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.