Digital Public History Narratives with Photographs

This post is a slightly different version of  Digital Public History narratives with Photographs. In: Public History Weekly 3 (2015) 31, DOI:  dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2015-4706. (German and French versions also available in PHW).

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Social Media are “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”[1] They facilitate various forms of web communication between individuals and communities. They can bring users together to discuss common issues and to share traces of the past. Local communities’ engagement with the past, mediated or not, are made possible through Web 2.0 practices. New virtual contacts could be built when communities are no longer present in physical spaces.[2]

http://public-history-weekly.oldenbourg-verlag.de/

Everybody’s got talent: user-generated knowledge

If social media allow dispersed communities to reconnect online and share their memories, today, understanding how common people use social media and play with history tells us many things about which pasts are important in our present.[3]
Everybody promotes her/himself. TV “reality shows” such as Got Talent[4] are the most followed TV broadcasts worldwide because they select unknown people and connect them with an audience. These shows reveal unexpressed skills and creative capacities the same way online social media websites crowd-source knowledge and reconnect with the past. Like TV talent shows, social media allow different publics to promote themselves, their family history, and their communities.
Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu defined the systematic repetition of similar family photographs as emblematic of popular behaviour and culture.[5] Sharing different generations’ family pictures in social media shapes collective memories.[6] On the other hand, such popular demand for genealogy[7] only scratches the surface of major events in history and is often disconnected from “big history” and broader contexts. But photography, in social media, describes popular behaviours – “selfies” today – [8] and, thanks to linked data technologies, Google Maps, and Street View, adds spatial dimensions and time boundaries to individual memories.

Pinning your images with Historypin, a digital time machine

“Historypin is a digital time machine that creates a new way for the world to see and share history.”[9] Linked data and the Semantic Web connect digital contents, combining primary sources with geography.[10] Old pictures can be “pinned” in the present: family pasts may be re-enacted today. Heritage institutions, but also common people, organize forms of storytelling because the technology is easy. Public historians takeHistorypin seriously to engage with specific communities.[11] Using Historypin, the American National Archives is now everywhere outside the building in the virtual space[12] and solicits everybody’s contribution to historical archives, inviting the wider public to “pin your history to the world.”[13] In Florence, during a public exhibition (2014) commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of the German occupation,[14] citizens brought their documents on site, using the MemorySharing project. Old 1944 documents were scanned and included in today’s maps of Florence. New Zealand soldiers are now re-enacted directly on Google Street View.[15] You can fade the vintage picture[16] to see the contemporary layer of the street.
Could academic historians use the potential of digital public history, with Historypin, a tool that makes it easy to re-enact even difficult pasts? Alon Confino tried to reconstruct the pre-1948 invisible Palestinian past of Tantura, Dor in today’s Israel. Confino studied cadastral maps, aerial photography, and images of Palestinians recorded prior to May 22–23, 1948. But user-generated content from social media would add original Palestinian diaspora documents: re-enacting 1948 Palestinian memories should be possible.[17]

Visual narrative public history

Inspired by a photograph, Michael Hughes’ Flickr project “Souvenirs”,[18] Looking into the Past merges past and present in a unique image.[19] “Ghosting family pasts”, thanks to digital technologies, is very popular for resuscitating memories. Merging old pictures and recent images shortens the digital timeline and activates different regimes of historicity in the present.[20]
Emblematic of many others projects around the world, the Past Present Project in Tumblr[21] publishes family pictures where past and present overlap.[22] Images showing the pastness of places shape a nostalgic present, such as the merged urban temporalities of the Hungarian artist Zoltán Kerényi,[23] or Hebe Robinson’s Northern Norway Echoes, a project placing old family photos from a Lofoten fishing village, abandoned after WW2, in today’s landscape.[24] Sometimes called rephotography,[25] these new images contain different time layers in one unique image. Even WW1 images are “ghosted” in a past-present continuum.[26] The same is done with WW2 images by the Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov in Link to the Past.[27] The author of a website about Krakow “looks for very old photos of the city and takes new ones from the very same spot, so my readers can compare and see what has changed”.[28] Keith Jones, inLiverpool then and now,[29] lets us discover “blended shots”: old black and white images merged with colour images.[30]

Past-present relationships in photographs

The Italian photographer, Isabella Balena, took pictures of the Gothic Line ruins that stopped the allied offensive in 1944 in central Italy sixty years after the event. Ci resta il nome, a photographic journey through the memory of WW2 in Italy is a good example of visual narrative public history.[31] What is important in Balena’s systematic reproduction of monuments and traces of the violent past is to show how the place where Mussolini was shot in April 1945 tells about both presentism and oblivion and is open to the present and new futures.
But photography may also show that the present has lost its connection with the past. Total disconnection with history is what Serge Gruzinski demonstrates with the cover picture of his book, L’Histoire pour quoi faire?:[32] young, post-colonial Algerians playing soccer. Their goalkeeper stands in front of an ancient Roman arch, a symbol of lost memories. The arch does not mean anything to them. Instead, in the context of today’s Isis campaigns, the Islamic State extremists destroy past heritages, so that history could be rewritten and memory cancelled forever.[33]

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Literature

• François Hartog: Régimes d’historicité: présentisme et expériences du temps., Paris: Seuil, 2003 (Regimes of historicity: presentism and experiences of time, translated by Saskia Brown, New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
• Serge Gruzinski: L’Histoire pour quoi faire?, Paris: Fayard, 2012.
• Serge Noiret: “Nulla sarà più come prima: considerazioni sul Digital Turn e le fonti fotografiche dal punto di vista della storiografia.” in Gian Piero Brunetta and Carlo Alberto Zotti Minici (eds.): La fotografia come fonte di storia, atti del convegno (Venezia, 4-6 ottobre 2012), Venezia, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2014, pp.248-268.

