History 419 Fall 2022

  Grant Klinkner In this chapter, Crymble discusses online databases and archives and the overall mass digitization movement, and how it has impacted history. He talks about how information like primary sources can now be converted into a digital version and can be accessed by anyone. For example, if you wanted to look up the Declaration of Independence you could find multiple completely interactive versions of it, and that is all thanks to the age of digitization. Most if not all important and famous documents have been digitized in this manner, and it is crazy to think that around 50 years ago that would be a pipe dream for a historian or student. Crymble also discusses crowdsourcing, which is another very reliable tool of the digital age. Because of the audience that the internet pulls in, there is always a community for content on the internet. For example, if a historical website wanted to do a project, and needed to raise funds, they could crowdsource and have their community...

 Chapter Two was a very unique chapter that relied on digital history. Digital History is the use of digital media to get a jump start on historical analysis'. Today we rely on the use of digital media to help us find more information and knowledge that will be helpful to find the information we are trying to receive. A huge development in the digital history was encoding which was when codes were imported to try and solve solutions. There were many schools, libraries, and other historians that were trying to develop these new technologies but had a difficult time adjusting. Encoding was used in private sectors and businesses that and money to develop. 

 i thought chapter 2 was very interesting.  The term digital history is one of the more modern terms but encompasses most of all the knowledge history holds.  many historical archives have been digitized and put online for everyone to access.  this idea has allowed for information to spread and be added to more readily than ever thought possible.  two historians can be working towards the same idea at the same time on different sides of the planet.  Although things being put online is a great thing, this is something that others capitalize on through copyright.  Copyright allows a person to own a thing, idea, or concept.  with this, they can control who can and can not use certain things.  this is hazardous for freedom of speech, especially with history since it is hard to own history

 This chapter talks about the always changing technology and how it enables historians to review archives. The first part of the chapter talks about the historical issues by providing a historical account of digitization that considers some of the differences and similarities between the US and British approaches. The other part of the chapter looks at the history for some the newer ways that historians and public memory organizations have begun to restructure archives. Digital history is many different type of activities that involve computers and historians. The US department of education has money dedicated to the teaching American history grants. For me as a future history teacher I think it is amazing that there a push for the use of technology in the history classrooms. There are so much information and teachers can use technology to further their lessons and get students engaged. Overall this chapter gave good inside on how technology has changed and how it changes in the wo...

 Changes in intellectual infrastructure needed to store the alphabet into computers is available due to scholars, technologists and public historians. This vision of archiving was achieved due to wanting a more sufficient way for people to interact and engage with them. The start of using dots and dashes were mapped into the basic building blocks of digital memory. Advancements have continued to be made after. Unicode Transformation Format has helped internationalize systems to store and share characters. Other advancements include microfilming, microfiching, digital imagining, CD-ROMS and archival revisionism. The way scholars advance technology and archiving, the more effective digital technological advancements become. 

 One thing this chapter made me think about which I never really thought about before was how everything got on the internet. Nowadays when new information is discovered it is just added on to the plethora that already exists, but this chapter made me realize that people had to put all the information that already existed for thousands of years into a digital format when the internet came around. One quote that put this into perspective for me was "It not only revolutionized historical research in ways discussed in the previous chapter, but it gave historians a new relationship with collections, putting a privileged few in control of their new shape and allowing them to set the agenda for the next generation of scholarship". The historians who were transferring all of the information into digital archives were creating the internet we know today which is really interesting to think about. 

 Chapter two, The Archival Revisionism of Mass Digitization, focuses on the action of putting history into digital versions. I found it interesting that there is a connection between new technologies and social changes. I never thought about how the social aspects would be impacted by the action of putting history into different forms. It was helpful that the author included examples of the digitization because it showed me just how necessary it was to make history available in more forms. I also found the comparison between the United States histories and Britain interesting to look at. There was a concentration on the CD, which I found out had a large impact on the digitization of history. This chapter was helpful in the understanding of the next step in revealing the relationship of history and technology.