Paula has a nice critical write-up on the “unbearable uselessness of timelines,” particularly those used in history textbooks. I’ve been working a bit on timeline applications, so Paula’s post made me think seriously about the role of timelines for scholarship and pedagogy. While I agree with Paula’s assessment of past and current uses of timelines, I think timelines can be useful if designed and implemented in deliberately thoughtful ways.
Uselessness (In Most Cases)
Paula is quite correct: timelines are, for the most part, unbearable and useless. Most simply display a single date with a single event, with no discussion or indication about how the events are constructed into a larger narrative. There is not contextual analysis; simply a listing of events the publisher felt was important to include. Take this example: The Abraham Lincoln timeline from The History Place. There is little thought on how to best present the information contained in the timeline. It is simply a list, organized by year, of major events that involved Lincoln. The information is factual, to the point, but dry and not engaging.
I will admit, however, that I have asked students to look at timelines. I do not, however, assign timeline reading for students to simply get a list of facts to remember; I ask students to evaluate timelines, to question which facts have been selected in the presentation, critique why those choices were made, and question how the presentation of those facts helps or hinder historical understanding. One of my goals as an instructor of history is to teach students how to read, evaluate, critique, and present information, in a variety of forms. Historians do this all the time with their own work (and especially with the work of other historians). As historians, we choose to present history in deliberate ways, and think critically about how best to present facts and evidence. It’s an important part of historical work, and it’s a process that spans multiple ways of presenting knowledge. So, one way I teach students about the construction of history (and knowledge in general) is to critique how history is presented through timelines.
Presenting Information
For me, the problem with timeliness is a matter of information presentation. Most timelines present information very poorly. Timelines lack cohesion, contexts, goals. With most timelines on the web, it seem that their creators didn’t think about how to best present the information contained in the timeline.
The thing is, historians think about how to present information all the time. Books, like websites, timelines, charts, graphs, and spreadsheets, are merely a delivery system for information. We think about how the information is organized in our books and articles. We constantly draft, reorganize, rephrase, and annotate our monographs and articles. We add maps and images in hopes of delivering more understandable, more organized knowledge. Additionally, we critique information and its presentation in a multitude of primary sources: images, letters, diaries, census records, probate records, court cases, laws, paintings, shards from clay pots, ancient tools, maps, surveys, newspaper articles, advertisements. All of these are also, at their simplest level, delivery systems for information, each with their own set of rules and criteria for how they are read.
Historians need to think about how information is organized and presented in multiple ways. This is one of the reasons why historians, particularly those studying new media applications of history, should learn more about user interface design, information architecture, and the presentation of information. I completely agree with Paula: Many timelines published are poorly designed and presented. But this is not the fault of timelines as a genre; The fault lies in those creating timelines without really thinking about what information they present, why they present it, and most importantly how they present it.
Towards Useful Timelines
So, why can’t we use timelines in a more informed, engaging way? I think we can. Like the other ways we present historical information, we need a critical understanding of how to best create, present, and critique the content in timelines. I think timelines can serve as a useful tool in a number of scholarly and pedagogical contexts. Of course, thinking isn’t enough; I’ve got to show it. So, my next few posts will explore some potential ways for creating and presenting useful timelines.
“Most simply display a single date with a single event, with no discussion or indication about how the events are constructed into a larger narrative.”
Most timelines don’t seem to consider that they could or do have a narrative of their own, apart from a larger contextual narrative. And perhaps context could be provided by showing concurrent timelines next to each other.
For example, the Abraham Lincoln narrative could be made into several concurrent running tracks, and displayed graphically (an actual line, with pictures) instead of as a list. You could have one timeline be “Abraham Lincoln’s Family 1637-1865″. Below that could be “Important Historical Events, Local 1637-1865″, listing events that are relevant to that personal history (for example, what events, if any, may have led to Samuel moving to Massachusetts, Thomas being killed by Indians or what were the key events of the Black Hawk War?). A third timeline could be “Important Historical Events, National”, another could be “Important Legal Events” that had bearing or precedent in Lincoln’s legal career, another could be “Important Events Governing the Relationship of North and South”, and so on. By graphically displaying them in line next to each other, and perhaps having dotted lines connecting related events between timelines, you could “multi-thread” different narratives.
You could even have one timeline display a historical narrative from a Northern perspective, and another from a Southern perspective, showing the differences of opinion on what constitutes important historical events for the two sides of the Civil War.
Another interesting tool, or one like it, would be Timemap and other historical atlas software.
http://www.timemap.net/
Exactly. This is why I ask my students to critically evaluate the content presented in a timeline, to question what, if any, narrative exists in the timeline, and think about ways of enhancing their knowledge beyond the timeline.
The concurrent timelines idea and the “multi-thread” timelines are interesting, and I’ll definitely take into consideration as I write my news few posts in this series. Timelines are an interesting puzzle to solve, from a user interface perspective.
Interestingly enough, I was going to post this at my blog!
One of my high school teachers, Dr. Leon Meade introduced us to a game that I still play:
Whenever I go shopping or dining, I look at the receipt/check and translate the sums to a year (BCE and CE) and I try to relate that year to an event or era in each continent. (This would include tax and tip!)
Dr. Meade felt that we should be aware of what was happening in the entire world at any given moment. Separate events were never separate in his book; they always had an influence on the future, both locally and afar. He had us save the sales receipts, list the years and events, then give an overview or some relationship amongst them. This was a monthly homework assignment. And it was a lot of fun! There were ‘brownie points’ if we were extremely perceptive and could think beyond the box!
He taught us that one employs timelines for perspective and dimension.
This exercise still sends me to my timelines of history book/pull-out chart (which I received as a Christmas gift forty years ago!), almanac, or computer! (I am currently looking at my Marshall’s receipt and note that my change amounts to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum.)
During the course of my tours, I strive to convey the importance of timelines to my seventh and eighth graders because history is not static.
Even a simple question like, “What other important battle (seige) ended the same week as Gettysburg?” demands a knowlege of timelines during the War Between the States. It is through this question that they realize one of the reasons why General Grant was not at Gettysburg and there were other significant battles going on. Add in, “What was happening in California, New York, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Africa, and Australia at the same time?”, gives a broader view of the age, and perhaps the effects of the American Civil War abroad. He liked the term, ‘Zeitgeist’.
I also like to introduce them to archeology, which is a visible and tangible timeline. They have marvelous archeological programs in Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, VA. (Yorktown’s archeological exhibit is about the sunken fleet in the York River!)
By the way, two television series that were excellent in bringing home the use of timelines were the recent, ‘E=mc2′, and James Burke’s, ‘Connections’. They intertwined biography, history, the arts, and science.
Hmmm. My personal timeline tells me it is way past my bedtime!
My last comment introduced Dr. Meade, and last night I recalled that his timelines started from a central ‘target’ or ‘hub’ with concentric circle lines representing current events (which immediately surrounded the subject) and radiating lines (like spokes of a wheel) representing other events which contributed or influenced the target. The spokes would be labeled by that which would be germane to the subject: history, culture, the arts, geography, geneology, natural history, politics, philosophy, religion, people etc.
We didn’t have any single, straight lines; in true history, they don’t exist!