External links

• 1940-1944 Firenze in guerra: http://www.firenzeinguerra.com (Last accessed 5.10.2015)
• Historypin – a global community collaborating around history: http://www.historypin.org (Last accessed 5.10.2015)
• Flickr Group “Looking Into the Past”: http://www.flickr.com/groups/lookingintothepast/ (Last accessed 5.10.2015)

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[1] Andreas M. Kaplan, and Michael Haenlein, “Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media”, in Business Horizons, 53/1, 2010 pp. 59-68.
[2] Dario Miccoli studies how the Jewish diaspora from the Maghreb is today “reconnected” through the web and social media. See “Digital museums: narrating and preserving the history of Egyptian Jews on the Internet”, in E. Trevisan Semi, D. Miccoli and T. Parfitt (eds.), Memory and Ethnicity. Ethnic Museums in Israel and the Diaspora, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2013, pp.195-222; “Les Juifs du Maroc, Internet et la construction d’une diaspora numérique”, in Expressions Maghrébines, 13/1, 2014, pp.75-94.
[3] André Gunthert: “Shared Images”, in Études photographiques, 24, novembre 2009, http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org/3436 (Last accessed 5.10.2015); “L’image conversationnelle”, in Études photographiques, 31, 2014, http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org/3387 (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[4] A list of countries offering, after the USA in 2006 and GB in 2007, an emulation of Got Talent is available in Wikipedia,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Got_Talent; America’s Got Talent (2006), http://www.nbc.com/americas-got-talent; La France a un incroyable talent (2006), http://www.m6.fr/emission-la_france_a_un_incroyable_talent/; Britain’s got talent http://www.itv.com/britainsgottalent; general information in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain%27s_Got_Talent (All last accessed 5.10.2015).
[5] Pierre Bourdieu, Luc Boltanski, Roger Castel and Philippe de Vendeuvre: Photography, a Middle-Brow Art, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.
[6] Richard Chalfen, “La photo de famille et ses usages communicationnels”, Études photographiques, n. 32, 2015,http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org/3502 (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[7] Jerome De Groote: “International Federation for Public History Plenary Address: On Genealogy”, in The Public Historian, Vol. 37, No. 3, August 2015, pp. 102-127, DOI: 10.1525/tph.2015.37.3.102 (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[8] André Gunthert: “The consecration of the selfie”, in Études photographiques, 32, 2015, http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org/3537 (Last accessed 5.10.2015)
[9] Historypin in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historypin (Last accessed 5.10.2015); see also Hunter Skipworth: Historypin turns Google Street View into a window on the past, June 21, 2010, The Telegraph,http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7854922/Historypin-turns-Google-Street-View-into-a-window-on-the-past.html (Last accessed 5.10.2015); Beat Brüsch: “L’histoire en noir et blanc”, in: Mots d’Image, http://www.motsdimages.ch/L-histoire-en-noir-et-blanc.html
[10] “A global community collaborating around history […]”, http://www.historypin.com/ (Last accessed 5.10.2015). Historypin was created by the non-profit company Shift with support from Google and launched at the Museum of the City of New York in July 2011. “Enabling networks of people to share and explore local history, make new connections and reduce social isolation” was the goal of the company. See Historypin,http://www.shiftdesign.org.uk/products/historypin/ (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[11] Meg Foster: “Online and Plugged In? Public History and Historians in the Digital Age”, in Public History Review, Vol.21, 2014, pp. 1-19,http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/phrj/article/view/4295/4601 (Last accessed 5.10.2015)
[12] Kris Jarosik: “Primary Sources With Some Help from Historypin”, in The National Archives Education Updates,http://education.blogs.archives.gov/2014/12/16/primary-sources-on-history-pin/ (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[13] NARA, http://www.archives.gov/social-media/historypin.html (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[14] http://www.regione.toscana.it/-/1940-1944-firenze-in-guerra (Last accessed 5.10.2015); Filippo Macelloni and Lorenzo Garzella: MemorySharing a Firenze, http://www.firenzeinguerra.com/memorysharing/ (Last accessed 5.10.2015). Francesco Cavarocchi and Valeria Galimi: Firenze in Guerra, 1940-1944, Florence: Firenze University Press, 2014, pp. XXIV-XXV.
[15] The historic centre of Florence on a Google map is now available with new, embedded documents from 1944. This is the direct link with geographical coordinates:
https://www.historypin.org/map/#!/geo:43.789874,11.271481/zoom:13/date_from:1944-01-01/date_to:1944-12-31/ (Last accessed 5.20.2015).
[16] Kaye, George Frederick, 1914-2004. Looking towards the Porta Romana in southern Florence, Italy, in World War II,http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22827427 (Last accessed 5.10.2015)
[17] Alon Confino : “Miracles and Snow in Palestine and Israel: Tantura, a History of 1948.”, in Israel Studies, vol. 17, n. 2, 2012, pp. 25-61, (photos are published on pages 44-55).
[18] https://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_hughes/sets/346406/ (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[19] Ghosting the Past is the title of a picture showing two generations of the same family pausing on Capitol Hill. Like their grandparents, the next generation visited the same “realm of American memory”. (Looking into the Past http://www.flickr.com/groups/lookingintothepast/ (Last accessed 5.10.2015)).
[20] François Hartog: Regimes of historicity: presentism and experiences of time (translated by Saskia Brown), New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
[21] Christian Carollo’s Past Present Project in Tumblr, http://pastpresentproject.com; The Past Present Project in Instagram,https://instagram.com/sayhellotoamerica/; The Past Present Project in Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pastpresentproject (All last accessed 5.10.2015).
[22] “I wondered,” said the photographer Christian Carollo, “what if I could replicate my grandfather’s photograph 30 years later?”http://pastpresentproject.com/about (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[23] 25 photos du passé se superposent avec le présent pour vous faire découvrir leurs histoires
http://soocurious.com/fr/25-photos-du-passe-se-superposent-avec-le-present-pour-vous-faire-decouvrir-leurs-histoires/ (Last accessed 5.10.2015)
[24] Hebe Robinson: Echoes, http://www.heberobinson.com/#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=0&p=1&a=0&at=0 (Last accessed 5.10.2015)
[25] Loïc Haÿ: Quand la rephotographie rencontre le numérique, https://tackk.com/rephotographie (Last accessed 5.10.2015)
[26] Pictured: Fascinating World War One photographs mixed with today’s modern landscapes, April 22, 2014,http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/world-war-one-photographs-mixed-3433146 (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[27]Sergey Larenkov: Связь времен / Link to the Past, URL: http://sergey-larenkov.livejournal.com
[28] Photos are divided; the old black and white image abuts the new one in full colour. The viewer may cancel parts – or the entirety – of one of the two combined images. (Kuba: Dawno temu w Krakowie, http://www.dawnotemuwkrakowie.pl/english/) (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[29] Keith Jones: Liverpool Then and Now, https://www.flickr.com/photos/keithjones84/sets/72157632063149974/ (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[30] Liverpool Then and Now, https://www.facebook.com/LiverpoolThenAndNow (Last accessed 5.10.2015)
[31] Isabella Balena: Ci resta il nome., Milano: Mazzotta, 2004 and http://isabalena.photoshelter.com/#!/about (Last accessed 5.10.2015).
[32] Serge Gruzinski: L’Histoire pour quoi faire?, Paris: Fayard, 2012, pp.21-24.
[33] Isis Video Claims Attack On Unesco Iraq World Heritage Site, https://youtu.be/iAWQHWU1H94 (Last accessed 5.10.2015).

