IHR Research Seminar Statistics for 2010-2011

With the 2010-2011 IHR seminar schedules at an end and all of the resulting podcasts uploaded online on the www.history.ac.uk website I thought this was a good time to take a moment and look at the statistics from the past year. 

 

  

 

Seminar Group	Total Views	Unique Pageviews
Sport and Leisure History	622	403
Voluntary Action History	647	370
Franco-British History	798	479
Military History	684	480
Global History	751	489
British History in the Long 18th Century	906	663
Psychoanalysis and History	362	282
Philosophy of History	260	214
Metropolitan History	756	508
History of Libraries	493	398

As you can see from the bar chart and accompanying data the British History in the Long 18^th Century seminar group received most hits to their pages with the Metropolitan History seminar, University of Paris Franco-British History, and Notre Dame University Global History seminars coming in a close second. 

The stats however, need further explaining.  Both the British History in the Long 18^th Century and Metropolitan History seminar groups received a significant boost from jointly holding our first live streamed session.  Neither the Psychoanalysis and History and Philosophy of History seminar groups held any podcasted events this year so their lower statistics represent visits to podcasts that have been held there for over a year. 

Particularly noteworthy however are the results for the History of Libraries seminar that have only podcasted one session and yet received 493 hits and 398 unique viewings over the last year.   

The stats for the live stream page also shows a strong interest especially considering that we have only held 6 events and only for the last 4-5 months.  Our first screening attracted 478 page views with 40 people actually participating in the live stream itself.  Since then we have received a further 774 page views of our live stream webpage with an average of 10 viewers for subsequent screenings.  Admittedly the contrast between page views and actual attendees to the live stream itself vary considerably but we are nonetheless thrilled that there has been this interest particularly with limited advertisement.    

To have a look at our Seminar and Conference podcasts (including a selection from our recent Anglo-American Conference) go to the IHR Website.

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SPOT Newsletter: Health Special (13 July 2011)

Two weeks ago the IHR held its 80th Anglo-American conference.  This topic was Health in History which presented the opportunity for historians to discuss a variety of health related histories and in some cases relate that research to current medical demands and political issues over the NHS and other medical authorities.  We have already uploaded a small selection of podcasts from this conference with more to follow shortly (click here for the Anglo-American 2011 conference podcasts.  In a future week I will discuss these in more depth.

In the meantime this special edition of the SPOT Newsletter selects three recent papers from our seminar groups on the topic of health.  These papers offer a varied approach to the topic beginning with Chris Hamlin asking why it is important for us to attempt a diagnosis of past illnesses.  Indeed, Hamlin argues that it is not so important which raises up some interesting questions in the subsequent discussion.  We then move onto voluntary organisations, first in the nineteenth century when there was a movement toward providing green spaces in urban centres for medicinal purposes.  Clare Hickman looks at the difficulties (especially financial limitations) involved for the voluntary organisations.  Then George Campbell Gosling shows us how these nineteenth century voluntary organisations coped with the changes of the twentieth century, particularly as they were consumed within the NHS.  The issue of payment and affordability are the crucial focus for this paper as it grapples with the voluntary and public hospitals just before they were consumed into the NHS in 1948. 

 

Global History seminar

21 March 2011

Chris Hamlin

Diseases long ago and far away: Does doctors’ knowledge answer historians’ questions?

Chris Hamlin takes a rather contentious position in this session of the Global History seminar which produced a good and interesting debate amongst those present.  Hamlin asks the question ‘why should we care?’ in regards to historians attempts to diagnose old diseases and illnesses through knowledge of modern medicine.  The problem with such diagnoses is that historians are rarely in a position to be able to say for certain and at any rate are imposing modern understandings of medicine onto medieval and early modern knowledge.  Does it matter what disease actually caused the Black Death and how useful, really, is statistics that suggest high percentages of deaths connected specifically to that one disease?  Hamlin argues that the understanding of the time is more important and that other illnesses and infections caused by (amongst other factors) malnutrition are often ignored in such simplistic categorisations.    Hamlin’s paper is about the practice of historians and asks the question whether changes should be made to the way we approach such subjects.  Debate throughout the presentation suggests that not everyone agrees with Hamlin’s position, but nevertheless does force them to find reasons why they think that way. 

