After doing extensive research on Marilyn Monroe Wikipedia does a pretty good job of accurately summarizing main aspects of her life. Her page on the site is broken down into the following categories:

•  Family & Early Life
• Career

–       Early work: 1945-1947

–       Breakthrough: 1948-1951

–       Leading Films: 1952- 1955

–       International Success: 1954- 1957

–       Last Films: 1958- 1962

• Death & Aftermath
• Administration of estate
• Personal life

One thing that I found disappointing on the site was aspect of Marilyn’s life that is not mentioned on the site is that Marilyn was a big supporter of the civil rights movement. For example, Ella Fitzgerald was one of Marilyn’s idols and a major inspiration. However, the Mocambo nightclub in West Hollywood, the most popular dance spot at the time, refused to let Ella perform there because she was black. Marilyn was outraged and told the owners that if they would let Ella perform, she would be there in the front row every time Ella was onstage. She did, and the two became friends.

According to the great Ella Fitzgerald:
“I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt…it was because of her that I played the Mocambo, a very popular nightclub in the ’50s. She personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.”

I think that if this aspect of Marilyn’s life was added to her Wikipedia page it would give readers a great understanding of who she was as a person and not just some sexualized icon.

www.perezhilton.com

The design elements shown on the website portray the personality of Perez Hilton very well. He does this by using bright colors, sparkling things, pictures of himself, and many different things. I also find it to be a very user-friendly web site. Being that it only shows one page at a time of celebrity gossip and then if the reader wants to read more, then they just go to the next page. The design has another aspect, advertising, which I find to be very annoying. Perez Hilton makes things like movies he advertising. The movie will be in all of his advertisements, and he will also write about the movies. He makes it seem like he really wants to go see them, but the reader never really knows if he really wants to see it, or if he is just playing up his advertisers for more money. He does this a lot for the movies that are coming out, or the new T.V. shows.

 Format & Organization of the Perez Hilton Web Site

As previously mentioned website is formatted the to be user-friendly. The site is only a page of celebrity gossip with pictures, videos, etc, and blogs about those things. There are also entries on the page that are just blogs and do not have pictures or videos. This type of organization makes sense because of the audience that Perez Hilton is writing to. The users are only looking for celebrity gossip and what he thinks about the things that are happening. They do not want to have to click on a million things to get there they just want it right in front of them. This is a very easy way for Perez Hilton to appeal to his users.

The percentage of text to visuals on his page is a big difference. The amount of visuals is way higher than the amount of text. There will be a huge picture of something to a small paragraph of text. He stresses on having the celebrities talk for themselves in their pictures, and then just reports on what is happening and how the picture corresponds to the celebrity gossip.

The website doesn’t have too many parts. It is mostly just the main page of celebrity gossip and the following pages of old celebrity gossip from the days previous. The main parts of the website that stick out are the following:

•   Fo’ One One

This part of the web site has five parts. “About”, “Copyright Statement”, “Conditions of Use”, “Privacy Notice”, and “Home”. Perez Hilton’s style of writing this part is very casual. For example, in his “About” part of the website, he stated, “He is the Internet’s most devilish gossip columnist.” This shows that he isn’t as serious about this part of the website, as most of web authors are.

Interactivity in Perezhilton.com

Perez Hilton makes it very easy for the user to see the most important things that are happening in the celebrity world. People.com have a million different links and categories for types of entertainment that their users would like to see.

I really enjoyed doing this research assignment on Belva Gaertner. I had no idea who Belva Gaertner was or what type of murder she had committed. After going to Wikipedia I quickly found out that she was acquitted of murder in 1924 and she was the inspiration for the fictional character Velma Kelly/Velma Wall in the play Chicago. The creator of Chicago, Maurine Dallas Watkins; reported on the 1924 murder trial for The Chicago Tribune. The Belva-inspired Velma has reappeared in the 2002 movie musical, “Chicago”, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. Ironically I have also wanted to see that movie now, I think I have to.

When it came to evaluating the facts on the murder, the trial and acquittal on Wikipedia and on The Chicago Homicide Database I found some similarities and a few slight differences. Obviously The Chicago Homicide Database provided in-depth information about the murder provided by primary sources; such as:

• The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office- which provided historical archives, with very comprehensive information about each record
• The Cook County Clerk’s Office- also maintained historical archives with the cases listed by name of defendant.

On Wikipedia, the information provided very little about

the murder, trial and acquittal and focused more on pop culture surrounding Belva Gaertner as a person and a fictional character. Regarding the murder and trial about four sentences are written about it.The sources used and sited on Wikipedia were secondary sources consisting of newspaper articles from The Chicago Daily Tribune.

