Can You Do Serious History on the Web?
From booktorrent
The following is a summary of an article that appeared in the American Historical Association's Perspectives publication in February, 1998. The author is Carl Smith, professor of English and History at Northwestern University.
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Summary
In this paper, Smith poses a series of questions about the state of history in the digital world. More specifically, Smith makes inquiries about the legitimacy of the Internet as a medium for conducting history and asks whether or not histories conducted on the web can and should be taken seriously by historical scholars. Smith uses his work as curator for the Chicago Historical Society's online museum exhibition on the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The site was created as a supplement to a physical exhibition that was taking place at the time of the site's debut. According to Smith, his work with the online exhibition stands as proof the serious history is not only possible through the Web, but histories that do so are more accessible to both the general public and historical scholars.
Selected Quotations
"Is the format of a web site inherently shallow, best suited to displays of sight and sound that seduce the senses without engaging the mind? Has the unregulated culture of the Internet made cyberspace a bloated refuge for work of questionable value that otherwise couldn't–and shouldn't–see the light of day? And, quite apart from questions of content quality, one can ask whether . . . the web's much-discussed non-linear nature work[s] against the presentation of ideas, as opposed to just information? Is it possible, in short, to do "serious" history on the web?"
"I would take serious history to mean original work that is responsibly based on primary sources, is intelligently informed by relevant scholarship, and makes a clear argument or group of arguments. One might maintain that this definition, especially its last part, demands the tighter structure and literary quality of articles and books, thereby ruling out any museum exhibition, real or virtual. The main thing that attracted me to this project, however, was that–for this subject and content at least–I believed that the Internet's advantages outweighed its liabilities."
"Working with virtual resources meant that we could handle and generate electronic content outside the usual constraints of mounting shows or publishing books. We didn't have to worry about the scale and configuration of a defined area in a museum, about the logistics and expense of hanging objects, or about how many full-color illustrations or pages of text a publisher would allow."
"So, is this serious history? I think it does fit the criteria I offered earlier: it is original work that is based on the best primary evidence, is aware of other research, and makes a group of sustained points about its subject. Perhaps of greater importance, the site encourages viewers to do history themselves, since it offers such a vast selection of sources that they can explore–with or without reading the interpretive text–and draw their own conclusions."
Access
You can read the full-text version of Smith's paper as it appeared in the AHA Perspectives publication on the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media's website by clicking here or at the address below:
http://chnm.gmu.edu/essays-on-history-new-media/essays/?essayid=12
You can visit Smith's online exhibition by clicking here or at www.greatchicagofire.org
Works Cited
Carl Smith. “Can You Do Serious History on the Web?” AHA Perspectives (1998): n. pag. Web. 13 Oct. 2011.
