Digital history: Difference between revisions
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In 1994, Rosenzweig founded the [[Center for History and New Media]] (CHMN) at George Mason University. Today, CHNM boasts several digital tools available to historians, such as Zotero and Omeka [http://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/index.php]. In 1997, Ed Ayers and William G. Thomas III coin the term “digital history” when they proposed and founded the Virginia Center for Digital History (VCDH) in 1997 [http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/index.php?page=VCDH], the earliest center devoted exclusively to history <ref>[http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/30]</ref>. Several other institutions promoting digital history include the Center for Humane, Arts, Letters, and Sciences Online (MATRIX) [http://matrix.msu.edu/] at Michigan State University, Maryland's Institute for Technology in the Humanities [http://www.mith2.umd.edu/], and the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities [http://cdrh.unl.edu/] at the University of Nebraska. In 2004, Emory University launched Southern Spaces, a "peer-reviewed Internet journal and scholarly forum" examining the history of the South. [http://www.southernspaces.org/] |
In 1994, Rosenzweig founded the [[Center for History and New Media]] (CHMN) at George Mason University. Today, CHNM boasts several digital tools available to historians, such as Zotero and Omeka [http://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/index.php]. In 1997, Ed Ayers and William G. Thomas III coin the term “digital history” when they proposed and founded the Virginia Center for Digital History (VCDH) in 1997 [http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/index.php?page=VCDH], the earliest center devoted exclusively to history <ref>[http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/30]</ref>. Several other institutions promoting digital history include the Center for Humane, Arts, Letters, and Sciences Online (MATRIX) [http://matrix.msu.edu/] at Michigan State University, Maryland's Institute for Technology in the Humanities [http://www.mith2.umd.edu/], and the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities [http://cdrh.unl.edu/] at the University of Nebraska. In 2004, Emory University launched Southern Spaces, a "peer-reviewed Internet journal and scholarly forum" examining the history of the South. [http://www.southernspaces.org/] |
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== Notable Projects and Practitioners == |
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The collaborative nature of most digital history endeavors has meant that the discipline has developed primarily at institutions with the resources to sponsor content research and technical innovation. As noted above, two of the first centers, George Mason University's [[Center for History and New Media]] and the [[http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/index.php?page=VCDH] Virginia Center for Digital History] at the University of Virginia, have been among the leaders in the development of digital history projects and the education of digital historians. |
The collaborative nature of most digital history endeavors has meant that the discipline has developed primarily at institutions with the resources to sponsor content research and technical innovation. As noted above, two of the first centers, George Mason University's [[Center for History and New Media]] and the [[http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/index.php?page=VCDH] Virginia Center for Digital History] at the University of Virginia, have been among the leaders in the development of digital history projects and the education of digital historians. |
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Some of the noteworthy projects emerging from these pioneering centers are The [[The Valley of the Shadow]] Project, [http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/index.html The |
Some of the noteworthy projects emerging from these pioneering centers are The [[The Valley of the Shadow]] Project, The Geography of Slavery [http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/index.html], The Texas Slavery Project [http://www.texasslaveryproject.org/], and The Countryside Transformed [http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/eshore/] at VCDH and Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution [http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/] and The Lost Museum [http://www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/intro.html] at the CHNM. In each of these projects, mediated archives holding multiple types of sources are combined with digital tools to analyze and illuminate an historical question to a varying degree; this integration of content and tools with analysis is one of the hallmarks of digital history – projects move beyond archives or collections and into scholarly analysis and the use of digital tools to develop that analysis. The differences between the ways projects incorporate these integrations are a measure of the development of the field and point to the ongoing debates over what digital history can and should be. |