An example of how information on Wikipedia was almost gossip or hear say was when it describes (defendant) Belva’s relation to (victim) Walter as a scorned “lover”. The Database is more scientific about the relation of the two by describing it as “relationship unknown”.  I assume that she truly was a scorned lover and that is why the murder happened however, it seems like more gossip and hear say to me. Plus you know what they say about assuming it makes an ass out of you and me!

I am embarrassed to admit it but, I couldn’t successfully complete the chart exercise. With that being said I am looking forward to class this afternoon to learn. I have a new research question I like better than my original one. It is… Today Marilyn Monroe is often viewed as an iconic beauty queen, either that or a beautiful but tragic woman but how was she viewed as in the 50s? I think this question will be very interesting and am very curious about. I can’t wait to wear my Halloween costume to class today 🙂

Secondary Sources
Many books have been written about Marilyn Monroe. A selection I have found so far is below:

Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words: Marilyn Monroe’s Revealing Last Words and Photographs by George Barris (April 1, 2001)

My Story by Marilyn Monroe and Ben Hecht (September 29, 2006)

Marilyn in Art by Roger Taylor (May 1, 2006)

Marilyn Monroe: Metamorphosis by David Wills (November 8, 2011)

Vanity Fair Magazine Article about–Marilyn Monroe’s hair dresser who was with her the night she sang “Happy Birthday Mr.President”

AMY, F. C. (2003, 06). It had to be kenneth. Vanity Fair, , 140. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/201036211?accountid=14541

I also found some great pictures from newspaper articles

I have used Google earth before and Google maps always printed out with my driving directions, before I got my GPS. So I found this exercise very interesting with the information I learned about my last Sunday afternoon. However at the end it became very frustrating.
The places I selected to locate on the Google map was where I went on October 13, 2013. I went to my car dealership (Pohanka Lexus) to have my car looked at, next I went to see a movie at the Centerville Multiplex and then to finish off my afternoon I went to the Apple Store at Fair Oaks Mall. I did these places because if I were to do my favorite places, they would all probably be at the mall and that wouldn’t make for much use for Google maps. After locating the three locations on the map I didn’t see anything to interesting or surprising. However, after I started pIaying around with the bells and whistles, I did notice that after using the tracing tracker the locations all seemed to be equal distances from each other (Almost like a perfect triangle) That’s where it all went wrong… after I finished tracing the line it would not end. Everywhere I tried to go on the map from there, the line kept tracing. It was really bugging me. So, I went to teachinghistory.com for tips to fix it. That is where I learned that this could be a problem not just for me but a lot of users. It made me feel better that other people also had trouble.

After all of that mess I was just done with the map and frustrated. At least I can say I tried and actually did learn some techniques for mapping. I can see how this will be a valuable tool for our research project and look forward to learning how to get more in depth with creating maps.

Find the records of at least 3 coal companies operating in the early 20th century in Virginia

For this assignment I had originally planned on using the Library of Congress or the National Archives. However, the government shut down and that was no longer an option. So, frustrated from there, I did what everyone does when they want to know something, I googled it. I typed exactly this “ 3 coal companies operating in the early 20th century in Virginia.

I clicked on one of the first results I was given:
lib.radford.edu/archives/findaids/VICC-records.html

That link took me to: The Virginia Iron Coal & Coke Company Records 1899-1965, that are stored in the McConnell Library Archives and Special Collections at Radford University. To actually look at the records I would have to go to the library and have them unlocked from the selves but, further down the intro page there was a hyperlink that said :

Digital Access
More than 100 maps and documents from the VICC Company Records Collection have been digitized and a the Virginia Iron, Coal, and Coke Collection on RU Digital Collections website.

This digital collection provided a good glance into the records of the coal company and the early 20th century coal industry in Virginia.

So… that was one of the 20th century coal companies I identified in Virginia.

After that I went back to google and found another link: www.miningartifacts.org/virginia-mines.html that showed me tons of pictures of mines in Virginia and the companies that ran them. I picked a couple of them that were listed. Including:
• Island Creek Coal Co. – Keen Mt., VA
• Panther Coal Co.- Grundy, VA
• Pocahontas Fuel Co. Mine- Boissevain, VA
• Panther Red Ash Coal Corp- Oakwood, VA
• Tom’s Creeks Coal & Coke Co.- Wise, VA

By selecting a couple of names from the site it made it easier to find records. Especially because I actually knew the names of the companies that may not have their records filed in the state of Virginia, due to the fact that the headquarters may be in a different state ect.

