What is Digital History?

The use of digital technology to further the scope of understanding, and to increase the involvement of those within the academy and the audiences they hope to connect with is a fairly recent phenomenon. It is because of its youth that it has been difficult to create a universally acceptable definition of what exactly digital history or digital humanities is. This debate over what exactly is digital humanities or history is greatly emphasized in Lisa Spiro’ article “This is Why We Fight”:Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities. Despite these debates scholars like Matthew Kirschenbaum have been able to create their own definitions. As Kirchenbaum defines it, “the digital humanities today is about a scholarship (and a pedagogy) that is publicly visible in ways in which we are generally unaccustomed...”.1 Ultimately for me, digital history is the utilization of digital media to further the preservation and understanding of history, and to provide a larger audience with access to such material. It is also through the use of digital technologies to provide a more collaborative effort in completing historical projects, or missions.

Although digital history is being utilized by an ever widening list of historical sites and museums, the Imperial War Museum’s Lives of the First Wold War project helps to provide an example of an ideal digital project (https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/). This is a crowd sourced project that was created in an effort to document WWI histories and narratives of the United Kingdom. Through citizen assistance, soldiers are remembered, their histories are preserved, and larger connections are being made between the public and museum communities. Not only are all people welcome to record their historical information and memory of the WWI period, but they are encouraged to upload pictures and explore historical records to better understand their personal pasts and the general history of the period. The Imperial War Museum has been able to provide historical information to a wide range of people through the use of this website, while also working collaboratively to preserve the history of the WWI period. This project not only uses the digital medium to connect with audiences, but it also provides an example of how to collect, evaluate, and preserve historical information with the assistance of their audiences and volunteers. 

1. Matthew Kirschenbaum, "What is Digital Humanities and What's It Doing In English Departments," Debates in the Digital Humanities, p. 3-11.