 

Voluntary Action History

23 May 2011

Dr Clare Hickman (University of Bristol)

Nineteenth-Century Voluntary Organisations and Urban Green Spaces

The preservation of green spaces as parks, gardens and playgrounds first occurred on a large scale in the nineteenth century.  Medical authorities and voluntary organisations promoted them as therapeutic resources; a necessary escape from urban life.  Clare Hickman talks about the various voluntary organisations set up to safeguard green spaces for city dwellers.  The Commons preservation Society, Kyrle Society, Metropolitan Garden Society, and National Health Society amongst others took varied approaches towards this issue and took it upon themselves to promote green spaces.  The problem for local and medical authorities in regards to green spaces was not finding space – many green spaces were donated during the nineteenth century.  The problem was one of financing their upkeep – not until the 1870s-80s would councils feel confident asking their Constituents for rates that could go towards park upkeep.  This is where the voluntary organisations stepped in – providing finances to purchase and maintain parks and gardens for the public good. 

Related Resources: Carole O’Reilly and Matti Hannikainen, Urban Geen Spaces (14 March 2011)

 

Voluntary Action History

20 June 2011

George Campbell Gosling (Oxford Brookes University)

For the Sick Poor?  Payment and Philanthropy and the per-NHS Voluntary Hospital System, c. 1900-1948

‘Universal access to health care’ and ‘free at the point of use’ is branded about on a regular basis when government and media talk about the NHS particularly at times, like now, when government are pushing through major changes that reaches to the heart of the national health service .  However, in the debates we rarely consider what came before the NHS and, upon its foundation, what was decided and why.  George Campbell Gosling makes an excellent point.  Why have histories of British health care rarely focused on the issue of payments especially before the inception of the NHS?  It is because British historians working within the culture of the NHS are the people studying it.  In America, for instance, payment is a key focus of such studies in regard to their health systems as payment is still a key part of their system.  Campbell discussion of payment in pre-NHS hospitals is therefore not only interesting but highly relevant to current dilemmas affecting the NHS.    

 

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IHR Future Plans

Two weeks ago we held a workshop on developing online research training particularly focused on the History profession (see my previous posts).  Of course my post at the IHR asks for me to develop online training courses (not so much the content but the infrastructure and design) so the topic of the workshop was intricately linked with focusing and enhancing our future plans.

At that workshop my colleagues, who are employed to develop the content of these courses both online and face to face, gave a brief talk about what the IHR provides in terms of research training, how successful that has been and where we plan to take it in the future. 

Simon Trafford began with a brief rundown of what the IHR offers the Historical community.  The common room and library are foci for historians.  The 50+ seminar groups a place for learning, teaching and scholarly debate.  The various publications and e-publications a furthering of academic knowledge and the research training programmes an opportunity to help both new and older academics make the most of their skills. 

As an institute set up to aid research both nationally and internationally the IHR have always tried to reach beyond its London base.  However, the continued tendency for training uptake to derive from the London region continues to be a challenge.  The IHR have, however, had some success in broadening its appeal.  Various summer schools are held to make it easier for visiting scholars to gain something from the IHR in a short period of time and at a time when their own institutions’ demands are less.  The IHR have also undertaken a programme of regional training events – taking our expertise out to other areas of the country.  More recently the IHR have begun to develop a greater online presence for its research training, which brings us to the second half of the presentation, given by Mark Merry. 

