adaptation or shaping the field: the next phase of digital history

Adaptation or Shaping the Field?THE NEXT PHASE OF DIGITAL HISTORY

SHARON M. LEONDIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROJECTS

ROY ROSENZWEIG CENTER FOR HISTORY AND NEW MEDIA

@SLEONCHNM

“Your Strategy Needs A Strategy”

• A Classical Strategy works well for those operating in predictable and immutable environments.

• An Adaptive Strategy is more flexible and experimental and works far better in immutable environments that are unpredictable.

• A Shaping Strategy is best in unpredictable environments that you have the power to change.

• A Visionary Strategy (the build-it-and-they-will-come approach) is appropriate in predictable environments that you have the power to change.

Reeves, et al. Harvard Business Review (Sept. 2012) 79.

What do we know about the environment for our work?

PREDICTABLE

• Interpretative approaches change

• Resources are scarce

• Individuals are overcommitted

UNPREDICTABLE

• Intellectual Climate

• Infrastructure

• Community support

Humanities Computing

In 1949, Father Roberto Busa convinced IBM founder, Thomas Watson, to apply computer technology to studying the works of Thomas Aquinas.

This work was the precursor of current computational text analysis.

The First Ten Years of the History Web• Archival Sites

• Exhibits, Films, Scholarship, and Essays

• Teaching and Learning Sites

• Discussion and Organizations

Building, Organizing, and Tool Making• 2003-2011: SIMILE project

• 2005: RRCHNM begins work on Zotero (SmartFox)

• 2006: TAPoR 1.0 launches

• 2007: RRCHNM begins work on Omeka

• 2009: Scholars’ Lab begins work on Neatline

• 2009: Library of Congress and Zepheira begin work on Viewshare (Recollection)

Meanwhile, the Great World Spins

Linguistic turn, cultural turn, spatial turn, digital turn, turn, turn, turn….

Digital and the Practice of History• Rob Townsend, “How

is New Media Reshaping the Work of Historians?” Perspectives (November 2010).

• Rutner and Schonfeld, “Supporting the Research Practices of Historians” ITHAKA S+R (December 2012).

Contemporary Digital History Work• Edited collections and repositories

• Computational text analysis

• Data visualization, geospatial and otherwise

• Place-based computing

• Participatory History

It has to answer questions. But yet?Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology? @Foundhistory

(2008):

My difficulty in answering the question “What’s the big idea in history right now?” stems from the fact that, as a digital historian, I traffic much less in new theories than in new methods. The new technology of the Internet has shifted the work of a rapidly growing number of scholars away from thinking big thoughts to forging new tools, methods, materials, techniques, and modes of work which will enable us to harness the still unwieldy, but obviously game-changing, information technologies now sitting on our desktops and in our pockets.

Yes, Now.

What do we have the power to control?

1. The tools we build

2. The sources we share

3. The questions we ask

The Tools We Build

Are they open and extensible?

The Sources We Share

Are they filling the silences?

The Questions We Ask

• Are we asking and answering some questions that look familiar to the larger field using digital methods?

• Are we doing history in public?

• Are we building and doing in combination with theorizing and analyzing?

• Are we engaging in a conversations about perspective, causality, and meaning?

• Are we considering constructions of race and gender and the material realities that go along with them, historically and in our work?

Digital History can shape the field.WE NEED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS. NOW.

Adaptation or Shaping the Field?THE NEXT PHASE OF DIGITAL HISTORY

SHARON M. LEONDIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROJECTS

ROY ROSENZWEIG CENTER FOR HISTORY AND NEW MEDIA

@SLEONCHNM