stand for my iPhone using the same foam used to hold the artifacts, and placed it on top of the stage. The stage went into their excavation units, near where they had some profile walls exposed. I hit the button, and, while the archaeologists continued working, got a wonderful panorama shot of the profile walls and other parts of the ongoing excavation. It took 5 minutes. This could be a wonderful additional use of the technology: by adding a screw in the base that accepts tripod attachments, the turntable could be used as a wonderful tool for capturing panoramas. This would be great for field work for getting shots of in units or of an entire excavation site. I do also wonder about the speed setting, which may not be optimal for panoramic shots like this: the auto-spin that is pictured on the website moves much too quickly to see the image. A panorama speed setting might be something to consider adding.

In all, these two tools combined, the app and the turntable, make for a great archaeological tool. The best part is, when compared to more advanced 3D tools, it is outrageously cheap. The app is free. The hosting is free or $4.95 a month, depending on how much spinning you think you’ll be doing. The stage is the most costly item: they are projecting that it will retail at $80, but a $60 donation to their Kickstarter campaign gets you one for free (they have less then a week to go, so consider helping them out). While it doesn’t provide for complete 360 degree capture, what it does capture, for the price, portability, durability, and ease of use makes this an incredibly practical tool for any archaeologist or museum professional who is looking for new and innovative ways to share their research and collections with the public.

DigVentures, however, is an organization that appears to be not only leveraging microfunding as a means for raising capital to fund an archaeological project: they are also using it as a means to build a community surrounding the project. The use of digital tools for public engagement has been heavy on my mind lately, and the more I look through the DigVentures website, the more impressed I am with the potential for this project to work as a way to gain literal investment by the public in archaeology and cultural heritage. Here’s what they’re up to:

If you donate £10, you receive “backstage” access to their website, where they will post daily content throughout the excavation. As you move up the payscale, your involvement can increase: £125 gets you one day digging on site, £225 a weekend, and so on, up to £1,300, which gets makes you a full-time field schooler. I’m particularly intrigued by the use of the web, however. There site states that,

Starting at the £10 level, you will have a ‘backstage’ pass to the Site Hut, a password-protected area on our website offering daily updates on the project, and loads of original content including apps, blogs, on site streaming, interviews, lectures from archaeological superstars, photos, finds news and more.

This means that your investment is rewarded with a number of unique ways to interact with the archaeologists, see what they are doing on site, and be a part of the discovery and excavation. This type of engagement could lead to all sorts of new relationships, new information for the public, and, ideally, a deeper understanding of why archaeology is important and how cultural heritage can be protected. This is the type of engagement that I think digital tools have the potential to foster, and I’m excited to see the outcome. And to take part, myself.

DigVentures also has made a commitment to working on projects that are under immediate threat, helping them raise capital through this medium as a way to bypass other lengthy, and low-percentage, funding structures. This summer’s site is a Bronze Age site called Flag Fen, which is under threat from drainage and climate change. You can read more about the site itself at their webpage and at their fundraising site. I will admit some ignorance about the site, as it is well outside my area of expertise. However, I am fascinated by the means that DigVentures is taking to both raise money and build a literally invested community in their project. I think this type of project could have major ramifications for how archaeology can be done.

One of the problems with auto-tweeting, however, is that it often happens in batches, meaning that you can eat up an entire person’s twitter feed with five different posts at once. The way most of these auto-tweets work is that a program like dlvr.it searches your content RSS feed for new entries, and then pushes those out as tweets, and many times does it at the same time every day. This is fine, except it means that, if you added ten items during the day, ten Twitter posts will appear on your  at exactly the same time, which will monopolize most people’s Twitter streams. In conversation with Shawn Graham (@electricarchaeo), who built Looted Heritage, this was one of his major concerns for setting up an auto-tweet: he didn’t want the content to be viewed as spam, since that decreases the value of the actual content through the medium he’s using to broadcast it. So, we came up with a better solution, using two easy and cheap tools: If This Then That and Buffer App.

These are tools that I use all the time. I’ve written about IFTTT many times: this is a tool that creates “tasks” to automate the Internet through If This Then That statements. Buffer is a wonderful social media tool that schedules your tweets out over the course of the day, automatically. I use it personally all the time if I’m reading a bunch of articles in my RSS feed, and don’t want to dump five articles in a row on my Twitter feed: instead, I email them to Buffer, which schedules each tweet into a time slot to be published later in the day (it can also post to Facebook and LinkedIn). Of course, IFTTT and Buffer work together. You can set an IFTTT statement that includes forwarding to Buffer.

