What Is Digital History?

After reading the introduction and the first chapter in Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, I broadly (and simply) consider digital history to be all forms of digital media that contribute to history. This obviously encompasses a large amount of materials and includes media that is used for research and presentation. The fact that digital history is so much directs us towards some of the main points discussed within the reading. First, while digital history is beneficial, there are some trade-offs that must be considered. In regard to its own history, digital history developed slowly at first, then (as with most technology) began expanding exponentially.

While the book specifically points out seven possible positives and five negatives of digital history, I'm going to focus on what I thought was interesting. So, what is digital history? As mentioned above, digital history takes many forms: videos, sounds, articles...the list could most likely continue with no end. It also takes different forms in regard to what kind of storage is selected, which brings up issues of preservation throughout time. Yet, digital history is more than that. It's also the ability to communicate with other historians, or utilize information, from the other side of the world while sitting at your desk. It is being able to quickly and efficiently find various kinds of sources. It is the possibility for interaction and exciting, nonlinear methods of disseminating information. It is a fantastic tool!

The deeper I read into this book (and the article "Digital Age Presents New Problems for Historians"), the more I felt very biased. The authors in the book seem to maintain a balance of the positives and negatives of digital history, and that article goes straight into a surplus of perceived issues. I think the beneficial aspects greatly outweigh the trade-offs. Maybe that's just me being a product of my generation. Maybe not. It seems many of the negatives the authors in Digital History focus on were issues within history before the creation of digital history, and the authors point this out. I admit digital history has exacerbated issues of authenticity and created somewhat new problems with inaccessibility and durability, but I also believe we now have more tools at our disposal to combat these issues. Before the digital age, historians found methods to work against the problems that arose, and I think digital history is simply a new form of this. Historians just need to stretch their techniques to include those that  minimize problems working in the digital age. We have programs that can aid us in figuring out whether or not a photograph is legit or not. We still have the same reasoning and logic that we used before the internet to separate good sources from bad ones, along with Google, which gives us the option of further investigating a source. I planned on delving deeper into all the problems from both texts, but I don't want to spend all my time on that! The topic of solutions would be great for class discussion.

Moving into the first chapter, the authors give a history of digital history. I noticed that like most technology, digital history and the internet started off rather slowly, then exploded into production. I found it interesting that amateur historians were the first to participate in creating digital history. For some reason, this concept makes me further ponder who should preserve digital history, and what should be preserved? I'm thinking this much should probably be decided by academics...nevertheless, digital history is in a very different state than it was in 1993, and I'm looking forward to seeing its future states. While I think digital history can be a bit complex, I don't think it's as complicated and challenging as it's made out to be. I view digital history as an endless possibility, and I hope HIST 6330 will confirm this!