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While many of the projects at VCDH, CHNM, and other university centers have been geared towards academics and post-secondary education, the [[University of Victoria]] (British Columbia), in conjunction with the [[Université de Sherbrooke]] and the [[Ontario Institute for Studies in Education]] at the University of Toronto, has created as series of projects for all ages, [[http://canadianmysteries.ca/indexen.html "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History |
While many of the projects at VCDH, CHNM, and other university centers have been geared towards academics and post-secondary education, the [[University of Victoria]] (British Columbia), in conjunction with the [[Université de Sherbrooke]] and the [[Ontario Institute for Studies in Education]] at the University of Toronto, has created as series of projects for all ages, [[http://canadianmysteries.ca/indexen.html "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" [http://canadianmysteries.ca/indexen.html]. Laden with instructional aids, this site asks teachers to introduce students to historical research methods to help them develop analytical skills and a sense of the complexities of their national history. Issues of race, religion, and gender are addressed in carefully constructed modules that cover incidents in Canadian history from Viking exploration through the 1920s. One of the original co-creators of the project, John Lutz [http://web.uvic.ca/~jlutz/], has also developed Victoria’s Victoria [http://web.uvic.ca/vv/] with the University of Victoria and [[Malaspina University-College]]. |
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== Technology == |
== Technology == |
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This article will contain information about the field of Digital History. References http://digitalhistory.unl.edu/ Digital History site at University of Nebraska, Lincoln http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/ Center for History and New Media, George Mason University http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/PastsFutures.html Virginia Center for Digital History http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/essay.php?id=34 "History and the Second Decade of the Web" by Dan Cohen http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/essay.php?id=30 "American Digital History" by Orville Vernon Burton --Dougseefeldt (talk) 22:04, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
History
The early development of digital history focused on software rather than online networks. In 1982, the Library of Congress embarked on its Optical Disk Pilot Project, which placed text and images from its collection on to laserdiscs and CD-ROMs. The library started offering online exhibits in 1992 when it launched Selected Civil War Photographs [1]. In 1993, Roy Rosenzweig, along with Steve Brier and Josh Brown, produced their award-winning CD-ROM Who Built America? From the Centennial Exposition of 1876 to the Great War of 1914, designed for Apple, Inc that integrated images, text, film and sound clips, displayed in a visual interface that supported a text narrative [1].
Among the earliest online digital history projects was The Valley of the Shadow, conceived by Ed Ayers at the University of Virginia in 1991. The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) at the University of Virginia adopted the Valley Project and partnered with IBM to collect and transcribe historical sources into digital files. The project collected data related to Ayers County in Virginia and Franklin County in Pennsylvania during the American Civil War. In 1996, William G. Thomas III joined Ayers on the Valley Project. Together, they produced an online article entitled “The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities,” which also appeared in the American Historical Review in 2003 [2]. A CD-ROM also accompanied the Valley Project, published by Norton in 2000 [2].
In 1994, Rosenzweig founded the Center for History and New Media (CHMN) at George Mason University. Today, CHNM boasts several digital tools available to historians, such as Zotero and Omeka [3]. In 1997, Ed Ayers and William G. Thomas III coin the term “digital history” when they proposed and founded the Virginia Center for Digital History (VCDH) in 1997 [4], the earliest center devoted exclusively to history [3]. Several other institutions promoting digital history include the Center for Humane, Arts, Letters, and Sciences Online (MATRIX) [5] at Michigan State University, Maryland's Institute for Technology in the Humanities [6], and the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities [7] at the University of Nebraska. In 2004, Emory University launched Southern Spaces, a "peer-reviewed Internet journal and scholarly forum" examining the history of the South. [8]
Notable Projects and Practitioners
The collaborative nature of most digital history endeavors has meant that the discipline has developed primarily at institutions with the resources to sponsor content research and technical innovation. As noted above, two of the first centers, George Mason University's Center for History and New Media and the [[9] Virginia Center for Digital History] at the University of Virginia, have been among the leaders in the development of digital history projects and the education of digital historians.