Mark Merry told the audience about the IHR’s three phased approach to developing online training.  The results from Phase One will be made available with the launch of History SPOT when several handbooks derived from our own expertise and training courses are provided free of charge.  These handbooks (named Historical Research Handbooks) are meant as reference guides that can be dipped into or read as a whole.  They will tackle methodological, theoretical and practical problems related to their topic and, hopefully, act as a hook to our face to face courses and, in the future, online courses.  Phase One also includes additional online material for our face to face courses.  We hope to provide something a little extra for those who attend a course with the IHR. 

Phase Two will present ‘tutorless’ courses on various subjects that can be undertaken at a learners own time and pace.  These courses will emphasise interactivity and communication between users (community support) as well as providing various assignments, exercises and activities.  Phase Three will develop out of these resources new tutor led courses entirely provided in an online environment.  These courses will include virtual lectures, seminars and discussions and will be tutored by an expert in the field of study.

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History SPOT (sneak-peak)

History SPOT will soon be our new home for the IHR research seminar podcasts, live streamed events and online research training materials.  It will also be a place where you can discuss these resources further and interact with others who share your interest in these topics.  We very much hope that History SPOT will grow into a useful and even essential resource for historians from the UK and indeed the world. 

As I explained yesterday we should soon be in a position to announce a launch date, but in the meantime here are a few screenshots from the platform.

History SPOT Front Page	History SPOT Podcast Page
Historical Research Handbook	Collaborate – creating a webpage (view)

Tomorrow sees the start of our annual Anglo-American Conference.  This year the subject is Health in History which should be both an interesting topic in itself and a highly topical one considering the current Health bill being discussed in Parliament.  This is an event that we will be podcasting which means a short pause in my posts concerning last week’s workshop on online training.  I’ll begin again next week with a brief synopsis of the presentation given by my colleagues Mark Merry and Simon Trafford.

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History SPOT (the single sign-on)

Just a brief update today!  A few weeks ago I posted a little teaser image for our upcoming platform: History SPOT.  I had hoped then that we would be launching within a fortnight but it was not meant to be.  The problem is not content – that is already uploaded and ready to go.  The problem is a technical one with the platform itself. 

To make sure that History SPOT provides us with the greatest scope for future adaptation and expansion and to ensure that it can deliver our current requirements we made the decision to utilise platform systems that best suited each aspect of our content.  The result was a three-fold development which would seamlessly merge together as one platform.  In brief these are:

Drupal (Content Management System) – Podcasts/live stream

Moodle (Virtual Learning Environment) – Research Handbooks/Training Courses

Mahara (e-portfolio system) – Collaborative and interactive elements

To ensure that these three systems work well together and to enable us to moderate user content we realised that we would need to ask users to sign up for a free account and link the systems together using a single sign-on.  ULCC (University of London Computer Centre) have been working on the single sign-on for us and we very much hope that it will soon be ready and we can launch.  It has, however, proven more difficult to achieve than either us or ULCC originally envisaged.   

Tomorrow I will provide you with some screen shots from History SPOT and a little more detail about what you can expect once it is up and running.

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The History SPOT – New Project Name announced

On Friday 3^rd September I announced on the IHR ‘History’ website and via Twitter that the Seminars and Research Training Project has been given a new name.  The name that we have selected is The History SPOT.  SPOT stands for ‘seminar podcasts and online training’ and the title is intended to attract the idea that this is a place for historians to go for learning, research and training resources as well as discussion and collaboration. 

 Its taken quite a while to settle on a name for the project.  I hope you like it (any comments are welcome!).

As project officer, I have of course been doing more over the last month or so since my last post than coming up with a name.  The building of the website structure based on a combination of Moodle and Mahara is on track and we will soon have something to test.  The first research handbooks have been drafted by my colleague Mark Merry.  These first handbooks will focus on databases for historians – more on that at a later date.  I have also been working on text for the website and an article, which goes into activity and expectations of podcasting in academia. 

 With the new academic year almost upon us I must admit that I’m looking forward to the research seminars, and thus the podcasts, starting up again.  The next few months will prove crucial for this project and should be an exciting time! 

 More updates soon!

 Matt

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