So, for Looted Heritage, Shawn set an IFTTT rule that probably looks something like this: In IFTTT set up a task that states that If there is a new item on my RSS feed Then send that item to Buffer. This way, IFTT captures all the new posts, but sends them to Buffer, not to your Twitter account. Buffer then sends them out on your pre-determined schedule throughout the day. Click here to get the IFTTT Recipe (be sure to enter your own RSS Feed!):

Why is this a good idea? First, you avoid spamming folks, which is always nice. This ups the value of your content, and will make people more likely to follow you. Second, it makes it easier for folks to read your content: for me, I’ll only get to click on one of your five tweets until the rest of them have been pushed down by other people (I follow a lot of folks). Third, it spreads your content out throughout the day. This means that more people are likely to see your content. Let’s say your auto-tweet goes out at 8 am EST. You’ve just burned all of your content on people who are awake at 8 am on the East Coast, meaning that most of the United States is probably going to miss your post. By spreading your content out, you’re able to ensure that items will be visible by a larger audience, which is the whole point in the first place. In all, adopting these tools will allow you to approach social media better, without adding any additional time.

How have you used buffer or ifttt? Are there other ways to automate RSS feeds that accomplishes the same goals? Do you have any questions about them? Drop a comment below or shoot me a note!

Sign up for Buffer App using this link, and we both get an extra message! Read about my affiliation with Buffer.

Please visit the site at http://terrypbrock.com and give me any feedback you have. There are still a number of items I have yet to add to the Portfolio, and I have to reenter a lot of images into the imported blog posts, but for the most part, this is the basic framework for the new site.

Of course, the biggest fear about moving a blog from one URL to another is losing readers and creating dead links. Fortunately, I think most of that will be fine:

• If you have subscribed to this site within the last year or two, you hopefully used the “feedburner” RSS Feed. This is good, because I can transfer that feed to the new blog. So, if you got to this post via your RSS reader, don’t do anything. If you got to this post via some other means, check your RSS reader and see if this post is there. If not, click on the RSS button and re-subscribe!
• All the blog posts on the old Dirt are still alive. I have imported them all to the new space, but have also left them up in the old space, meaning any links that go directly to old posts still work: they just take you to my old site.
• Any link to “dirt.terrypbrock.com”, however, will redirect to “terrypbrock.com”. So, if you’re one of the couple people who have me listed in a blogroll or something, never fear: the link still works.

Anyway, please take a look through the site and please give me any comments you may have. There is a contact form under the “About” tab, where you can send corrections/suggestions or just say “hello”!

This is an important component of the research that I am conducting for my dissertation research, and it is a product of a lot of the recent historical scholarship that addresses emancipation as just this: a process that occurred through time, not a single, shotgun moment. Most of us learned that Emancipation was a product of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and that the 13th Amendment made it all official. While this is somewhat true, it does quite a lot to obscure the actual story of how the Emancipation Proclamation came to be and what it actually did (and didn’t) do, and what the 13th Amendment was, as well. In both cases, we are dealing with military and government actions that post-dated events that were occurring on the ground: they were the results of a process put into motion by African American slaves who fought for their own freedom. Visualizing Emancipation portrays these actions through the presentation of time and space.

Let’s remember: the Civil War, initially, wasn’t (technically) supposed to be about slavery, it was about state’s rights and preserving the Union. However, the enslaved in the South, and those who were enslaved in the Northern border states like Maryland, were certain that it was about slavery, and it was through their actions that they pushed that envelope. But how? We are talking about slaves, here, and they didn’t have much power, and certainly couldn’t vote or run for elected office or be in the military. This is certainly true, but it didn’t mean they weren’t human: they have agency, can make choices, and can effect change through those actions, no matter how small or seemingly meaningless. Typically framed as “resistance”, archaeologists and historians have dedicated countless studies to identifying the hows and whats of resistance, ranging from more passive actions like identifying spiritual activity to crafting goods with African influences to naming traditions, to more aggressive forms, like violence, insurrection, or running away.

Of particular importance to the Civil War, slaves were politically active within their own communities (Hahn 2003). When they ran away, they were making political statements about their views of the institution of slavery . An entire literary genre, the Slave Narrative, was built around the accounts of runaway slaves, and used as political weapons by the abolitionist movement to dictate the horrors of slavery. Slave runaways were so politically damaging to the public perception of slavery that the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850 as a means of keeping these stories out of the public sphere. This Act required that escaped slaves remained the property of their owners, and that those harboring them were in violation of the law. Their actions of resistance, therefore, had an impact.

