Some Issues with Digital History
There are many advantages and positive reasons as to why history should make the push to embrace and use the digital medium. When doing research for a paper for school I often wish I could find everything I needed on the internet and without leaving my home then having to go to a library and searching through stacks of books. And while there have been a lot of advances in the move to making things more digital, such as Google Books, there is still a lot to be questioned over digital history.
I for one think that digital history as a place in the history field and that opposition to it comes mainly from fear of the new and unknown. But some of the reading assigned to class this past week makes some points that I agree with and have thought of as well as hurdles to digital history.
In Digital History by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, they talk about some of the issues with making the change from traditional to digital history.
“It can involve more technical hurdles than a simple history website; legal and ethical concerns, such as invasion of privacy and the ownership of contributed material…” (162)
Will historians now in graduate school be required to take html and computer courses just so they can have the ability to display there work. If they were to just publish a book, they would not have to know how to work the book publishing machines but in the digital history field, many of those historians are expected to know the basics of coding and the technology.
Another reason they site is the anonymity of the Internet, and that you don’t know sometimes whom you are dealing with. Perhaps a bored teenager decided to pose as a historian and create some fabricated research site about the founding fathers (although Cohen and Rosenzweig dismiss this because teenagers simply don’t care enough to do this, clearly they haven’t been on Wikipedia or 4chan.org very often).
Another issue I think should be addressed is that with books, that medium is more permanent. While books can go out of print and are hard to find, for the most part they are still around. But with websites, people can stop paying the website fees or maybe some new type of Internet technology and computers will come around and people simply won’t want to or can’t move all the information over.
I’m sure most of the issues will be worked out over time but for now these hurdles might prevent those traditional historians from being on board with new technology and can hinder the process of the evolution into the digital age.
“Will historians now in graduate school be required to take html and computer courses just so they can have the ability to display there work.”
At George Mason, yes, every PhD student has to take the “Clio Wired series” where eventually students do learn how to do HTML, CSS, and create their own websites. You’re definitely right that its a drastic change from writing books, where historians deal very little with the actual physical production of the book itself, or even think about it. But–and this is a blog post I’ve been rambling around in my head for a while now–its an enormous opportunity for historians now, to be able to shape not only *what* they say, but *how* they get to present it. There is tons of resistance among the historical community about acquiring these skills, even resistance among Mason students. But I hope the profession can start seeing all the advantages and opportunities that can come from more direct control over the creation of historical content in new media.
I like that Mason is making people take the courses. Obviously we are taking a course along the same lines. While academia may continue to resist digital skills they are essential for the future historian. I think the key in looking at the validity of internet sources will come down to reputation. As we were discussing a couple weeks ago, the peer review process is one of the best indicators of site validity. Once a few well-known and respected historians evaluate a site it can begin to develop its own level of respectability.
“Will historians now in graduate school be required to take html and computer courses just so they can have the ability to display there work.”
At George Mason, yes, every PhD student has to take the “Clio Wired series” where eventually students do learn how to do HTML, CSS, and create their own websites. You’re definitely right that its a drastic change from writing books, where historians deal very little with the actual physical production of the book itself, or even think about it. But–and this is a blog post I’ve been rambling around in my head for a while now–its an enormous opportunity for historians now, to be able to shape not only *what* they say, but *how* they get to present it. There is tons of resistance among the historical community about acquiring these skills, even resistance among Mason students. But I hope the profession can start seeing all the advantages and opportunities that can come from more direct control over the creation of historical content in new media.