During class on Monday, May 18, we were lucky enough to have Dan Cohen (Director of George Mason’s Center for History and New Media (CHNM) and co-author of Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web) speak to us about digital history and its effects on the the discipline of history as a whole.

In Digital History, Dan and his co-author Roy Rosenzweig make the point that, in order for digital history projects to ultimately “be all that they can be,” there need to be some methods and standardization. In class, however, we also discussed the importance of flexibility in digital history work. For many reasons, digital history content simply cannot adhere to the same standards as traditional historical scholarship. These reasons include the medium for digital history work (the internet) as well as the types of projects undertaken by digital historians. For example, when CHNM undertook the September 11 Archive, they quickly realized that the archive would not succeed if modeled on traditional, non-digital archives. Not only would users not be likely to fill out a cumbersome form when making their contributions, but there was also no easy way to verify much of the incoming content. Perhaps most importantly, CHNM staff wanted to get the archive off the ground as soon as possible in order to quickly begin collecting objects and stories. Hearing Dan talk about his experiences with projects such as this one truly demonstrated the importance of flexibility in digital history work– taking smart risks can certainly pay off. Historians doing digital work must still strive to be as thorough and competent as they would be for a non-digital project, but perhaps by learning to sweat the small stuff less and taking reasonable risks, historians can achieve new things as they learn by doing through digital projects.

Our discussion about the possibilities of digital history naturally led us to discuss some of the difficulties surrounding such projects. While most people now acknowledge the potential of digital history, such projects cannot be easily evaluated through the standards traditionally used by historians–namely, peer review. Standards are certainly important, but as projects such as the September 11 Archive or other digital undertakings demonstrate, new standards must be developed to properly evaluate and ultimately improve digital history. Using traditional standards to evaluate digital projects is like comparing apples and oranges. Digital history and social media have enormous potential but they also break down barriers, and this can be scary and lead to resistance from some. In order for digital history projects to fulfill their potential, digital historians will have to become (in the words of Dan Cohen) “thought leaders” working together to develop standards, inspire new projects, and hopefully change some long-standing traditions within the field of history.

See also: Dan Cohen’s article, “The Future of Preserving the Past.” Many thanks to Dan for taking the time to visit our class!