How do I see digital tools and approaches affecting my current and future practice of (public) history?”

During my undergraduate degree I used multiple digital research tools for school and for my own purposes. For school purposes, I would always start a paper by searching the library catalogue (usually at home with the off-campus website) for books related to my topic. If I couldn't decide on a topic, I would see which topic had more available sources. The next step would be to search the school’s online journal databases and bookmark anything that could be useful. In my upper-year seminars, when I started using more primary sources, my first stop would usually be the historic newspaper databases. These databases contained digitized copies of newspapers from the US, the U.K. and Canada. Accessing all these resources was done at home in my bedroom at my computer. And all of it was possible due to the increased accessibility allowed by the Internet and digitization projects. My best example of this phenomenon is how I once found an article in a British newspaper database that perfectly fit my arguments. It was almost as if the author written an editorial 200 years in the past just to help my paper, and it was available to me online without having to cross an ocean. 

Digitization projects allow for document collections to reach far wider audiences then they ever could without the web. One of the best examples of this is one we discussed in class: an increased interest in genealogy among the general public. Online genealogy websites have links to resources that allow people to do research from home after work, rather then visit archives they may not have access to. These sites help increase people’s interest in history because they provide starting points from which users can do as much or as little research as they like depending on how much time they have available. Other sites use digitized sources for exhibition purposes rather than research. Sites like Buzzfeed allow users to create articles about any subject they like, which will then link to similar subjects already available. Recently there have been multiple articles comparing photos from the two World Wars to their modern day counterparts. Museums and government archives are also following this trend. By publishing online exhibits as stand-alones or as companions to current exhibits, they hope to attract wider audiences then their physical exhibits alone. 

However, like all things, digitization does have its downsides. Large projects take a large amount of resources in both time and labour. There are too many artifacts, and/or documents for everything to go online; meaning that choices have to be made on what should be digitized, and what shouldn’t. When considering which documents to publish online, the project must consider among other things, the funding available, and selection bias. As well, if the project involves personal information, such as genealogical records, the project must consider the ethics surrounding putting a deceased person’s personal information online. Another flaw involves the status of a collection’s accessibility. Despite the increasing accessibility of multiple sources around the world, not everyone has the same access. For example, my access to all the databases mentioned above is due to my student status, most people don't have this access, and I won't either once I’ve finished school.   

Despite these flaws, the possibilities and accessibility offered by digital tools are amazing tools to be used by public historians to present information in multiple different formats to wider groups. Following this trend, there is a good likelihood that I will be working on digitization projects or be involved in developing online exhibits in the future. This course will allow me to learn the skills I need to follow this path. I am especially looking forward to the mapping and web design portions of the course.