Hitchcock, Tim (2013) Confronting the digital: or how academic history writing lost the plot. Cultural and Social History, 10 (1). pp. 9-23. ISSN 1478-0038

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Abstract

This discussion piece argues that the design and structure of online historical resources and the process of search and discover embodied within them create a series of substantial problems for historians. Algorithm-driven discovery and misleading forms of search, poor OCR, and all the selection biases of a new edition of the Western print archive have changed how we research the past, and the underlying character of the object of study (inherited text). This piece argues that academic historians have largely failed to respond effectively to these challenges and suggests that while they have preserved the form of scholarly good practice, they have ignored important underlying principles.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Digital History, Digital Humanities
Schools and Departments:	School of History, Art History and Philosophy > History
Subjects:	D History General and Old World D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D016 Methodology- General works
Depositing User:	Timothy Hitchcock
Date Deposited:	19 Nov 2015 11:20
Last Modified:	07 Mar 2017 05:24
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/58045

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