Comments (0) Just a quick post to let everyone know that my final project for digital history is nearing completion (well, at least for now). My final project is entitled Personal Liberty in Antebellum America: The Fugutive Slave Crisis and the Coming of the Civil War, and I intend to keep developing the site beyond just this summer as time allows. Feel free to let me know what you think so far.
Digital history challenges much of traditional historical practice. From its form of communication (websites, digital archives, and online exhibits vs. traditional print books and in-person museum experiences) to the challenges it poses for long-standing traditions such as peer review, digital history has far-reaching implications for the discipline as a whole. Generally speaking, academics (historians being no exception) have very specific standards for what constitutes “good” historical work, and these characteristics have changed little over many, many years. However, with the rise first of public history and with the more recent rise of digital history, historians are being forced to consider shared authority and open source work more seriously than they ever have before. In an article entitled, “Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past,” Roy Rosenzweig questions how far professional historians can and should go in embracing open sources such as Wikipedia.
In his study of Wikipedia, he finds that the online encyclopedia ‘“beats Encarta but not American National Biography Online in coverage and roughly matches Encarta in accuracy. This general conclusion is supported by studies comparing Wikipedia to other major encyclopedias.” Where Wikipedia lacks, in Rosenzweig’s view, is in writing, and he believes this is largely due to the synthetic, collaborative nature of the writing. Rosenzweig acknowledges that many academic historians are rather hostile towards Wikipedia, either because they view it as unreliable (which his study dispoves) or perhaps because they are unsure of how to deal with a model that differs so greatly from traditional historic scholarship. Rosenzweig also makes the point that Wikipedia is ultimately an information source (as are all enxyclopedias) and is inherently different from more subjective, interpretive works of history and historical theory. Wikipedia should inspire all historians to teach their students the limitations of encyclopedic sources, but this doesn’t mean that Wikipedia isn’t a reliable source just because it differs from more traditional historical sources.
Where Rosenzweig really hits his stride is when he questions why other sources of historical knowledge (such as JSTOR or other subscription-based repositories) aren’t available to there general public in the way that Wikipedia is. Sources such as the American National Biography Online, “written by professional historians, sponsored by our scholarly societies, and supported by millions of dollars in foundation and government grants…[are] available only to libraries that often pay thousands of dollars per year rather than to everyone on the Web as Wikipedia is…Shouldn’t professional historians join in the massive democratization of access to knowledge reflected by Wikipedia and the Web in general?” Historians, Rosenzweig argues, should also be participating in ventures such as Wikipedia in order to improve the site’s content and educate Americans who will interact with history on these types of open source sites (and likely not anywhere else that professional historians will be publishing their work). Furthermore, Rosenzweig argues, “Although Wikipedia as a product is problematic as a sole source of information, the process of creating Wikipedia fosters an appreciation of the very skills that historians try to teach.”
Clearly, Rosenzweig’s article is chock-full of valuable information that seriously challenges the way historians approach their work in this new digital age. He is also very realistic about the opportunities and problems involved with digital work, but tries to make a distinction between Wikipedia-type history vs. more traditional forms of historical scholarship. There will always be a place for interpretive, academic works of history, but historians would also be doing themselves a disservice by ignoring the rise of the Wikipedia world of history. By involving themselves in both the academic world of history as well as the public, open source world of history, historians can improve the work in both spheres. Although he is clearly unsure as to how interaction between the two spheres will work out in terms of details, Rosenzweig clearly doesn’t believe that historians can ignore the world of Wikipedia: “And whether or not historians consider alternative models for producing their own work, they should pay closer attention to their erstwhile competitors at Wikipedia than Microsoft devoted to worrying about an obscure free and open-source operating system called Linux. ”
For more on history as an open source, see Kevin Sheets, “Wiki in the Historical Classroom.” Additionally, for more information on digital tools and sources, see the Digital Resources Tools Wiki. I wrote a review of CiteULike.
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!
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