The Evolving World of Digital History: Implications for Historians and their Practices

Transforming the intellectual landscape of historians is the rapid emerging and ever evolving technological developments within the field of history. The  wave of new social media,  increase access to research databases and  new ways of publishing traditional historic material are creating rapid changes in how historians practice and think about history.  Reviewing the articles on the American Historical Association  (http://www.historians.org/index.cfm) website gave me a very concise overview of the plethora of issues and changes facing historians in the digital age.

            Key highlights which were  interesting to me focused on teaching methods. Examining  David Voelker article  gave one insights into ways in which  new teaching pedagogies are being shape by technology.  David Voelker in “Blogging for your Students” suggest digital history practices are allowing him to have more interactive classroom  discussions and more efficiently guide reading assignments.   Using blogs as a reading prompt seems to be an effective way to engage students to think critically and make them become more active readers.  I can personally understand the value using blogs to facilitate  reading comprehension development within historical subject areas because the input from professors and reading prompts can help you navigate through difficult reading material. I know when I took a history class on Slavery, my professor blog which had some definitions of important terms made the reading assignment easier for me to understand.    Besides, assisting scholars with coming up with innovative teaching methods to enhance their impact on students learning digital history is impacting scholars on a personal, intellectual level.

            The emergence of digital history allows scholars more collaborative way to interact with other scholars and to reach new audiences. As discussed in “ H- Net: Digital Discussion for Historians”  H-Net  (http://www.h-net.org/) is a convenient way for historians  to post and exchange ideas,  to moderate discussions groups and  to list scholarly references.  In my personal examination of this site, I was overwhelm by the amount of topics and discussion groups.  Freeing scholars from the traditional modes of publication (print journals and books) I think is one of the most profound impacts of digital history innovations for the individual history scholar. Many more historians can participate in the public discourse of history related subjects.  Digital history allows historians the ability to publish directly to the web using outlets such as blogs, wiki’s and the growing amount of online historic journal sites. These methods allow more scholars to participate in the publishing process and  bypass some of the stifling and political referee journal publications with all there rigid rules and self selected editors.  The freeing of the scholar from the academic plantation of traditional publishing and tenure methods, I think is one of the most important and rewarding elements of coming from the new field of digital history.   

 

Notes

 

An Editor note, History and the Changing Landscape of Information, http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0705/0705tec1.cfm. Accessed October 11. 2012.

Matthew Gilmore,  H-Net: Digital Discussion for Historians, available at http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0705/0705tec1.cfm. Accessed October 11, 2012.

David Voleker, Bloging for Students, available at http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0705/0705tec7.cfm. Acessed October 11, 2012.