Some of the players of digital history

        When Cohen and Rosenzweig talk about the possibilities and transition of taking on a digital platform, they begin with a very fundamental, and seemingly obvious difference. Books, the dominant format of historical information, have an advantage over some forms of the up and coming digital formats. “After a book page is printed, or diary entry recorded, it is “fixed” (to use the U.S. Copyright Office’s favorite word) in a form that will likely survive for generations.” This is emphasized for the sake of contrasting it against the digital ways, such as web pages, which the reading goes on to say is in danger of getting deleted, or altered in someway. Accessibility is another issue when it comes to books and websites, one which works in favor of digital. Continuing on, the authors give advice on website and domain naming depending on the host that you have. Site names could be used effectively if they correspond to the contents of the site, in this way, the researcher can quickly access your site through the common use of search engines like Google or Yahoo. 

     Continuing with the theme of accessibility, Spiro, the author of another of our readings at Digital Scholarship in the Humanities writes at length about open access and introduces us to a couple of the key players today in digital history. Among the methods of research historians have access to, the free online research site, Zotero (which I like to think of as the sort of Facebook for historians) is mentioned in this article as hugely popular among the students and faculty of author’s institution. Spiro reports that Zotero was being sued by another site that offered open access, EndNote, but had failed to have substantial accusations against them, which may end up hurting EndNote more than if they had not pursued the lawsuit. 

     Both Digital History and Digital Scholarship in the Humanities provide excellent insight in the development of digital history, its positive aspects and the issues that are yet to be corrected when going digital.


And meanwhile in France...

I pulled this little masterpiece off of the Exploring the French Revolution site, which was linked by the Center for History and New Media site.


The Center for History and New Media, at George Mason University is an extremely attractive site in terms of how simple the site is presented. The CHNM site contains some of the most popular names in the digital history field.