It was at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, where the Civil War started to become about slavery. Escaped slaves began to show up at the Fort, looking for freedom. The Fugitive Slave Act required that these slaves be returned to their owners, and the federal government was slow on developing a policy. Pressured into making a decision, Major General Benjamin Butler decided that these slaves would be kept by the Union Army as contraband of war, a decision that changed the course of the war. Gradually, the policies regarding escaped slaves moved more towards emancipation, particularly as the Union moved further South and more slaves escaped. Eventually, Lincoln acted with the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all the slaves in the Confederate States. It was not until the 13th Amendment that the Federal Government outlawed slavery in throughout the United States, after all the states had adopted Emancipation in their state legislatures. Even so, the Union Army did open its doors to black enlistment, and many slaves escaped from Union slaveholding states to enlist. In Maryland, many slaves escaped to Washington, D.C., where slavery was illegal, and proclaimed themselves escaped slaves from the South: this resulted in their emancipation (Fields 1988). In many ways, emancipation was a process that occurred over time and was led by enslaved African Americans, not a single moment when black slaves were freed by “The Great Emancipator”.

Visualize Emancipation is a wonderful way to see this process. The entire tool is a map of the location of a historical document where a slave achieved freedom during the Civil War. You can view the map through different time periods, watch animations, and get all the information about each document. It shows other items, as well, such as where Union camps were located over time, and the railroad system, all important components of escape. What is powerful about this is that, as it grows (and it will, since it provides an opportunity for the public to submit their own documents), it will provide a better opportunity to see the process by which African Americans were achieving their own freedom. Singular documents often make it difficult to envision collective action, but this tool allows us to see many documents that tell us the same thing moving through time and space. In all, it is digital projects like these that are beginning to open the door for historians and archaeologists to begin to understand deeper questions and ideas about the past. And it is the collaborative spirit of these databases that will allow scholars to do this work together, transparently, and with a greater eye towards public engagement.

Fields, Barbara J. 1985 Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hahn, Steven 2003 A Nation Under Our Feet. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

What is Pinterest? Quite simply, they describe themselves as “A Virtual Pinboard”. It is a tool where you can collect images and videos about various topics, events, or themes on individual “boards”. You can follow other people’s boards, which creates a larger board of which you can browse, repinning, liking, and chatting with other users about their interests. So, if you’re planning a wedding, you may want to follow boards of other people who are also planning weddings. In many ways, I often feel like I am window shopping at a mall. For those not using it, here is  a good introduction to Pinterest.

There are a number of ways that I think Pinterest could be used by those of us who use social media for community engagement with cultural heritage. The first question I always ask before using a new site is, “why?” What is it about Pinterest that would make me want to be there? The answer in this case is quite simple: it’s where people are. Lots of people, and women in particular. BlogHer, for example, has reported that women are more likely to trust Pinterest postings and to make more purchases through Pinterest over other social media sites. Users also spend more time on Pinterest then on other social media sites other than Facebook, and it is the largest driver of traffic to retail sites. This means people are there, they stay there, and they use it to access other sites: all good indicators of a tool that could be beneficial for cultural heritage sites. There have been issues about copyright, although Pinterest seems to be actively concerned about it. Regardless, be careful with what you share. If you follow the Pin Etiquette, you should be in good shape.

The next question is how should we use Pinterest for cultural heritage? Here some suggestions for using the tool:

Create an Official Pinterest Account

If you’re working at a museum, University, heritage foundation, or non-profit, you should consider starting a Pinterest account for that entity. This way, you can focus the board on the elements that represents your organization. These topics could be widespread. For example, Preservation Virginia has created a number of boards that represent the types of things they are interested in: Historic Buildings, Sites they’re working on, architectural features, archaeology, preservation in action, and a storefront are all boards that define what Preservation Virginia is about, and provides content for their followers to raise awareness, drive traffic back to their site, and raise some money. I would suggest, for example, that they also include an “Events” and an “In the News” board, to showcase other places where the public can learn more about activities happening in their area.

Get Visual

As I’ve mentioned before, social media is making a huge push into becoming more visual. Fortunately, most things relating to cultural heritage are visual: archaeologists, for example, are regularly taking photos of sites and artifacts. Historic Preservationists share have photos of buildings that need preserving, or historical photos of the buildings in their heyday. For those of us who are providing content in blog posts or online exhibits, this means that photos have to be a critical part of each post: something that is catchy and relates to the content is important, because that is what will encourage users to Repin or visit your site.