Définir le champ de l’Histoire Publique Numérique, un atelier à THATCamp Paris 2015

Un atelier proposé pour THATCamp Paris a été voté par les participants à la "unconference" et s'est donc tenu le mercredi 10 Juin 2015 à 9 heures du matin. J’avais proposé -en mon nom et au nom de Mark Tebeau- l'atelier que Frédéric Clavert, un des organisateurs de THATcamp Paris, membre du THATCamp Council, a présenté en notre nom, mardi 9 juin au public quand, ni Mark ni moi n’étions encore à Paris. L'atelier portait sur la définition du champ de la Digital Public History (DPH) ou, en français, Histoire Publique Numérique.

Quelles en étaient les motivations ?

En décembre 2016, l’éditeur De Gruyter – Oldenbourg à Munich publiera un Handbook of Digital Public History dans la série "De Gruyter Reference" en langue anglaise. Mark Tebeau (Arizona State University) et moi-même coordonnerons cet ouvrage de référence international.

Nous avons défini un projet d'index détaillé de chapitres et de thèmes et voudrions aussi choisir les projets d’histoire numérique publique les plus importants internationalement pour qualifier la discipline, ses pratiques et, justement, certaines de ses meilleurs réalisations et objets numériques à l'échelle internationale.

La proposition scientifique du Handbook (abstract) acceptée par l'éditeur est la suivante en anglais.

Aims and Scope for an Handbook on Digital Public History

This handbook will provide a systematic overview of the present state of international research in digital public history. Detailed individual studies by internationally renowned public historians, digital humanists and digital historians will elucidate central issues in the field and present a critical account of the major public history accomplishments, research activities, practices with the public and of their digital context; the handbook will apply an international and comparative public history approach, look at its historical development, focus on technical background and on the use specific digital media, software’s and digital tools; it will offer a glossary of common terms, software’s, practices in the field together with a multi-lingual bibliography adapted to each chapter. The Handbook will analyse connection with local communities and different publics worldwide when engaging in digital activities with the past, and indicate directions for future research, practices and teaching activities. The Handbook will delimit the field extension between digital humanities, digital history and public history through its main theoretical chapters connected with smaller descriptive sub-chapters describing and comparing specific projects internationally.

 Coordinateurs:

Mark Tebeau, Associate Professor in the School of History, Philosophy, & Religious Studies at Arizona State University, Director of Arizona State University Public History Program, (Phoenix, AR, USA)

Contact information:

Email: Mark.Tebeau@asu.edu,

Website: http://www.marktebeau.com,

Blog: http://urbanhumanist.org

Commercial: http://curatescape.org

Serge Noiret, History Information Specialist (PhD) at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy

Contact Information:

Email: Serge.Noiret@eui.eu

Blog: http://dph.hypotheses.org (http://sergenoiret.blogspot.it)

Project: http://primary-sources.eui.eu

Questions posées aux participants de l'atelier de THATcamp Paris 2015 #tcp2015 :   

• What should be here which isn’t there
• What is there and should not be there
• Key examples for each entry (what do you think each entry should be about)
• Good authors, volunteers to contact us and suggesting who we should contact
• This is an International program so essays truly international should come from all around the world

Résultats de l'Atelier de THATcamp du Jeudi 10 Juin 2015

L'atelier "Définir le champ de l’Histoire Publique Numérique" a suscite des questions différentes autour des chapitres, des projets et des acteurs de la DPH. Il a permis aussi de susciter des collaborateurs potentiels pour le Handbook vu que nous sommes, Mark et moi, dans la phase d’attribution de chapitres et de recherche de collaborateurs.

Toutefois, la définition de ce qu'est la "Publi History" a été au centre de la discussion avent même d'entrer dans une interaction histoire numérique, histoire publique.

La question fondamentale, liée a l'architecture du Handbook, a été la suivante: en quoi de nombreux chapitres se différentient-ils de ce qu'un humaniste numérique pourrait écrire ? Quel est la spécificité de l'Histoire Publique Numérique dans chacun de ces chapitres?

Les résultats du FramePAD sur cet atelier et de la discussion à laquelle ont participé: Martin Grandjean, Frédéric Clavert, Sébastien Poublanc, Vincent Auzas, Nathalie Casanova, Léonard Laborie, Lyriane Bonnet sont les suivants. Ils touchent a la fois les demandes des participants et les informations données par les participants eux-mêmes, des participation potentielle au Handbook.

