Digital history might be the most intimidating aspect of
public history for me. My only experience with digitizing history has been
helping the Collections Manager at the Mutter Museum with a something he deemed "the never-ending project" - digitizing the historical
photograph collection. The museum is currently going through the same transition
which many institutions are going through - creating a user-friendly online
database that houses entire collections in a digital format. Creating an online
space which allows the everyday-user to experience a museum's collection is
amazing! However, it is a very long and arduous journey, especially if done
in-house. Individually uploading and digitally cataloging each photo and video
takes a very long time, and that's not even taking into account the time it
takes to create a web page, a database, or digital archive from scratch. The
Mutter Museum alone houses thousands of objects that they would like to make
available for viewing online. Each item would need to be professionally
photographed, cataloged, uploaded, and researched to provide a brief history of
each object. A great example of the use of digital history within the museum field are the online exhibitions the Smithsonian Libraries has on their website. The website is user-friendly, and brings Smithsonian exhibitions to people all over the world. All of this is way over my head, but there are a few platforms I
could see myself using in the future.
A Short Guide To The Digital_Humanities was a good place to start reading this week. This
excerpt outlined many questions and answers to questions I had once I began
thinking deeply about digital history. It gave insight on how digital projects
are made, how they are funded, and how truly interdisciplinary they are. It is
interesting to note that the article explained the use of archaeology in the
digital humanities. Digital media really does seem like a great platform for
using archaeological methods of preservation and presentation. Another guide
that was useful as I began reading this week was How Did They Make That?, a blog post by Miriam Posner; Miriam coordinates
and teaches in the Digital Humanities program at the University of California,
Los Angeles. This post outlines many different digital projects and what
digital tools were used to create them. Although the post is a great resource
for links to different tools and it tells students what the tools do, I still
had no idea what the article was about. I have never heard of many of the
tools, and I would have no idea how to start a digital project on my own. However,
I think it would be a great collaboration to work with graphic artists
and web designers to create a digital history project. Tools like digital
map-making and 3D modeling look like amazing additions to a history project, but
actually creating them would take a lot more learning on my end.
The digital project The Nicest Kids in Town serves as a companion to the book by Matthew F. Delmont
with the same title. This project blew me away! It was both accessible and
interesting; it allows the user to "choose their own adventure" in a
way. After clicking on every available "path", I found myself falling
down the YouTube rabbit hole, so to speak, and searching for more and more videos of American
bandstand. I can only hope that one day someone will see my work and find themselves searching the internet for hours for more information! Though I don't doubt the long hours of work that went into this
project, this seemed more like something I could accomplish as a public
historian. A part of the project that I especially loved was the last "chapter"
in which the public could share their stories. This is such an important part
of a public history project that is often overlooked - allowing the people you
are researching to have a voice here and now. Overall I hope to learn more
about digital history while at Temple because I think it will be a huge part of
public history in the future. Creating digital history projects relies on a
skill-set that I will need to have, and I think it is a visually pleasing way
to bring history to the public.
Above is a video I found while scouring Youtube for more information on American Bandstand
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