subject: Historians Interested In Digital Scholarship [print this page] Many prominent historians have hopped on the digital bandwagon. A new survey has found that most of the 4,000 historian respondents are ready to try forms of digital scholarship like "interactive maps or online databases." However, the number of journals interested in publishing this new, digitalized work is relatively non-existent in comparison.
Because of this initial disinterest, the Sustaining Digital History project was created in order to help historians who are entering the realm of digital scholarship publish their work in established forums. Digital work has often struggled with finding footing in a long-established, traditional academic world in which peer reviews and print journals reign supreme. The Sustaining Digital History group recently met at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln to address these issues and figure out ways of translating the growing interest in digital scholarship into a new- age, acceptable breed of scholarship work. Among the 30 attendees were prominent editors from 8 historical journals and at the meeting's culmination, each had "committed to experimenting with digital scholarship."
Recent digital scholarship has found a safe haven in blogs or websites like Wikipedia, far outside of the traditional academic-publishing realm. But, with the establishment of groups such as the Sustaining Digital History project and vows from leading editors to test out the digital medium, historian's digital work may soon see mainstream scholarly publication.
Doug Seefeldt, one of the project's directors, believes that the digital format is a perfect platform for history. Pointing to historical projects carried out at the University of Virginia and Stanford which employed interactive maps, video, audio and searchable primary sources he noted, "the complexities of the past, it seems to me, are a perfect match for the capabilities of some of these digital tools."
In fact, says Seefeldt, historical journals should take advantage of the current influx of the digitalbecause, "it's not too long before we drop the digital, and it'll just become history."
