Week 2: Reaction - Who are the Players?

Answer: At first appearance, this might seem like Abbott and Costello’s signature baseball routine, “Who’s on First?,” a burlesque skit creating its own kinetic confusion as the duo vigorously engaged runners on bases.  But, honestly, its not quite that bad.

Translating intellectual labor into a web-based digital world is complex and subjective.  Some theoretical, qualitative projects may have a much better fit with “traditional” (analog) academic and publishing practices. The “promise of digital history” may not resonate with the tweed coats and leather elbow patches.  (I portray quite unfairly.)

Other intellectual work and research may neatly pigeonhole into a digital format, like the digital history site at the University of Huston, a website devoted to supporting teachers and students as they actually “do” history.  This surprisingly rich site invites multi-level exploration and one click after another leads to narrative histories, audio and video features including historical music, active games and learning, photographs and images, Flash-based interactive timelines, a reading and reference room, and virtual exhibits.  Each of these many digital tools are discussed in Cohen and Rosenzweig’s Digital History featured readings-of-the-week, “Getting Started” and “Becoming Digital,” providing a variable and multi-layered experience for exploratory visitors.

An interrogation of online digital history sites reveals different levels of sophistication and tools used.  Sites can be rough around the edges, amateurish, and of questionable pedigree, like the Home of the American Civil War, or they can be professional, sophisticated, and of good peerage, like the Center for History and New Media (CHNM).

The sheer number of online sites and the information digitally available is overwhelming, creating that problem of site and information abundance.  On any single site, even the most intrepid online adventurer risks being overwhelmed by a profuse number of options.  CHNM, in three helpful categories, offers over fifty tools to create and supplement online teaching, publishing, and exhibits.  The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), offers at least twenty-five different tools, project, research, and database links.

And the sheer number of tools available to create, maintain, organize, secure, and share sites generates its own problem of tool abundance.  So many options, so much to know, so little time.  The online tools available for purchase are as numerous as the options at CHNM.  If one Google searches for “web design software,” only one small drop in the very large bucket of digital necessities, one hits the hard wall of realization that simply choosing a product is challenging, and after purchase, there is large investment of time to learn the product and actually create a decent website (assuming one has a server upon which to host that website).

How does a historian navigate this digital maze and intelligently utilize technology-based tools in a coherent and efficient manner?  And for the technology expert (technology itself a field so complex that narrow specialization is compulsory), how do they pick up the language, theoretical frameworks, and methodology of the humanities to contribute material of value?  We all have (more than) fulltime jobs in our chosen professions.  It takes a great deal of personal perseverance and off-duty time to learn a whole new set of skills (the scientist and humanist morphing into a digital scholar).  Or, more reasonably, it takes a collaborative (and funded) effort of multiple people with multiple skills to construct and sustain a vigorous, useful, and contemporary site.