readings of the week

What a busy week!! This week we have a practical piece from Roy Rosensweig called Digital History. He gives a step by step account of how to create a history website. In the process he discusses many of the issues that affect such sites. The problems are widespread, and include technology, storage, copyright, and other such issues unique to the proliferation of the internet. But Rosensweig fails to outright discuss what is perhaps the largest internet problem, that of authenticity. What distinguishes an article on the Holocaust from an article on Holocaust denial? In print that would be done by the medium in which the article is written. On the internet this is much more difficult to discover. That is the service given by the “gatekeepers” that Rosensweig and other historians so maligns. Perhaps a solution does exist, some sort of compromise between the for-profit companies and the presumably not-for-profit journals that they come from.

Digital History is a few years old, which isn’t usually a problem in the subject of history, but since this book describes the internet time passes much more quickly. In the words of Jeffrey Wasserstrom time on the internet is in “dog years”. Blogging—just beginning at the publication of the book has become an extremely popular form of communication. Jeffrey Wasserstrom describes this on Intersections: History and New Media in an essay called “The Mythology of Blogs: A Top Ten List for the Uninitiated Historians”. He explains various misconceptions about blogs including that they are not necessarily amateurish, nor the sole purview of younger people.

History websites need not be the normal journal articles or even blogs. While Rosensweig provides a template for a “standard” history website, others have done things that are extremely interesting and unique. Lisa Rosner has turned to a technology much like Google’s street view and developed an interesting way of exhibiting history. On her website (burkeandhare.com) one can take a tour of the 19th century city as it appeared to those involved. The problem with this, and all good internet products is that they are quite expensive. The technology required also often need specialized knowledge, and possibly the hiring of a specialist to do the work for you.

The digital turn is not a fad, it is the future, but the work required is specialized and difficult. Blogs such as mine and my classmates are an interesting project, but a simple one considering the possibilities that could be achieved. A historian must also be technologically trained today to function.