A belated thanks to history hacker William Turkel for posting a Roundup of Digital History Blogs, this one among them. I’m humbled by the company. There were a number I hadn’t seen before: all the more to keep up with, I guess. A pleasant burden. I’ve updated my blog links to add several for routine viewing.

Dr Turkel says we don’t have enough for a carnival – but how about if we stretch to include manifestoes and forth-holding; journals, umbrellas, and fora; how-to‘s and workshops; hints to coming attractions; not to mention articles, ‘papers‘ or news items on the techno-classroom, academic initiatives, public history, personal archives, wikiHistory, learning with primary sources, etc.

OK, so these don’t technically make a blog carnival …

I am pleased to see Laurie’s “This Week in the Blogs” survey on CWi. Thanks to Drew for putting the word out. It’s great to see how an outside reader sees what we do. It’ll probably help new readers find us, too.

In the inaugural edition Laurie notes that, in commenting on the JFK Library digitizing records, I used

some geek-talk , as in “…proprietary software platforms or storage formats, but trust that core data will be available to the end users in standard web-friendly formats like .txt, .xml, .pdf, .jpg.”

Such things are important even for those of us who are not as geeky as we ought to be.

I apologize for the jargon. I’ll watch out for that in future.

To translate the snippet quoted above:

I am worried that the JFK Library will create digital records that can be read only by people using EMC products, but expect they would also make the information available to the public in standard formats all of our browsers can read.

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While I’m at it … the CWi blog listing on Link Central says of behind AotW that we

get into some very interesting, albeit scholarly, issues.

“Scholarly” usually means stiff, pedantic, even dry and uninteresting. It also suggests a subject of interest only to academics. I am a life-long student, and I try to be careful with History, but don’t want to come across as scholarly. Nor would I want to portray doing History on the web in those terms.

I’ll work on that, too.

Big news for practitioners and proponents of Digital History: the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum yesterday announced a massive project to digitize and make available online all of the millions of documents, images, and audio and video recordings in their collection. See more in the Press Release.

Being one of the twelve such Presidential Libraries under the direction of the National Archives (NARA), hints that they might all eventually get this treatment. If they can do it, who else might follow? Keep those cards and letters coming …

JFKL&M is getting help from EMC who are donating hardware and software assistance, estimated to be worth 1 Million $US. Good press and credibility for EMC – more power to them. Featured is the EMC Documentum product – a suite of management and “transformation” tools to support digitizing, data management, and web delivery. I worry a little that this suggests some proprietary software platforms or storage formats, but trust that core data will be available to the end users in standard web-friendly formats like .txt, .xml, .pdf, .jpg.

“The project to digitize the collection is expected to take more than 10 years and will begin with the official papers of President Kennedy”, says the press release.

Keep your eyes on this one as it goes forward. The potential here – for all of us – is enormous.

OK, so what do I think Digital History is, exactly?

Digital History (DH) is a subset of the field of History the branch of knowledge that records and analyzes past events in which historical information is discovered or created, stored, published, distributed, and/or consumed on interconnected (networked) computers. The products should be universally available and generally accessible.

A Word document on your hard drive isn’t DH: it’s just a work in progress until you publish online. A CDROM archive is just local information unless I can see it on the network. A PowerPoint classroom presentation is just an abomination, not DH.

If I have to pay extra to read your dissertation or query your historical database, by the way, it’s not Digital History, it’s Commerce.

Digital History is a relatively new field, first practical in the early 1980’s with the advent of cheap personal computers. It has been recognized by a measurable number of historians only within the last 10 years, or so.

In earlier years DH relied on portable media (floppy disk, videodisc, CDROM) for publication and distribution. These have since been made obsolete by the ubiquitous nature of the Internet. The proliferation of the network and wide availability of the PC together enable mainstream DH.

DH is not separate from traditional History, nor is it a challenge to the field or its professionals. It offers new tools, techniques, and capabilities to the profession. The fundamental nature of the study of History continues.

DH is used to

• Teach: guide students to resources (analog and digital); distribute classroom materials to geographically diverse students; share resources with other teachers; visit historical sites and sources virtually,
• Research: find and use digitized primary source materials; do peer review; keep current with advances in the field; use software to mine and analyze data sources, and
• Publish, Preserve, and Share: publish findings online for easy access and peer interaction; archive and organize born-digital information; convert and store historical documents and artifacts digitally; capture and serve current events (tomorrow’s history).

I’ll explore further in future posts in the series [see intro].
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More on doing Digital History:

• Cohen and Rosenzweig: DH Promises and Perils (from how-to guide)
• George Mason’s incubator: the CHNM
• Virginia’s VCDH – another early adopter
• Turkel: Doing Digital History (for example, from Hacks)
• Smith: DH Destined for the Dustbin?
• Bateman, Brennan, Mudd, and Petrik: digital cameras in the archive
• Rosenzweig: scholarship for free?
• Lee: DH in the classroom
• Robertson: History in Hypertext
• Anderson: digital maps and history
• Talbot: fading memory of the State
  

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Source for “the branch of knowledge that records and analyzes past events” is Merriam-Webster, Online Dictionary