We’ve spent most of this semester discussing the output side of being a digital historian, but this week we turn our attention to how we can also leverage digital technology to be better historians. For most historians, digital technology has simply sped up the process of what they already did with analog tools. For instance, many of my colleagues use a database (like FileMaker) to take notes instead of using index cards as one had typically done in the past. Others have utilized bibliographic software like Endnote, Biblioscape, Reference Manager (formerly ProCite), RefWorks, or now the free Firefox plug-in Zotero to organize their citations (which everyone should do, since it makes documenting your references sooooooo much easier and accurate).
These two examples are simply an extension of the older transition that all academics made when they switched from typewriters to word processing software and don’t necessarily “add” any value to the product of their research. However, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a great deal of potential in the very near future.
One of my favorite digital historians is Bill Turkel up at the University of Western Onterio. Dr. Turkel represents the cutting edge of historians (in his case and environmental historian) who want to press the envelope of technology to see what it can do for us to further our basic understanding of the past. Dr. Turkel doesn’t just use computers, he tries to think about devices or add-ons for devices that don’t yet exist and then builds them! This is fascinating stuff to say the least!
Another great story of using technology to be better historians comes from the UK last year. Scientists were able to train a computer and an electronic sniffing device to recognize the age of paper without the need to carbon test a fragment (and thereby destroying a part of the original document). When I “tweeted” about this last fall, Bill Turkel wrote to remind me that he had speculated about something similar in a blog post of his in 2008.
These are just a few examples of the potential to use technology as historians to not only present our craft, but to perform our craft more effectively and possibly in entirely new ways. What we need are more people who can “think outside the box” and dare to explore new methods that take advantage of digital technology’s potential and yet remain true to the mission of historians to explore and analyze the past.
So – What’s your big idea going to be?