Digital History

In The Pasts and Futures of Digital History written by Edward Ayers (1999), he states that history more so than most other academic subjects is seen as something that is old and far away from a world of technological innovation.  In Computing and the Historical Imagination written by William Thomas, III in 2004, he mentions how historians as early as the 1960s and 70s were looking into a future with digital tools. Despite the fact that that notion did have its critics (as it does today) the new burgeoning field of social history was looking more and more into how to utilize these tools for the abundance of statistics they were using as part of their work. Thomas states “political historians examined the influences at play in voting, not just the rhetoric of a few leaders; social historians found patterns to describe the world of average people; and economic historians developed models to account for multiple variables of causation.”  When Ayers was writing his article in 1999, he was optimistic of a world where digital tools would be integrated into looking at and creating archives, displays and altering educational techniques. Of course, a lot has changed since 1999. The JAH Interchange from 2009 describes digital history as an “approach to examining and representing the past that works with the new communication technologies…an open arena of scholarly productions and communication, encompassing the development of new course materials and scholarly date collections….framed by the hyper -textual power of these technologies to make, define, query and annotate associations in the human record of the past.”

In Ayers’ Valley of the Shadow Project, he was able to exemplify ways in which digital tools would be an effective future for historians. “The general public understood it as a set of Civil War letters, records and other accounts. Students and teachers praised it for opening up the past to them and allowing them to ‘be their own historian.’” While digital projects like Ayers opened up new opportunities for learning it did create some issues. “All of the connectivity and digitization has opened up history and historical sources in unprecedented ways, yet the technology has not come without tensions, costs, and unexpected sets of alliances and demands for historians, educators, administrators, and the public.” Unlike the “traditional” practice of history, there a lot more new components that come along with it. Sometimes these new components can offer both positive and negative aspects. Digital history projects allow for collaboration on a level not thought possible before with people from different aspects of academic. Technological experts and librarians and students and historians from various backgrounds can come together to work on a digital project.

When Ayers was writing his initial article in 1999, he wasn’t able to imagine the tools which we are able to use now and possibly in the future that will make digital scholarship an even more effective tool for historians. “We have entered a new stage of digital history in which we can put an emphasis on active learning, collaboration and enhanced interaction.” We have the ability to use Wiki blogs, mashups, tags, and social networking. In the future, as Seefeldt and Thomas mention in What is Digital History?  Historians’ sources will be almost entirely digital with the use of instant messages, emails, doc files, videos, databases, etc. The JAH interface sees a future in which we and look into 3D reality environments such as Lisa M. Snyder’s reconstruction of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Unfortunately, for scholars who are more hesitant to embrace digital scholarship, this future environment might challenge their more traditional method and perhaps make it obsolete.

Digital history has the ability to make a good partnership with public history. Nothing is more available to the public than some of the digital tools which can be accessed online. Public institutions such as museums and libraries have the ability to use these tools part of an online exhibition or an archive; however, they can use the tools for more than that.  Some of the digital projects that I accessed via the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab, have shown how easily accessible information is for students in an academic setting or how some of the research that would mean nothing on paper can become visualized and take on a whole new meaning. I browsed through a few of these projects; but the one I spent the most time with was the map of Foreign Born Population in the US from 1850-2010. Normally, looking at these stats wouldn’t mean much to anyone; but with the utilization of this visualization the essential question being asked (which seems to be “How has the foreign born population changed in past 150 years?)

In his most recent article, Does Digital Scholarship Have a Future?, William Ayers uses the term “generative scholarship” which he deems is scholarship that builds ongoing digital environments framed by significant academic questions. It invites collaborators from all facets and it advances scholarship in a way which cannot be done in print. Digital history fits this definition of generative scholarship because it has constantly changing and inviting scholars from realms outside of the traditional world of historians to participate.