The presentation and discussion on Digital Darwin was really informative and interesting to hear about for a multitude of reasons. I hadn\u2019t previously known this was the largest online database dedicated to one singular historical figure, and just admiring the scope of the project was really incredible. I also found the discussion with John Van Wyhe especially intriguing because it was really unique to hear his side of things and his perspective on the site as a whole. Hearing the work and dedication he put into the site personally was also really powerful and really framed the entire project for me as a very large and well-crafted project. In all aspects the website seems like a major success to me because it is very easy to navigate even as a first time user. Things are all clearly labeled and you can really access any information or writings from Darwin that is available.<\/p>\n
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As we learned in the discussion with John Van Wyhe however, this abundance of information can actually lead to some very problematic situations for the website itself. A strong example of this is the lack of citation that the website receives itself. As we learned this is a product of thorough work and persistence on the part of John and others working on Digital Darwin. They were so meticulous that they managed to compile all of Darwin\u2019s works into one website, which as John said is great for educational purposes and surely helps many people find the information they are looking for with ease. On the other hand because all of these sources are readily available on Digital Darwin it is problematic because they provide people with the original work to cite and so this database itself rarely gets the appreciation or recognition it deserves because people can just go directly to the primary source itself through the Digital Darwin website. I thought this was really interesting to consider and was something I hadn\u2019t considered much before our discussion via Skype.<\/p>\n
This made me think back on my academic career, specifically here at Colby, and the number of times I have similarly used someone else\u2019s work or writing to find a specific quote or section in a primary source. It seems all too common in our modern world and it makes me almost feel sympathetic for the creators of websites such as Digital Darwin. It seems wrong that so much hard work can go into perfecting a site to only have it utilized for other people\u2019s work without any sort of acknowledgment or recognition. All things considered though, I don\u2019t necessarily see a simple solution to this problem or any way to avoid things like this happening in the future. In our digital age, information is available readily to everyone and it is becoming more and more difficult to receive credit or recognition for the work people put out there. In conclusion it is definitely unfortunate it may not always be cited when it should be, but Digital Darwin is an incredibly well thought out website that truly provides all the information you could want on an incredibly influential man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The presentation and discussion on Digital Darwin was really informative and interesting to hear about for a multitude of reasons. I hadn\u2019t previously known this was the largest online database dedicated to one singular historical figure, and just admiring the scope of the project was really incredible. I also found the discussion with John Van […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7506,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[402584],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7506"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3400,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399\/revisions\/3400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}