Database Histories: New Designs on the Past

by Moriya Vanderhoef

This week’s lecture by Paul Longley Arthur, sponsored by The Center for 21st Century Studies, was fantastic! I may be a little biased on this one, however, as history is my major and my passion.

Arthur examines, in his research and work, new ways of representing history using digital media. This new digital history, as he calls it, represents a democratic turn in the research and publishing of history. He argues that history has gone from the towers of academia to the everyperson sitting at their computer researching at home, thus eroding the authority of experts and privileging small, local histories over large, national histories. But this change effects history in other ways too, as he envisions history as the newest interdisciplinary department on campuses, as the field branches into new areas of exploration using insights and methodology from other related academic areas. These varied disciplines will all share the digital environment as their common denominator.

But how do you define digital history? Arthur explained it as a series of pathways and methods, often interactive, which lead to the exploration of history via navigation rather then narration. But definitions for this emerging field are shifting in these early years. The benefits of digital history, for historians, are not as apparent as the benefits of writing books and articles, but it is believed that as academia slowly catches up to to these newly emerging areas of publication and new forms of information sharing, they will begin to be worth more towards tenure and standing within the community.

An audience member asked, and I feel it important to mention this, “When will digital history, defined mostly by the use of this new technology and methodology, just become history once again?” When will this shift happen, if ever? Will digital history always be set apart from regular history? Only time will really tell, but I believe, much like Arthur, that one day they will merge into a single idea once again and these “new methods” will be accepted ways to research and publish along with the more traditional forms without anyone making a distinction between “old” and “new.”

Last, but certainly not least, Arthur talked about the emergence of navigation vs the more traditional narration as seen in digital history. He stated that game theorists say we have exhausted narrative, that was have reached the limitations of narration’s scope and depth, and that the future is navigation. Most emerging digital history websites today feature heavy navigation through interaction with little to no narration. During the question and answer session afterward we discussed the possibility that navigation is not free of narration, but the narration is outsourced from the writer, the traditional source of narration, to the navigator, who must provide their own navigation through the information available, much the same way one must navigate your way through a Chose Your Own Adventure book.