After maintaining the names and searching for them I came upon this site http://www.dmme.virginia.gov – which is the Virginia Department of Mines Minerals & Energy. I essentially hit the jackpot there. I was able to find records of many of the coal companies there.

When I began this research doing my research in finding these coal companies in Virginia… The results kept putting “West” in front Virginia so made it a little difficult in the beginning.

But, overall even though the government deterred my initial plan… I pulled it off!

I have never been really interested or thought too much about how I would want to preserve my family’s history in general. Maybe it’s because I was naive and thought I already knew everything there was to know. Or maybe it’s because I had seen so many attempts by my mom trying to create baby books for my siblings and I. Naturally my book is the most completed one being that I’m the oldest child (and her favorite). Just kidding!However, today I believe my mom would have great success with it due all of the digital ways she could use to create one.

Although like I previously mentioned, prior to this class, I didn’t really care about preserving my family’s history because I thought it consisted of scrapbooking and having it as physical album to show when people came over it visit. After learning in this class how easy and efficient it can be I am now interested in starting to digitally preserve my families history.

I actually had started thinking about family history last month when my grandmother died. She had eleven siblings, twelve including her. My grandmother was the youngest out of the twelve kids in her family. At her wake my grandfather had a bunch of pictures of the family. Pictures I had never seen before. I was even in some of them yet had never seen them before. Who would have thought that he had collected all of these pictures?

Before I begin to digitally preserve of the history of my family there are a couple questions I must ask about the information I am putting out on the web. I am a visual person and will probably will have the history shown through pictures. That is one of the best things I feel that you can digitally display on the net. Some of the pictures are older, yellow, dusty and even possibly torn slightly. That is benefit of JPG will help with some restoration of the pictures. JPG enhances photographs in similar continuous tone with images that contain many colors, then breaks down the image and disregards the kind of information that the eye is least likely to notice.

I am also comfortable with using photographs because I feel like they tell the best story. Words can sometimes change the meaning of something and a lot times people are feeling different emotion when a picture is being taken and even though I am just trying to preserve history of the family, I must remember this is history and true history is argument based. Families tend to be easiest people to have arguments with because there is a great amount of history that has been collected overtime. Sometimes bringing up the past isn’t the best thing to do. However if it’s a great picture to me… It’s going on the site! I just don’t want to put words in anyone else’s mouth. I truly may try to preserve some of photos I have of my family but it would definitely have to be after this semester!

I decided to take a look into the website TeachersPayTeachers.com. So what exactly is it? TeachersPayTeachers.com is an online marketplace for teachers. The sites purpose is for teachers to buy and sell lesson plans, activities, tests, and quizzes and so on to other teachers. Interestingly enough the site is actually pretty dedicated to preventing copyright infringement. The first thing I did when I got to the website was go to the ‘about’ section because the name of the site sounded shady. After reading what the site is exactly all about I preceded to find the section about the copyright policy and the commitment to respect intellectual property. Even though there is a copyright policy and it is promised that intellectual property will be respected, I have an ethical issue with the selling of tests and quizzes. If teachers are actually buying quizzes, tests off this site and then preaching to their students not to plagiarize when they’re essentially doing the same thing. Would a teacher by okay with a student buying an already written essay online? I think not! I believe that the creators of this website were looking for an easy way to make money off of teachers that think that they don’t have time to make a lesson plan, test or whatever it is that they want to buy. Also teachers are not truly doing their job if they’re doing this, instead they’re taking the easy way out because their job is to create their own challenging ways of teaching. Plus it’s a teacher’s responsibility to test students on the material they teach and typically the material the specific school wants to be taught has already been decided by someone higher in rank therefore, no test that is bought will suffice. With all of this being said I ethically do not approve of the site. When it comes to the legal aspect I think it has covered all the ground it has to, to protect itself.

The topic I have chosen to the frame is Marilyn Monroe’s death. What impact did Marilyn Monroe have on society after her death?

Or I could possibly ask: What impact did Marilyn Monroe’s death have on Hollywood? Did Marilyn Monroe take her own life or was it homicide?

I am not sure exactly sure if the way I have framed the question is too broad.

I am also concerned that I may have a difficult time finding credible primary sources.

I would really like to do the question: Did Marilyn Monroe take her own life or was it homicide? However, I think there might be more conspiracy theories than facts. But, there are primary sources that have posed the homicide aspect… Not sure what to do.