Question qui touche la langue anglaise de l'ouvrage et la relecture des articles ecrit par les auteurs internationaux:  Oui, l'ouvrage sera entièrement en anglais, mais l'editeur financera la relecture des chapitres.

Quelle est la distinction entre humanités numériques et histoire publique numérique ?

Quelle est la relation avec une communauté d'utilisateurs. 

Existe-t-il une histoire publique non numérique ?

 Serge Noiret rappelle l'origine britannique de l'histoire publique: enregistrement des mémoires des mineurs britanniques au moment des grandes crises sous Thatcher: enregistrement de leur mémoire AVEC eux.

Cite l'exemple des commémorations comme celle du 200e. de la bataille de Waterloo les 18-20 Juin 2015, sur le site même de la bataille avec une reconstitution de ses phases avec plus de 5.000 "reenactors".

 Il n'y a pas d'histoire publique sans historiens académiques.

Léonard Laborie: inclure des exemples de projets qui ont été mis en échec? Frédéric Clavert, la question complémentaire étant gestion de la fin d'un projet, la "sustainability" des projets ajoute Serge Noiret.

Voir si on peut inclure un chapitre sur les commémorations du centenaire de la Première Guerre mondiale: avec comparaison France / Royaume Uni. Avec Frédéric Clavert mais pas seul et Marie-Christine Bonneau se portent volontaires. Il faudrait des participants de la Mission du Centenaire scientifiques et de l'Imperial War Museum pour evaluer les projets d'histoire publique plus large.

 Contacter: luccianomelanie@yahoo.fr - talie - Traces de l'Antiquité à Lille et en Eurorégion

 Voir NYC Memory. Équivalent à Londres. Projet Marseille.

 Voir Base de données sur les Monuments aux Morts.

Martin Grandjean à disposition pour l'aspect "Social Media" (Rewriting history in 140 characters http://www.martingrandjean.ch/rewriting-history-140-characters/)

Frederic Clavert demande s'il y a des différences entre DH e DPH dans le domaine des langages numériques. Comment le Handbook fera ressortir la spécificité de l’histoire publique. Dans l’index (TOCs) des éléments sont spécifiquement DPH, d'autres pourraient être autant histoire numérique / DH que DPH. Comment faire ressortir les spécificités.

 On suggère d’avoir des chapitres qui sont écrits par des amateurs historiens directement (généalogie notamment).

Comment justifie-t-on un Handbook sur l'histoire publique NUMÉRIQUE?

Serge Noiret répond que la révolution numérique se retrouve dans les pratiques et objets des historiens publics. cf. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media: forts développements autour et donc avec les utilisateurs - centre de l'histoire publique. L'historien.ne publique travaille avec des communautés et pour ces communautés. 

 

Importance des "Environmental Humanities" pour la DPH: Digital Environmental Humanities, McGill : http://dig-eh.org/projects/ ; pour la partie Européenne : http://eseh.org/ (émanation française : RUCHE : https://leruche.hypotheses.org/)

 

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Handbook Draft Structure for THATCamp Paris 2015

Introduction

1. Introduction & Definitions

2. A Digital Public History of DPH

3. The Historiographical Foundations of DPH

4. Manifesto (5000-word culmination): Appendix that gets published separately

 Section 1: Historiography

 Section 1 explores the themes, disciplines, linkages to other fields, as well as the context of public history practice.  In each essay, the writers take on key aspects of the topic, with attention to how the intersection of the digital & public has transformed these fields/themes. It especially considers the theoretical aspects of the fields.

 

1. Digital Humanities & History In what ways has public history shaped the digital humanities and digital history?

2. Public History  In what ways has the digital revolution reshaped public history theory, practice, and training? 

3. International Public History Movement (Local-Global-International)

4. How has digital public history shape the spread of public history from the United States through the globe.

5. Oral History  In what ways has the emergence of digital public history reshaped oral history practice?

6. Public Archeology

7. Politics (of the past)

8. Nostalgia (memory today) 

9. Heritage

10. Violent Pasts Our ability to document and represent conflict, war, social unrest, inequality, and genocides has grown more sophisticated. 

11.  Identities The studies of identify formation in terms of class, race, gender, and indigenous cultures remains central to historical work; how has this work been transformed by digital and public history?

12.  Realm of Memory Memory sites, including monuments and commemorations, have become more accessible in the digital age, producing wider understandings.

13.  Environment Environmental humanities and sustainability have emerged as central concerns in digital public history in recent years. The NICHE (Canadian Network) as well as projects such as the environment & society portal from the Rachel Carson Center are examples of that work.

14.  Museums Museums have opened significantly as a result of the digital revolution, providing new modes of engaging public audiences, as well as imagining their function in an increasingly device-driven world.

15.  Archives/Library Archives & libraries face extraordinary challenges as books slowly disappear and our engagement with them becomes more and more digitally mediated. 

16.  Communication

17.  How digital public history has blurred past & present?     How digital public history is confronting periods and periodization?

Section 2: Contexts

Section 2 explores the places and contexts where digital public history is practices; it pays attention to scales of institution, locale (global, regional, national), and theoretical challenges faced in each domain.

1. Museums What does it mean to practice in specific history contexts, based on scale—w/attention to national/international?

3. Museum How has digital public history mattered in non-history contexts (such as natural history, art, or other museums, w/attention to international?

5. Virtual Museum + Exhibitions The emergence of the digital has produced the possibility for the virtual museum and exhibition. 

7. Archives How has archival practice been transformed? (Think: “what’s on the menu”)

9. Born Digital Archives Born digital archives have emerged. What are the issues associated with these (for example SAADA.org)?

11. Libraries (dp.la & europeana) The digital has raised the possibility of the virtual Library at Alexandria. What does digital public history tell us about the implications for large-scale library projects, such as dp.la or Europeana?

13. Digital Libraries (no connection with real libraries) The Digital library has supplanted the physical library. Or has it?

