Tonight marked our last discussion class.  We talked about the future of digital history: challenges and opportunities.  We also workshop-ed student exhibits for the Atlanta Rail Corridor Archive.  More detailed notes follow.

Digital History Class Notes Week Thirteen

April 14, 2015

4:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

• The Future of Digital History
  • Has technology transformed historical writing (and presentation) and if so, how?
    • Creators
      • Collaboration
      • Streamlining the writing process.
      • Nonlinear writing
        • Jumping from section to section
    • Products
      • Interactive online exhibits
        • User has some control over their experience
        • Changing temporal experience
      • Not just hard-copy
        • endless copies
      • Changing availability and presentation of sources
        • Changes our use of sources and expectations for readers/visitors
    • Processes (tools)
      • Email
      • Dropbox (file sharing)
    • Content
      • How do you make arguments non-linearly?
      • Constraints on entry have changed, even if your desire to tell a story hasn’t.
      • Making arguments— with multiple access points.
  • Is the digital turn in historical scholarship truly novel?
    • Is digital history inherently public history?
      • No— you can put a scholarly work online with open access, but if you don’t write it for a public audience, popular audiences probably won’t engage with it.
    • What are the possible futures for collaboration?
      • Academia still focused on the production of monographs
  • Publication futures
    • How did Writing History in the Digital Age encourage public comment on the book in progress?
    • What next for historical publishing?
      • Authors
      • Reviewers
      • Publishers
      • Libraries/repositories
  • Historical research
    • Big data
      • How will historians access the kind of “big data” collected by companies like Google and Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram?
        • Engage directly with private companies
        • Advocate for legislation to keep certain data in the public interest
        • LoC and Folklife Center trying to preserve digital culture.
      • What new research questions can/should emerge?
  • Audience
    • What roles should social media play in audience engagement?
    • How will historians find and engage audiences in the future?
  • Authenticity
    • What is an authentic resource in the digital age?
  • Material culture and metadataAudience
    • What roles should social media play in audience engagement?
    • How will historians find and engage audiences in the future?
  • Authenticity
  • Sustainability
  • Sustainability
    • How do we preserve the past?
      • Public vs. Private
    • Should historians serve as advocates for open access scholarship, university and government archiving of large cultural phenomena, such as social media?
      • Who do we talk to to advocate?
        • Start with the public– impress upon them the importance of saving cultural heritage.
  • Concluding thoughts
    • Technology changes so fast
    • Windows for writing history are smaller than they use to be.  Retrospection is challenging!

5:00 – 5:10

• Break

5:10 – 5:20

• Group check-in
  • Final assignment
    • Send bug reports!
    • Secure permissions and finalize images
      • New field in permission log letting me know that items are ready to go public.
    • Update items
    • Sign up for conference times
    • Annotated bibliography
      • Email or D2L/Brightspace
    • Grant narrative
      • Email or D2L/Brightspace
    • Final exhibit
      • Omeka Exhibit Builder
      • Neatline
    • Course Evaluations
      • Survey Monkey
    • Final presentation
      • Omeka, Prezi, Powerpoint
      • At the CURVE
      • 10 minutes each with 10-minute break and 10 minutes at the end for questions.
      • Will go in same order as conference sign-ups.

5:20 – 7:00

• Exhibit workshops
• Everyone will have 8 minutes
• I will give everyone admin access for 1 week in order to enable peer review