Go Behind the Scenes

Two of Pinterest’s great features are its mobile app and its ability to create collaborative boards. By encouraging your colleagues at your organization to join Pinterest, they could collectively contribute to a board on your organization’s Pinterest account. The mobile app allows those individuals to do this “live”, by sending photos of what they’re doing at the moment to the board. This gives your followers an opportunity to go behind the scenes. For example, a museum could set up a board for their curators, who could pin photos of them building the next exhibit. Historic St. Mary’s City could have an Archaeology board, where the archaeologists could post pins of their discoveries, as they’re happening. Colonial Williamsburg could send a photographer into the field each day, to take photos of living history interpretors engaging with visitors, and post it the “Today on DOG Street” board. All these ideas give your followers an opportunity to visit your site, and see the behind the scenes work that goes on at your museum. By engaging them in the process, you are building relationships and buy-in, which may prompt them to come visit.

Repin, Communicate, and Like

Like an social media, its important to be an active user. Search for topics relating to your content, and follow the boards of your followers that relate to your organization. A history buff who’s following you may have a History board, which you might find interesting. Users will appreciate it if you repin their posts, the same way people love it if you Retweet or Share their content on Twitter or Facebook. You could even start a board specifically for followers, where you Repin “What our Followers Are Pinning”. In all, this gives you an opportunity to engage and build relationships with the people who enjoy your organization.

Add a Pin Button

Just like all the other social media outlets, Pinterest has created buttons to put on your website and blog so that people can pin your website content onto their boards. Again, remember to make sure those posts all have images associated with them, because otherwise they won’t be able to pin them.

Build a Store

Let’s be honest: there isn’t much money in cultural heritage. With that said, many organizations, particularly museums, have gift shops. Because Pinterest has already shown that it can be a place for commerce, why not link items from your online store (you have one of those, right?) to Pinterest on its own board? By including a “$” sign with a price in the description of the item, it will receive a price banner on the corner, and be included in the “Gifts” section of the Pinterest site, grouped by price. What a great opportunity to market your goods.

In all, I get the impression that Pinterest is here to stay. Its immediate success, particularly its ability to make brands money so quickly, will ensure that it will become more popular than it already is. Hopefully, cultural heritage institutions and practitioners will hop on board, and begin to populate the Pinterest space with a wider variety of content then what is already there. Pinterest is still request only, but it only takes a little while to get on board. If it takes too long, send me your email and I’ll make sure you get one. If you give it a shot, follow me on my pin board, so I can see how you’re using it! Happy Pinning!

Let’s chat: Are you on Pinterest? What do you like or dislike? What ways do you think it could be beneficial for cultural heritage institutions and practitioners?

One of the most popular mobile apps, for example, has been Instagram. This app lets you take photos, modify them with filters, and share them across a number of social networks. It has become my go-to app for photo taking, whether for fun or when I’m in the field, and has allowed me to engage a wide-number of people on a number of different networks with great looking photos. Twitter upgraded their web-based client this year to allow people to better see images that are placed in tweets, and put your recently posted images on your profile wall. Flickr is aware of the priority of photos, and is currently restructuring just about everything, including their website, to keep up with the rest of social media sites.

Pinterest, the new social media darling, is really pushing the envelope for images. Billing itself as your pin board for the web, it is an entire social network that feeds built on images. It is the shopping mall of the social world, where visitors essentially window shop the web, looking at pictures that are driven to websites. As a content producer, the only way to drive traffic from Pinterest will be through the quality of your images, not your words.

Lastly, Facebook’s big upgrade to the Timeline, both for personal and business pages, emphasizes the full value of pictures. Profiles boast a large banner image across the width of the screen, and individual photos that are posted to the wall are much larger than they were before. This is in response to Facebook’s data that shows that pictures are the most liked and clicked type of content on the web. While Facebook tends to chase out trendy items, Timeline is not a project like their check-in feature: this is a major restructuring of personal and business profiles, which are important components of their site.

What does this mean for those of us who are producing content and hoping to drive people to our websites? Pictures are critical. If you don’t have a good image that will be featured on the Pinterest wall, or aren’t capitalizing on your Facebook page by uploading photos regularly, then you won’t be able to reach as many people. Recently, I’ve been frustrated with some great blog posts I’ve read because they didn’t have images attached to them, meaning I couldn’t share them on Pinterest, and that when I shared them on Facebook, there wasn’t a visual attached to the link. This means that you may be missing out on a huge demographic of people who may be interested in your content, but won’t ever see it.