15. Technological  Devices matter in the digital age. How does the machine shape the delivery of public history? (Think the history and character of devices and technologies, from the CD to the DVD to floppy disks.)

17. “Privatized” Public History (market driven PH). Consulting and marketing for a private enterprise, e.g. Getty Archive, Fratelli Alinari Archive; what are the philosophical and practical considerations?

19. Publishing:  How we publish PH has changed. Consider twitter micro-blogging, open-access, peer review, evaluation, sharing, crowdsourcing, Hypothesis, PressForward. What’s happening to text?

21. University History Teaching  How have digital & public history have altered the history classroom--both for the instructor and learner; includes emergence of digital humanities curriculum?

23. Public History & Humanities Training: How do we alter public history curricula to confront the digital turn? What should the new public history curriculum look like, as it pertains to digital history, includes professional development for people in the field?

25. The Digital Public History Course: What does this course look like?

27. Pre-University Consider the context of High School, Primary & Secondary Education, perhaps Euroclio.org and project Historiana. How is the digital/public intersection changing & enhancing both approaches & engagement of schools with history, institutions, & publics?

29. Grassroots Local communities have begun to document and produce their own historical knowledge; how does this transform the relation to the past?

31. Federal Governments Policy (truly international: US, Canada, & EU)

32. State & Local Governments (also international)

33. National Parks & Historic Sites (is this in Federal Government)

34. Landscape & Space: parks, gardens, cemeteries, monuments; emphasis on local 

35. Historic Preservation & Cultural Resource Management The field of cultural resource management and preservation continue to focus attention on physical landscapes; how has emergence of a digital public history altered this work, in theory and practice?

37. UNESCO  How has the digital & public revolution transformed the work of international bodies, such as UNESCO?

Section 3: Practices: Engagement, Communities, & Curation 

Section 3 explores how public history practice has changed and digital practice has emerged as a result of the intersection of digital public history. This section focuses on best practices and approaches, using case studies and examples where possible. The big ideas for this section include public engagement, community building, the evolution of curation, and emergence of big data.

1. Strategies for the digital & public future (theoretical)

2. Professional Policies (What are the best practices of digital public history: i.e. open/closed access; open sources; filtering, algorithms, sustainability, programs?)

3. Law & Ethics (i.e. Ownership & Copyright)

4. Visualization (a kind of narrative but through visual means) Blogging & Textual Narrative (also video blog, podcasts, micro-blogging, tumblr, twitter)

5. Mapping

6. Data Standards & Practice

7. Collecting & Archiving (best practices)

8. Exhibiting

9. Conserving

10. Funding for the Past in the Future (funding, sustainability, emergence of a field in the funding)

11. Gaming (Playing and Fun) 

12. Crowdsourcing

13. Social Media  

14. Shared Authority

15. Community Building & Civic Engagement 

16. Storytelling

17. Living History 

18. Activist History

19. Narrative Practice: Popular, Fiction (Imagination – Imagined history), 

20. Genealogy

21. Curation

22. Teaching & Training: classroom, pedagogy, and program organization

23. Organizing/preserving the self

24. Amateur/non-professional public digital history (everyone their own historian?)

25. Commercial practice, DPH as Business, Market oriented DPH 

Section 4: Technology, Media, Data and Metadata

Section 4 explores various types of technologies, media, and metadata and how they’re being used in digital public history, with attention to the challenges in each of these domains--including the problems of engaging publics, the challenges of technological change, and modes of constructing historical argument.  This section also explores how the technological itself--both in its implementation and theoritization--is transforming digital public history.  The emphasis is on the emergence of both big ideas and categories of technology, as well as on the ways of organizing, dissemination, and sharing knowledge. With special attention to data and metadata, to hardware and software, as well as tool sets, essays in this section focuses not just on the present but suggests future direction.

1. Book & Print

2. Technological devices as mediators of media (also in technology)

3. GIS (the use of GIS, mapping programs, open street maps, designing maps, interpreting maps, arc-gis, q-gis (web & separate)

4. Mobile & Locative Media

5. CMS (various strategies and approaches)

6. Open Access (Theorizing, Application Programming Interfaces, Data Interoperability, Metadata standards, Licensing such as Creative Commons)

7. Open Source (Theory, Challengenges, Tools, GitHub, Maintaining Community, examples: Omeka, Drupal, WordPress, etc.)

8. Linked Open Data (Theory, challenges, taxonomies, ontologies, semantic web)

9. Standards (Different types of standards: archival, library, data, metadata, etc.)

10. Materiality and landscape in digital age (including soundscapes & 3-D modelling) Sensory history has gained currency as digital tools have emerged that allow for immersive experiences and multi-dimensional modeling. 

11. 3D Visualization (prospective, what it means: new modes of presenting and representing past, Second Life, Occulus Rift)

12.  3D Printing

13. Game Technologies (Occulus Rift?, soundscapes, connections, implications)

14. Programming (languages, approaches, should the historian be a programmer?, implications of the need for specialized programming skills--consider the public history context of the need for designers, exhibit developers, marketing specialists, etc.)

15. Websites (I want a “website.” What does that mean? Consider the transition from web 1.0 to web 2.0 to web 3.0 technology; thinking about characteristics of public history web: participatory/not, open/not, types of content; public engagement/not, links; how web technologies are changing, such as HTML5, including device contexts)

16. Video (video projects, streaming technologies, YouTube, Vimeo, portable devices, 

17. Photography (technologies, i.e. phones as cameras, photoshop, FLICKR etc., re-photography, HistoryPin, merging past/present locations (mixing past/present), cinemagraphs, focus on how technologies (both of taking photos and of representing photos, as well as sharing photos) shape the intersection of digital/public history; is this a new form of narrative in its own right? selfies

18. Audio (oral history in the digital age, transom http://transom.org/ for public radio, SoundCloud, streaming, podcasts, the emergence of sound studies, these three categories: focus on how technologies (both of taking photos/video/audio and of representing photos, as well as sharing photos) shape the intersection of digital/public history;

19. Social Media (focus on technologies of social media)

20. Reference/Management Tools (Zotero, Evernote, and other tools for building references, and links.)

21. Metadata (What is it? and why you should care? archival/library standards and machine metadata.)

22. Big Data (What this means for public engagement in history and cultural institutions; what does it mean for a digital data driven public history; what does proliferation of data mean for local institutions?)