Some of the noteworthy projects emerging from these pioneering centers are The The Valley of the Shadow Project, The Geography of Slavery [10], The Texas Slavery Project [11], and The Countryside Transformed [12] at VCDH and Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution [13] and The Lost Museum [14] at the CHNM. In each of these projects, mediated archives holding multiple types of sources are combined with digital tools to analyze and illuminate an historical question to a varying degree; this integration of content and tools with analysis is one of the hallmarks of digital history – projects move beyond archives or collections and into scholarly analysis and the use of digital tools to develop that analysis. The differences between the ways projects incorporate these integrations are a measure of the development of the field and point to the ongoing debates over what digital history can and should be.
While many of the projects at VCDH, CHNM, and other university centers have been geared towards academics and post-secondary education, the University of Victoria (British Columbia), in conjunction with the Université de Sherbrooke and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, has created as series of projects for all ages, ["Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" [http://canadianmysteries.ca/indexen.html. Laden with instructional aids, this site asks teachers to introduce students to historical research methods to help them develop analytical skills and a sense of the complexities of their national history. Issues of race, religion, and gender are addressed in carefully constructed modules that cover incidents in Canadian history from Viking exploration through the 1920s. One of the original co-creators of the project, John Lutz [15], has also developed Victoria’s Victoria [16] with the University of Victoria and Malaspina University-College.
Technology
Digital technology tools powerfully arrange ideas and promote unique analysis for the presentation and access to historical knowledge online. Some tools exist for basic web development, like WYSIWYG HTML-editor Adobe Dreamweaver. Other tools create more interactive digital history, such as Databases, which provide greater capacity for information storage and retrieval in a definable way. Databases with features like Structured Query Language (SQL) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) arrange materials in a formal manner and allow precise searching for keywords, dates, and other data characteristics. The online article “The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities” used XML for presenting and connecting evidence with detailed historiographical discussions. The Valley of the Shadow project also employed XML to convert all of the archive’s letters, diaries, and newspapers for full text searching capabilities[17].
“The Differences Slavery Made” also used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyze and understand the spatial arrangement of social structures. For the article, Edward L. Ayers and William G. Thomas created many new maps through GIS technology to produce detailed images of Augusta and Franklin counties never before possible [18]. GIS and its many components remain helpful for studying history and visualizing change over time.
The Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments (SIMILE) project at MIT develops robust, open source tools that enable access, management, and envisaging digital assets[19]. Among the many tools built by SIMILE, the Timeline tool, which employs a DHTML-based AJAXy widget, allows digital historians to create dynamic, customizable timelines for visualizing time-based events. The Timeline page on the SIMILE website declares that their tool “is like Google Maps for time-based information [20].” Additionally, SIMILE’s Exhibit tool boasts a customizable structure for sorting and presenting data[21]. Exhibit, written in Javascript, creates interactive, data-rich web pages without the need for any programming or database creation knowledge[22].
Creating visualizations of textual elements open new interpretations and new uses of historical data. Text-analysis software like TokenX, developed at the University of Nebraska’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, generates word-frequency lists and word clouds to illustrate language usage and word significance within historical resources[23]. The Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) based in Canada has also developed a web portal for experimentation with text analysis tools. On del.icio.us, an online bookmarking and research tool, tag clouds visually depict the frequency and importance of user-generated tags. These tags promote new modes of learning, exploration, research, and communication that foster the production of knowledge in a more efficient manner by elucidating related subjects and making connections based on related information[24].
A principal trend in recent computing is the increase for research online, and a commensurate use of digital tools to categorize scholarly resources. Daniel J. Cohen, Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University and the Director of the Center for History and New Media, recently called for a more sophisticated method to organize the vast amount of research and information online[25]. Answering his own call, Cohen developed a new research tool, Zotero, which makes it easy to gather, organize, annotate, search, and cite materials found online and off. At George Mason’s Center for History and New Media other research, teaching, and presentation tools that allow collecting and interpreting history in new and imaginative ways are available or under construction at their tools center[26].