According to AHA President James Grossman, we have entered an age of ‘Big Data,’ which requires ‘Big History.’[1] This phenomena finds historians tackling large corpuses of data with digital tools, to find new patterns and questions to focus their research. It always requires historians to reexamine their approaches to displaying their research. Working with complex … More Visualizing for the Public
The Old Bailey Project is a Goliath in the world of historic big data sets. Composed of around 125 million words from 197,000 trial records of London’s central court, ranging in date from 1674 to 1913, this project provides amazing potential for textual analysis of historic court records. Though this collection was previously available via … More Mining in the Old Bailey Project
Last week, in preparation for this post, I visited the Indiana State Museum here in Indianapolis for the first time. Though I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, I found the integration of technology rather lacking, especially within the second floor areas concentrating on Indiana’s history. Here, much of the exhibit concentrated on artifacts grouped together by … More Behind the Glass: Ruminations on Digital Interfaces within Two Museums
I have to admit, I left my reading Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps and Trees a bit perplexed. As an inherently visual learner, I have always loved graphs and maps, both as sources and as a unique interpretation for material. However, I got very lost within Moretti’s labyrinth of maps and graphs and his forest of … More Beans, Leaves and Grass: Franco Moretti Lost in Translation
Continually, public historians wrestle with the concept of shared authority, grappling with the notion of where historical authority lies and how audiences participate with sources. Digital history makes breaking these barriers easier, creating endless possibilities for public curation and infinitely more ways to connect with artifacts (albeit on a virtual level).[1] The New York Public … More What Happens When the Public Transcribes? The New York Public Library and What’s on the Menu?
As predicted, Digital History is deceptively complicated to define. On the surface the term seems self-defining: a simple tautology of using digital technology to conduct historical investigations. However, delve deeper, and this elucidation becomes a bit murky. This definition is overly simplistic in its lack of methodology or theory, ideological agency that historian needs to … More How do you do Digital History?
Digital Public History 