Wednesday, September 11, 2019

What is Digital History? Selected Readings, 1999-2019



2004: William G. Thomas III, "Computing and the Historical Imagination," (Links to an external site.) in A Companion to Digital Humanities
2006:  Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, Ch. 1,  ”Promises and Perils of Digital History,” (Links to an external site.) in Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web
2009: Douglas Seefeldt and William G.  Thomas III, "What is Digital History?" (Links to an external site.) in AHA Perspectives
2016: Stephen Robertson, "The Differences Between Digital Humanities and Digital History" (Links to an external site.) in Debates in the Digital Humanities
2019: Sheila A. Brennan, "Digital History" (Links to an external site.) in NCPH's The Inclusive Historian's Handbook

What is Digital History? (JAH Interchange, Thomas, et al.)
“Digital history might be understood broadly as an approach to examining and representing the past that works with the new communication technologies of the computer, the internet network, and software systems.” (Thomas)
I believe that this is a great definition of digital history and is broad enough to include all software and projects that would be included. From quantitative datasheets, to GIS, videos, photogrammetry, and even search tools and self-publishing, digital history can be applied to old research or be entirely digital from the start and ask a new question through the lens of digital tools.

How does 21st century Digital History theory/practice differ from earlier applications of computer technology to historical research, such as the data-driven quantitative history (“cliometrics”) of the 1970s? (Thomas)
Digital history started in the 1970s as cliometrics, or quantitative history, and consisted of statistical methods. Quantitative history was controversial during the 1970s and through the 1980s because it focused too much on quantitative data and computers without much human analysis of the datasets. Digital history today starkly contrasts that of the 1970s because it has expanded rapidly with the creation of the internet and the advancements of hardware and software. Digital history is not just about quantitative data, which can be useful in its own right, but encapsulates anything adapted to the computer systems.

How does Digital History differ from Digital Humanities? (Robertson)
Digital history is a subset of the digital humanities. Digital history is centered around a few digital tools that benefits historical research. Text mining and topic modeling are two tools in the digital historian’s toolbox as well as search tools, web-based mapping programs, and quantitative tools. Digital Humanities has often been described as being too broad focusing on too many tools whereas each discipline within digital humanities already know and use a small set of digital tools to aid in their specific workflow. Often thought of casting too wide a net in terms of digital tools for only one area of study. Thereby digital history is a more specified subset of digital humanities with fewer tools and with research and skills highly focused in regard to those tools. There has been a call, however, to shift the view of the digital humanities into being a more interdisciplinary approach of learning the tools in your specific field and then engaging with other disciplines within the digital humanities.

What are the promises/perils of doing Digital History? (Ayers, Cohen & Robertson, JAH Interchange)
Some of the promises of digital humanities are capacity, accessibility, flexibility, diversity, manipulability and interactivity. Capacity and accessibility being the two most obvious with more information than ever before being stored onto a computer or the internet with a greater ease of access than before the computer era. More people can visit digital archives from across the world for little to no cost, can access academic journals, and are not restricted by a physical or cumbersome limit that computers can alleviate. The information we access on the web is also incredibly flexible in its presentation, instead of a limited presentation of text and pictures in person, the humanities can present itself as text, photos, videos, sounds, 3D models, data sheets, and any combination of these forms. Diversity focuses mainly on the low barrier of entry for everyone to enter information on a topic of their interest. It is just not professors who are able to maintain blogs on their research but anyone from an amateur in the humanities to the most esteemed professor. Manipulability of the large amounts of information stored online are also a possibility that is not shared in the physical form. Using digital tools to quickly shift through entire journals for keywords or phrases. Interactivity makes it easier than ever to communicate between individuals, quick messaging and interactions between professor and public made the dissemination of information easier. Hypertexuality is the last of the seven beneficial promises of the digital history, and is simply the free flow of information in an undirected way
              Some of the perils of digital history can be seen related to its benefits. Information does not last forever on the internet and with the low entry bar for entering information on a topic, quality likewise suffers. Additionally, the way people approach information online with manipulability change the way people read thus lowering the requirement to read through the text the author crafted in the way it was intended. Lastly, the problem of inaccessibility comes into play, everyone does not have a computer and skills required to use it. Monopoly, too, runs along with inaccessibility with corporations taking interest in and profiting off of the flow of information with questionable care of authenticity.

Can we make Digital History, as a field, more inclusive? (Leon, Brennan)
Digital history has taken steps to become more inclusive by way of free to use publishing, editing, and by including histories about marginalized groups. However, this is also how digital history can improve its inclusivity, the best stories are told by the people themselves and the jobs of professors and museum curators will best reflect minority stories if they are the minority themselves. Creating, publishing, and collaborating have become large advancements to reach and spread more stories but institutionalizing the more marginalized stories would be the best path for reaching inclusivity.

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