Here's the essay I wrote for digital histories assignment. I think it wouldn't do Blogger any harm to put an attachment button in the toolbar, it would probably make this post look a lot more bite-size, and bite-size is good.
Also, I'd like to add; to anyone from class, I'm not not following other people's blogs because I'm rude. I'm not following people's blogs because I think Blogger has a pretty crummy interface, and I don't know how!
How does the digital change the nature
of history writing?
A number of historical writers have described books as
“comfortable”. In the Introduction to
Nawrotzki and Dougherty’s Writing History
in the Digital Age, they say this is because historians are skilled in
writing in the traditional long-argument book format and comfortable in reading
and evaluating others’ works in the same arrangement.[1]
William Thomas argues in his essay about
writing digital history journal articles, that; with the emergence of a new
digital medium, historical writers need to set aside what they find comfortable.
Otherwise they will never truly understand how to communicate in this new form
of scholarly communication, as the processes and conventions of this new
digital format are yet to be defined. Thomas also recognises the importance of
harnessing the ‘openness’ of the digital medium, as it permits historians to
create vibrant new scholarship and speak to a new generation of students. [2]
and Dougherty have gone beyond the conventions of
typical historical writing, by making their work available as both a printed
book, and in the form of a website. In doing
this they highlight some major advantages in online publishing; the most
prominent of these advantages is the ability to continuously re-edit their
work, without the need for expensive and time-consuming re-issuing of their
work by the publisher. Since their work is largely made up of a collection of
essays by a number of historians this feature becomes increasingly more
valuable when considering that readers can comment not just on every essay, but
on each paragraph within each essay. This gives each historian who is part of
Nawrotzki and Dougherty’s project the ability to revise each phase of their
writing, allowing for infinitely more user interaction than from a printed book
alone. Effectively; allowing their students to help evaluate and write their
pieces.
Crowdsourcing is a method of historical writing that numerous
digital histories are greatly benefiting from. It is defined by Estellés and
González as a type of participative online activity in which: through an open
call, an individual or institution proposes to an unknown and unspecified
group, the voluntary undertaking of a task. The group, or ‘crowd’, then uses
their work, knowledge, experience, and sometimes money in order to propose a
solution. The method is mutually beneficial, as the crowd will receive some
form of satisfaction, whereas the commissioner, or ‘crowd-sourcer’, is able to
benefit from, and make use of the crowd’s contributions to the project.[3]
Though the term ‘crowdsourcing’ was only coined in 2006[4],
the implementation of the process has been going on a lot longer, and even saw
the birth of the Oxford English Dictionary.[5]
Today, the most popular product of crowdsourcing is the website wikipedia.org,[6]
and in most respects, there is very little difference in the way this online
encyclopaedia gathered its information to the way the OED did. Both required
the submissions of a large number of unpaid volunteers. This suggests that
crowdsourcing as a method doesn’t change the nature of historical writing; only
the medium we witness though is different.
However one of the key aspects of the information gathered was the
time it took to do so. The OED received over 6 million submissions over a 70
year timespan. Wikipedia on the other hand contains over 21 million articles (a
number that is continuing to grow), whilst it has only been active 11 years.
The contrast between the times taken to create these two projects is
interesting, as both effectively used the same method (albeit some difference
in implementation). The difference shows that by using digital tools, crowdsourced
projects (in this case historical writing) can be produced at a much faster
rate than those using traditional tools.
Though there are many benefits of using crowdsourcing to write
history, it can be problematic, and does come under some criticism. History
professor Roy Rosenzweig criticises the written
quality of articles on Wikipedia. Because of the site’s neutrality policy,
Rosenzweig feels as though some of the articles end up “waffling”, in the
search for a balanced point of view, and it is Rosenzweig’s opinion that clear
and engaging prose is an essential factor in historical writing. Essentially, Rosenzweig’s
argument is that: “too many chefs spoil the broth”. For Rosenzweig historical
writing (particularly online) is something that is best left for the
professionals, who can take a stance on history, and defend it if neccessary. [7]On
the other hand, Leslie Madsen-Brooks argues that by
using the digital revolution to open up historical writing to the general
public, amateur historians and other professionals, it is becoming ever easier
to access growing pools of primary source materials and opening avenues for
exciting and sometimes challenging interpretations of those sources.[8]
Blogging as a framework for historical writing is
created in a much different manner to crowdsourcing. Blogs are
usually the work of one person, and are usually based on a themed subject.
