Just the other day, Bill Barrow surfaced to make an entry into his Cleveland History Blog. It provides an overview of the exciting work being developed here in Northeast Ohio to make historical sources available to the public. Our work on the Euclid Corridor History Project takes it to the next step and builds the capacity in the community to interpret these materials and to use them in reinventing the region’s history, helping to recreate Cleveland as a place. Incidentally, this will also allow us to use the regional landscape to intervene in broader questions in United States history. Bringing historians, librarians, and the community together really promises to remake the paradigm of history writing–realizing perhaps the goals of early social historians who imagined a more community-based history.

We are previewing a prototype of the interfaces for the history kiosk
that will be along Euclid Avenue, sometime as early as October 2008. I
love the interface, and watching it in action with real live people has
been amazing. I just got back from observing and here are some observations, in no particular order.

• The Ingenuity audience is not typical of our eventual audience, which will include as a very large constituency, public transit riders.
• Most everyone noticed it, but not everyone interacted with the kiosk. Those that interacted did not spend a whole lot of time, and not everyone understood its functionality. People appeared more likely to notice and interact with the kiosk on two conditions: if someone else was using it or if the video was still looping and drew their attention.
• The prototype from EuroTouch Kiosks had a noisy fan, which dampened the quality of the experience of the users and was noticed by passers by.
• The screen interface was too small (not surprising, as we designed in a web not a kiosk) world. The images could be larger, and the sound could be made accessible with the images. The sound should be equalized.
• Not all users understood how it worked. The sound was most often overlooked.
• Users thought the kiosks should be richer.
• The longer a user stayed, the more they liked it–based on our own experience and some questions posed to passers by.
• Maybe the news section could contain ideastream podcasts, rather than streaming sound? Thanks to my friend Dave Kanzeg for that brainstorm. (Note that this would be easier to manage than a constantly live connection.) He observed that while regular sound might draw people to the kiosk, ongoing sound could repel–especially the regular transit audience. Nice observation; there might be a way to draw attention without annoying.
• What about podcasting more generally? And, is there a way to make that available on the street–at the theaters? ideastream? CSU? Clinic? University Circle? or even CVB? Again, thanks to Dave for getting that brainstorm going. Speaking of which, remind him about being a regular "irregular."
• More connections between sound/images are needed.

More thoughts in a second or third post as I reflect.