In Tony Guidone’s experience as a historian, he has examined a plethora of different primary sources and artifacts of varying degrees of significance and rarity. However, in the framework of the digital humanities, every primary source has a series of values and obstacles that accompany the digitization of an artifact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The positives of digitization are seemingly obvious. Ideas of distance reading and keyword searching go back decades, but the ease of searching a digital source easily trumps the hassle associated with scanning through text using a microfilm reader<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>. Nowadays, the ease of scanning through hundreds of pages in the matter of seconds by searching for a keyword, is truly valuable. This has positively shifted my interaction with academic sources, as I can insure the sources I utilize in my research or scholarship will truly be helpful. Additionally, it is much easier to formulate effective arguments that are supported by credible sources, since those sources are easier to find. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Furthermore, the digital nature of modern historical projects allows them to inflict a greater amount of social change. In previous years, one may not hear about the Enslaved Children of George Mason project, unless they are directly involved. The digital nature of this project allows it to collect a great deal of data about George Mason’s legacy, and presents it in a way that is easily accessible to the general public<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although, the digital nature of a source may impede one’s understanding of important context. As noted in the presentation, a photograph of a coin may not account for the texture of said coin, the weight, craftsmanship, or quality. Such factors may enhance one’s understanding of a period in history and allow for new insight. While this information can be included in detailed captions, it still may fall short of holding the artifact in one’s hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, there are a variety of positives and negatives associated with the digital nature of certain history projects and exhibits. In total, the emergence of keyword searching and distance reading is an invaluable gift, as is the ability to spread information via social media. Though some elements of history may be more likely to be ignored, individuals are able to overcome these obstacles as curious scholars. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Tony Guidone’s experience as a historian, he has examined a plethora of different primary sources and artifacts of varying degrees of significance and rarity. However, in the framework of the digital humanities, every primary source has a series of values and obstacles that accompany the digitization of an artifact. The positives of digitization are … Continue reading “What’s Gained and What’s Lost in Digital History”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-searching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}