23. Aggregation (Wikipedia, but also tools for content Aggregation, in cultural realm this includes such as dp.la, Europeana, new modes of engaging public outside ...)

24. Discovery & Connection (Connected Histories; Moving beyond Google: technologies for linking, connecting, & discovery of cultural information)

 

Storia Digitale o Storia con il Digitale ? E' lecito porre la domanda ?

La storia digitale ha rimodellato la documentazione dello storico e gli strumenti usati per accedervi, immagazzinarla e trattarla senza tuttavia che l’uso critico di questi strumenti -che non sono asettici nel rapporto tra lo storico e le fonti digitali-, fossero questionate a dovere nell’università italiana.

A livello internazionale invece, il terremoto del digital turn ha suscitato molti interrogativi nella professione confrontata globalmente con le incertezze sul futuro di una storiografia con il digitale, tra inquietudine e rigetto. La storia digitale richiede di riscrivere e reinterpretare i metodi professionali e di dominare le nuove pratiche nel digitale.[1] I cambiamenti delle pratiche professionali degli storici sono tali che ci dobbiamo interrogare su quali sia l’impatto di quella storia digitale sulle forme tradizionali di narrazione del passato e sui tempi della storia.[2] Ci possiamo chiedere se, alla luce della diffusione pubblica delle tecnologie, non dobbiamo rivedere in profondità il rapporto stesso che intratteniamo con il passato, la memoria e la storia nel presente.[3]

 Le pratiche degli storici impegnati a dominare -e anche forgiare- la tecnologia, avrebbero avuto come effetto di creare dei ghetti e di impaurire la professione tutta confrontata con il digital turn. Esistono difficoltà obiettive nel gestire le tecnologie digitali sempre più diffuse nel pubblico e usate -spesso egregiamente- all’infuori della professione.[4] Les incertitudes d'une mutation scriveva Rolando Minuti nel 2002,[5] Promises and perils of Digital History, ammonivano Daniel J.Cohen e Roy Rosenzweig nel loro manuale di digital history pubblicato nel 2006,[6] mentre ancora nel 2013, il catalano Anaclet Pons scrive un libro sulla storia digitale intitolandolo El desorden digital[7] in riferimento alla babele di una documentazione digitale difficile da dominare come lo aveva descritto Borges.[8] Questi studiosi interpretano il digital turn e la digital history partendo da una riflessione sui cambiamenti del mestiere di storico tradizionale. L’approccio non è né ottimista né pessimista, ma è quello di chi vuole capire le mutazioni tecnologiche alla luce di un positivismo critico –Cohen e Rosenzweig parlano di “tecno-realismo”-[9] non sottomesso alla tecnologia stessa, ma certamente interessato a essa. Toni Weller nel suo libro “History in the Digital Age”,[10] insegna che non tutti gli storici che utilizzano le risorse digitali e il computer sono “storici digitali”. Egli evidenzia l’impatto morbido della rivoluzione tecnologica applicata alle pratiche preesistenti degli storici e in continuità con le loro tradizioni professionali.[11] In sintonia con queste deduzioni di Weller, i risultati di un importante inchiesta Americana sulle pratiche della storiografia con il digitale sottolineano che “the underlying research methods of many historians remain fairly recognizable even with the introduction of new tools and technologies, but the day to day research practices of all historians have changed fundamentally”.[12]

Sempre dello stesso parere, la versione italiana del manifesto dell’Umanistica digitale nei suoi tre primi punti, recita che “la svolta digitale della società esplora e modifica le condizioni di produzione e di diffusione dei saperi” e che “le Digital Humanities riguardano l’insieme delle Scienze umane e sociali, delle Arti e delle Lettere, […] [e] non fanno tabula rasa del passato. Si appoggiano, al contrario, sull’insieme dei paradigmi, dei saperi e delle conoscenze proprie di queste discipline, mobilitando gli strumenti e le prospettive peculiari del digitale; le Digital Humanities designano una “interdisciplina” che include metodi, dispositivi e prospettive euristiche legate al digitale nel campo delle Scienze umane e sociali. [13] Questo Manifesto stilato durante THATcamp Parigi (The Humanities and Technology Camp, 2010) fu ridiscusso un anno dopo durante THATcamp Firenze (2011),[14] quando umanisti digitali italiani e francesi si confrontarono in un processo di internazionalizzazione della disciplina[15].

Comunque si pensi, riflettere sull’impatto transdisciplinare delle nuove pratiche che costituiscono le fondamenta della transdisciplina chiamata Umanistica Digitale (Digital Humanities) con le tradizioni epistemologiche e filologiche della storia è così diventato essenziale. E di fatti, la "cultura storica digitale" è parte di una più vasta "cultura digitale" che permea la nostra società attraverso la rete internet e sotto varie forme comunicative. Il concetto sociologico di cultura digitale proviene dall’opera di Manuel Castells[16] e anche dai lavori di Willard McCarty all’UCL[17] mentre in Italia, Tito Orlandi,[18] ha teorizzato addirittura la nascita di una neonata koinè, con un nuovo statuto disciplinare basato sull'elaborazione metodologica e scientifica del precedente concetto  d’informatica umanistica che incontra la rete internet e la comunicazione via web.[19]