And how about those of us in the cultural heritage fields? What does this mean for archaeologists who are using social media? Well, I think it’s good news. Our discipline is extremely visual. There are historical photos, artifact photos, and excavation photos that we can include on all of our posts, upload to Facebook or Flickr, and include captions and have discussions about the content. The basis of my success with Twitter from the get-go was live-tweets from the field, and those almost always included a photo. Now, with tools like Instagram, we can blast those photos to every social media site at once, and they will be more visible because these sites are highlighting them in big ways. In the end, this means more engagement with the public.

So, get yourself a camera, and start thinking about how you can use images to increase your level of engagement with your followers!

[Image Courtesy of Flickr User Shuggy with Creative Commons License]

A lot happened that summer, including meeting the woman I’m going to marry. I also volunteered on Historic St. Mary’s City’s field school, in order to gain more experience, but also to learn the methods that HSMC employs when excavating, which has obvious applications when analyzing work they’ve already excavated. There were a number of talented students on that field school, many who are still involved in archaeology, and one in particular, Scott Tucker, who is currently enrolled in a PhD program in underwater archaeology at Southampton. He, too, is conducting research at St. Mary’s City, and taking advantage of a part of the site that has received little attention: the St. Mary’s River.

Scott and I have maintained a solid friendship since he graduated from St. Mary’s College. He obtained his Master’s Degree a few years later from Southampton, looking at the use of waterways by African Americans in United States (I was humbled and surprised when I realized he had thanked me in the acknowledgements). Recently, he was part of our session about the archaeology of Historic St. Mary’s City at the SHA Conference in Baltimore, where he outlined his plans for research in the St. Mary’s River.

By all accounts, this will be a wonderful project. Scott plans to build on the limited underwater survey that was conducted in the 1970s, investigating what could potentially be a 17th century ship located at the bottom of the river. If this is identified as such, it would be the oldest identified Europoean ship in the region, and would help to shed more light on the advent of British mercantile trade, particularly the role that St. Mary’s City, Maryland’s first capital, played within it. You can read a bit more about his plans on his blog.

As Scott comes up on his first summer of fieldwork, he hasn’t been as lucky as I was after my first year. While he has the support of Dr. Miller and HSMC, there are not sufficient funds to conduct the fieldwork necessary to investigate the site properly and completely. Underwater archaeology is costly, requiring expensive equipment, both to excavate and to conserve. So, Scott has taken to the interwebs, to ask for our help in giving him the initial funds to begin his dissertation work, following the lead of other archaeologists who have used microfunding as a tool for supporting their research. Having shared excavation units with Scott, had multiple discussions about his work, and read his scholarship, I would like you to consider this to be my endorsement of Scott’s abilities, and I would encourage you to visit his donation page and make a contribution. The beauty of microfunding is that any contribution counts: you can give $5, or you can give $5,000. As graduate students, and archaeologists, know too well, every little bit helps.

Why archive your Tweets? Well, I do it because it is one of my primary means of communication with a lot of my friends and colleagues. It’s also where I gather a lot of information, and where I share a lot of resources. Often, I find that I want to go back and gather that info again. Since Twitter only keeps a couple weeks of tweets available on their site, I needed to find a way to archive the things I’ve tweeted. If This Then That (ifttt) and Evernote ended up being the tools that have worked best for me.

The reason I chose Evernote as my archival site is because it’s searchable, it’s mobile, and I use it regularly for other things, so I didn’t have to learn anything new. There are other reasons Evernote is a good choice, as well: you can share notebooks, so if you’re archiving a hashtag that you want to share with your friends, colleagues, or to the entire world. This way, the archive is visible by all the people who may want to use it or have access to it.

Ifttt is a great tool because it automates actions between different social media platforms and other tools, like Evernote, Dropbox, or Delicious. You could easily use ifttt to archive your tweets in any number of these platforms instead of Evernote: you could set up a dropbox folder where each tweet is sent. Or a delicious account where tweets are archived in Delicious with a certain tag, or you could plop them into a google calendar. There are tons of options.

At any rate, I’ve made my ifttt recipe for Twitter to Evernote available for you. All you need to do is a) open an Evernote Account b) create an Evernote Notebook called “YourTwitterUsername tweets archive” c) open a ifttt account and d) link it all together.

What other ways are you archiving your tweets? How else do you use If This Then That or Evernote?