Andrea Lawrence identifies
a number of dilemmas with using a digital medium like web blogs to
present long-form history. The first problem she finds with the online
publishing of history is that: websites aren’t supposed to be long-winded. Another
problem she was concerned with was the realisation that people don’t read in a
linear fashion online, as they do with an article or book. With these problems
in mind, Lawrence draws attention to the digital medium’s ability to
incorporate multimedia to combat wordy accounts.[9]
The battle against these wordy accounts is intensified with the
web’s implementation of micro-blogging. Today’s most highly used micro-blogging
website, Twitter limits
users to 140 characters per ‘tweet’ (blog).
Though some may argue this simply isn’t enough space to provide readers
with a half-decent display of historical writing; a deeper dive into some
historical micro-blogs suggests otherwise. User @RealTimeWWII uses the
site, not only to micro-blog, but also live blog. Their tweets are sent out to
coincide with the exact dates and times of events happening in 1940 during in
the Second World War. Though not overly descriptive, the tweets are often
accompanied by images, and other forms of multimedia, in order to give the
reader an understanding and insight into events that happened precisely 72
years ago to the day. There are numerously similar projects on Twitter,
including tweets from famous historical figures diaries etc. on the
corresponding dates, as well as an abundance of spoof and parody accounts. In
this way, historical blogs can be used not only to inform their readers, but
also to entertain them. The limited nature of blogging forces historical
writers to be creative with what they produce. This combined with the many ways
to facilitate the use of a range of multimedia options allow historical writing
to be as creative as possible.
Creativity is arguably one of the most essential features when
looking at historical writing in the form of a blog; as a blog seeks to earn a
historical writer their own returning readership. This is because unlike, a
traditional history book, a blog can constantly be updated, essentially
allowing a writer to share his research with his audience, as he goes along. In
this way, the digital changes the nature of historical writing, as it distances
history from the past and makes history part of the present.
With an ever growing number of historical writers opting to use
digital tools and mediums to write and present their work, their researching
and note taking techniques have inevitable had to adapt to a more digital
format. In Reflections
on 10,000 Digital Notecards, history professor Ansley Erickson recalls
her first experiences with using a database to categorise her research in order
to help structure and write her dissertation. By the end of her research she stated that she
had the equivalent of 10,000 notecards on her database. Erickson did not use her
database to revolutionise how she performed her research. Instead, she used a
new tool to do familiar aspects of her research in what she describes as a more
accessible and efficient way. Erickson proposes that the potential value of
database tools goes underappreciated, as users often focus too much on the
programs’ bibliographic and citation management features, as opposed to the way
database packages can have broad impact on how we interact with information.
That said; reference management software, such as Zotero does deserve a special mention when
considering how the digital has changed the nature of historical writing. Like Erickson’s database, these programs are
unlikely to revolutionise the entire nature of historical writing, it does
however take the familiar aspect of referencing and creating a bibliography,
and produces the end result in an infinitely more efficient manner.
