Webs of Significance

Drew VandeCreek article Webs of Significance outlines the need for professional historians to engage with the development of digital libraries on the internet, or risk historians becoming increasingly irrelevant to popular historical discourse. He uses the Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project as an ideal example of the types of interactive work historians need to become involved in.

VandeCreek comments that for the person with an interest I history as a hobby or ‘lifelong learners’ the availability of primary source documents on the internet is not enough. People also need a proper historical context and interpretation to get the most out of these sources. He says that while librarians can provide access to such materials it is historians that can provide ‘the perceptions and debates unique to their discipline.’

The Lincoln project provides access to primary documents and is unique in its collection image, map, sound and video sources too. As well as this the website also provides a biographical context in which to place the early phase of Lincoln’s life and a number of key historical themes around which debate range on Lincoln. This provides the context that VandeCreek calls for in other projects.

The benefits of collaboration of different disciplines that Patrick Manning advocated in his article Digital World History are also evident in the Lincoln project. The project saw the contributions of historians interested in different aspects of the historical experience, whether social, diplomatic or political history. The Lincoln project provides a ‘variety of interpretations of historical materials’ and allows people ‘to weigh the available evidence in order to assess their persuasive power.’

The issue of access is identified by VandeCreek as an impediment to lifelong learners with digital sources. ‘Unlike enrolled students, these individuals and groups usually lack any recourse to instruction or other forms of historical expertise that may inform their exploration of a digital library.’ This situation is similar to the position I was in before taking this course. There was numerous useful digital resources available to me which I was unaware of, but now I use tools such as Evernote and Google Alerts for my research.        

VandeCreek also outlines the possible consequences of the non-involvement of historians in the development of digital libraries. With huge amounts of other material available, people will readily consult history websites ‘without scholars queries, interpretations, and debates.’ VandeCreek is very critical of the history articles of websites such as About.com, many of which he says do not consult any primary sources.

I looked up an article on the 1916 Rising to get an impression of About.com articles. I could see VandeCreek’s reservations. The article was written by a journalist and has no citations or footnotes of any kind, therefore having no evidence to back up the facts in his account.

To counteract this, VandeCreek feels it is essential that historians engage with modern forms of scholarship. This is needed in an Irish context also. When one searches on an issue such as the 1916 Rising for example, many of the Google results page come from republican websites, which obviously would not be applying the standards of professional historians. Quoting VandeCreek historians are now obliged ‘to step forward and share their ideas and interpretations with the public.’