Vanno così valorizzate le peculiarità disciplinari dello storico digitale: la ricerca di fonti differenti e le diverse trame narrative del web. Se è vero che l’umanistica digitale offre metodologie e pratiche comuni alle scienze che compongono l’area umanistica,[20] è vero anche che queste pratiche e questi concetti sono forse maggiormente elaborati a livello di singole discipline.[21]  Questo avviene riguardo alle diverse tradizioni scientifiche che ritrovano poi nella “république du virtuel”, un universalismo che supera le divisioni tra scienze umanistiche per forgiare nuove pratiche transdisciplinari e strumenti e linguaggi usati in tutte le discipline umanistiche. (Per esempio si usano protocolli aperti e compatibili nei siti della rete come gli standards di marcatura dei documenti,[22] i meta-dati descrittivi come il Dublin Core Project,[23] o i programmi e prodotti open sources[24] come Zotero[25] che favoriscono progetti collaborativi. Le banche dati, le biblioteche digitali e gli open archives sono ora compatibili tra di loro[26] attraverso un’interoperabilità dei loro dati, i cosiddetti linked open data dell’OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting o, in italiano il “Protocollo per il raccoglimento dei metadati dell'Open Archive Initiative”). [27])

Quasi tutte le problematiche tradizionali del mestiere di storico, dalla delimitazione di un’ipotesi di ricerca alla scoperta, all’accesso e alla gestione dei documenti e delle fonti, fino al conseguimento di un impianto narrativo e, soprattutto, alla comunicazione della storia e dei risultati della ricerca, e, infine all’insegnamento della storia, passano oramai in parte o in toto, attraverso lo schermo del computer: queste pratiche si annidano all’interno della ragnatela. La storia digitale si potrebbe così definire come “tutto il complesso universo di produzioni e scambi sociali aventi come oggetto la conoscenza storica, trasferito e/o direttamente generato e sperimentato in ambienti digitali (ricerca, organizzazione, relazioni, diffusione, uso pubblico e privato, fonti, libri, didattica, performance e via dicendo).”[28]

Invece, se si pensa al calcolo statistico, alla geo-localizzazione, alla gestione dei big data, enorme quantità di dati/fonti digitali disponibili come fonti che permettono pratiche trasversali di text-mining al loro interno,[29] -Peter Haber parlava addiritura di processo di “datificazione”-,[30] ai programmi che interrogano le immagini direttamente sui loro pixel, etc., la storia digitale, all’interno della transdiciplina dei digital humanities, non è soltanto fatta dell’utilizzo di nuovi strumenti digitali che facilitano vecchie pratiche. Si tratta anche dello sviluppo di un rapporto stretto con le tecnologie suscettibili di modificare i parametri stessi della ricerca. Lo storico è in grado di porre nuove questioni epistemologiche nell’analisi del passato dopo l’avvento del digitale. Tuttavia, solo una minoranza di storici digitali domina gli strumenti che rispondono a nuovi interrogativi scientifici. Meno ancora essi creano programmi originali che permettono nuove analisi e nuove forme d’interazione con le fonti e il loro trattamento in funzione d’ipotesi di ricerca facilitate dall’analisi computazionale.[31]

Lo storico oggi in Italia come altrove, [32] è storico con il digitale, molto meno storico digitale o umanista digitale,[33] ma è la storia stessa (fonti e storiografia) e la memoria del passato che sono, de facto, diventate digitali a prescindere di come gli storici individualmente e/o come gruppo professionale organizzato, si rapportino oggi al digital turn, ai digital humanities e alla storia digitale. La connivenza virtuosa con le tecnologie nonostante l’assenza di un quadro disciplinare istituzionalizzato per le Digital Humanities come in Inghilterra per esempio,[34] ha avuto delle ricadute diffuse e positive sul mestiere di storico nel suo insieme anche in Italia.[35] E’ certamente la comunicazione pubblica e una diffusa presenza del passato e delle memorie di ognuno in rete per le quali manca spesso la coscienza storica, che questionano il ruolo dello storico di professione nei confronti del mondo digitale.

[1] FREDERIC CLAVERT, e SERGE NOIRET (a cura di): L’histoire contemporaine à l’ère numérique - Contemporary History in the Digital Age, Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2013.

[2] FRANCOIS HARTOG: Régimes d’historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps, Seuil, Paris, 2012; Pierre Nora intervistato sul significato dei “lieux de mémoire” ribadiva la necessità per gli storici di dare un senso e una vita nel presente alle trace della memoria collettiva della nazione. (PIERRE NORA: Historien Public., Paris, Gallimard, 2011, pp.446-47.)

[3] PHILIPPE JOUTARD: Révolution numérique et rapport au passé, in PIERRE NORA (a cura di) La culture du passé, in «Le Débat», n.177, 2013/5, novembre-dicembre 2013, pp.145-52.

[4] SERGE NOIRET : La digital history: histoire et mémoire à la portée de tous, in Pierre Mounier (a cura di) : Read/Write Book 2. Une introduction aux humanités numériques, Marseille, OpenEdition Press, 2012, p. 151-177, URL: [http://press.openedition.org/258].

[5] ROLANDO MINUTI: Internet et le métier d'historien: réflexions sur les incertitudes d'une mutation. Paris, PUF, 2002.

[6] DANIEL .J. COHEN e ROY ROSENZWEIG: Digital history: a guide to gathering, preserving, and presenting the past on the Web., Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005; vedere inoltre degli stessi autori, Clio Wired. The future of the past in the digital age., New York, Columbia University Press, 2011.

[7] ANACLET PONS: El desorden digital: guía para historiadores y humanistas., Siglo XXI de España, Madrid, 2013.

[8]. J.L BORGES, La Biblioteca de Babel in ”Ficciones“, Alianza, Madrid, 1971, pp.89-100. Sull’incapacità di trovare una risposta nella “babele” dell’informazione, oggi nel web, il tema affrontato da Borges nel 1941, vedere il saggio di C. ROLLASON,: “Borges’ “Library of Babel” and the Internet", in IJOWLAC - Indian Journal of World Literature and Culture, 1/1, Gennaio-Giugno 2004, pp.117-120, ripubblicato qui: URL: [http://www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_papers_rollason2.html].

[9] COHEN e ROSENZWEIG, Digital History, cit., p.3.