For Erickson she explains it wasn’t exactly the nature of
historical writing itself that was changed by her use of databases, but rather the
amount of relevant information that seemed to jump out at her, that could be
easily cross referenced with other information saved elsewhere in the database.[10]
For Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin databases played a similar role in their work. They too
used the likes of Zotero to archive their research, and then transferred it
into their own databases. They felt as though the main advantage of performing
their research in this way was that: they were able to categorise their data,
and analyse it by a number of different criteria such as; dates, geographical
regions, and topical coverage etc. This allowed them to identify
underrepresented areas in their research. This was useful as they were then
able to seek out advice from fellow historians in order to strengthen their own
work.[11]
When looking at Erickson’s essay, and posing the question: how
have digital databases changed the nature of writing history? The answer was
the way in which she was able to interpret data differently. Rather than having
to manually look through all of her findings in order to compose her arguments,
she was able to perform searches within her database to find information, which
she was then able to categorise and cross reference with her other similar
results, effectively letting the arguments construct themselves. In Erickson’s
case it is more that her writing process changed, rather than the nature of her
writing. The nature of Sklar and Dublin’s work on the other hand, can be
considered changed by the digital. As arguably without their use of databases,
they would have been unaware of which areas of their research required more
investigation. The use of the digital therefore changed the nature of their
writing, in that it allowed them to fortify the quality of their work.
As mentioned when discussing blogs earlier, the digital medium
allows for so much more than text to teach history. There is a wealth of
multimedia, such as videos, images, visualisations etc. to combine with
historical prose, which serves to keep readers not only informed, but excited
about history. When writing about 1920s
Harlem, Stephen Robertson found that using digital visual aids in the form of
maps, forced him to reshape
his historical analysis. He claims this was because after using
geospatial tools to help interpret and redefine the maps he was using to base
his research on, he found that places and events often overlapped each other.
Robertson assigns that his thinking was re-evaluated to the fact that Geospatial
tools involve not only maps but also databases. The importance of this is that
it allowed Robertson to integrate material from a range of different sources.[12]
Robertson emphasised the significance of this to his research by introducing
Karen Kemp’s assertion that when assigning a geographic reference to data, “it
then becomes possible to compare event[s]… with others that exist or have
existed in the same geographic space. What were previously unrelated
facts become integrated and correlated.”[13]
One of the most important aspects of Robertson’s use of multimedia
is its interactivity. The user can manipulate the historian’s research, so they
can find precisely what they are looking for. Another notable project that allows
the user to control exactly what part of a historian’s research they are seeing
is Gapminder. Hans Rosling’s
work, such as Wealth & Health
of Nations allows users to select very specific
details of the Rosling’s study, and witness it in the form of info graphic. Without
being in a digital form, neither Robertson’s or Rosling’s work would have the
same effect. By pandering to traditional historical writing procedures and
displaying static images printed as appendices, would serve to completely
devalue their work. For history to be interactive, it is essential that they
are in a digital form.
By Robertson’s own admission, the
digital format of his work changed the nature of his historical writing, as it
gave him an unforeseen insight into the correlation between the history he was
trying to convey, and other its relationship to other histories from that area.
Gapminder’s digital format on the other hand allowed Rosling to assess his
research data, in order to predict upcoming trends; essentially not just
writing history, but using the past to predict the future.
In this essay I have addressed just a
few of the many ways history is being created and presented in a digital form.
From examining these digital histories it is clear that; though some things
remain the same with some historical writing, digital mediums have also changed
the nature of others. Though some argue that not all these changes are for the
better; it cannot be denied that the digital has the ability to make historical
writing more: immediate, superior, interactive, efficient, accessible, and creative.
[4] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2007/03/01/8402019/index.htm Date Accessed: 11/04/2012.
[5] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-01/13/the-oxford-english-wiktionary Date Accessed: 11/04/2012.
[7] Rosenzweig, R. (June 2006). "Can History be Open Source?
Wikipedia and the Future of the Past". The Journal of American History
93 (1): 117–146. Available
online via: http://chnm.gmu.edu/essays-on-history-new-media/essays/?essayid=42 Date Accessed: 11/04/2012.
[8] http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/crowdsourcing/madsen-brooks-2012-spring/ Date Accessed: 11/04/2012.
[11] http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/data/creating-meaning-in-a-sea-of-databases-sklar-dublin/ Date Accessed: 11/04/2012.
[13] Kemp,
K.K. (2012). Geographic Information Science and Spatial Analysis for the
Humanities. In D. Bodenhamer, T. Harris & J. Corrigan (Eds.), The
Spatial Humanities: Indiana University Press.
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