[10] Weller distingue tra “those historians who were professionally engaged in digital tools and technologies in their work … and those who did not consider the subject within their remit at all, despite regularly using email, distribution lists, digitized newspapers or images and many other online resources.”, TONI WELLER: History in the Digital Age., London, Routledge, 2012, p.2.

[11] Lo stesso approccio cauto sull’impatto delle nuove tecnologie si ritrova in Italia in alcun recenti riflessioni sul significato della storia digitale. Il gruppo di giovani studiosi che fanno capo alla rivista Diacronie adopera questa visione cauta nel fascicolo a cura di Elisa Grandi, Deborah Paci e Émilien Ruiz: Digital History. La storia nell’era dell’accesso., in “Diacronie. Studi di Storia Contemporanea", 10/2, 2012; la stessa cautela si ritrova in un saggio che introduce il numero speciale della rivista storica BMGN nel Benelux a cura di GERBEN ZAAGSMA: On Digital History., in BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review, Vol. 128/4, dicembre 2013.

[12] J. RUTNER e R. C. SCHONFELD,: Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians: Final Report from ITHAKA S+R, December 10, 2012.

[13] Il Manifesto dei Digital Humanities elaborato da Marin Dacos e da chi assistette nel 2010 al THATcamp Parigi, fu presentato e approvato anche al primo THATcamp italiano, THATCamp Firenze all’Istituto Universitario Europeo, dal mondo dell’umanistica digitale italiana. Le proposte del manifesto sono volutamente generiche per identificare un momento di passaggio e di cambiamento e non legare il contenuto del manifesto ad una sola cultura, un solo paese o a pochi gruppi di innovatori. Si veda di M. DACOS: Manifesto delle Digital Humanities, 26 marzo 2011, pubblicato in italiano dopo THATCamp Florence, nel marzo 2011, URL: [http://www.thatcampflorence.it].

[14] THATcamp Florence, 23^rd-26th March 2011.

[15] L’AUICD italiana (Associazione per l'Informatica Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale) aderisce all’EADH, (European Association for Digital Humanities), URL: [http://eadh.org], una delle componenti dell’ADHO (Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations), URL: [http://www.digitalhumanities.org/], che raggruppa le associazioni internazionali di Umanistica Digitale; per motivi di diversificazione linguistica e culturale, è stato fondato durante il THATCamp Saint-Malo in Francia nel 2013, un associazione francofona di umanistica digitale, Humanistica con sede in Canada (URL: http://www.humanisti.ca). Il campo è oggi in piena espansione organizzativa ed associativa a livello mondiale.

[16] Sui mutamenti profondi, culturali, sociali ed economici, in corso nella nostra società dopo l’avvento di internet, si veda di MANUEL CASTELLS: La nascita della società in rete, Milano, EGEA-Università Bocconi, 2002 e dello stesso autore: The Internet galaxy: reflections on the Internet, business, and society., New York, Oxford University Press, 2001.

[17] WILLARD  MCCARTY: Humanities computing., Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

[18] TITO ORLANDI: Informatica Umanistica., Roma, La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1990. Per una bibliografia degli scritti di Orlandi rimando alla sua pagina web personale: Pubblicazioni relative all'Informatica umanistica, oltre che alla bibliografia contenuta in LORENZO PERILLI e DOMENICO FIORMONTE (a cura di), La Macchina del Tempo. Studi di informatica umanistica in onore di Tito Orlandi, Firenze,. Le Lettere, 2011.

[19] La nuova disciplina sarebbe da inserire nell’Area 10: Scienze dell’antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-artistiche, e nell’Area 11: Scienze storiche, filosofiche, pedagogiche e psicologiche. (GINO RONCAGLIA,: Informatica umanistica: le ragioni di una disciplina). Si veda anche il manifesto Proposta di costituzione del settore scientifico-disciplinare: Informatica applicata alle discipline umanistiche (ovvero: Informatica umanistica), e a mia conoscenza il primo manuale italiano per la didattica dell’Informatica Umanistica che ne anticipava già le concezioni, TERESA NUMERICO, e ARTURO VESPIGNANI, (a cura di): Informatica per le scienze umanistiche., Bologna, Il Mulino, 2003.

[20] Il primo manuale (2004) accessibile dal 2007 gratuitamente in linea è di SUSAN SCHREIBMAN, RAY SIEMENS, JOHN UNSWORTH (a cura di) A Companion to Digital Humanities, Oxford, Blackwell, 2004. CLARE WARWICK: Digital Humanities in Practice., London, Facet Publishing, 2012; M.K. GOLD: Debates in the digital humanities., Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2012; MELISSA TERRAS, JULIANNE NYHAN, e EDWARD VANHOUTTE: Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader., London, Ashgate, 2013; sulle pratiche degli storici dopo il “digital turn”, rimando anche a SERGE NOIRET: “Storia Digitale: sulle risorse di rete per gli storici.”, in La Macchina del Tempo. Studi di informatica umanistica in onore di Tito Orlandi, cit., pp.201-25.

[21] PHILIPPE RYGIEL: L’inchiesta storica in epoca digitale, in Memoria e Ricerca, n.35, 2010, p.163-.

[22] Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)  URL: [http://www.tei-c.org/index.xml].

[23] Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), URL: [http://dublincore.org/].

[24] Open Source Initiative (OSI) è un progetto per rendere accessibile la codifica dei programmi e banche dati a tutti, URL: [http://www.opensource.org/].

[25] Zotero, URL: [http://www.zotero.org].

[26] Open Archives Initiative (OAI), URI: [http://www.openarchives.org/].

[27] Open Archives Initiative. Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, URL: [http://www.openarchives.org/pmh/].

[28] GIANCARLO MONINA: Storia digitale. Il dibattito storiografico in Italia, in Memoria e Ricerca, n.43/2, pp.185-202, qui, p.185.

[29] VIKTOR MAYER-SCHÖNBERGER, e KENNETH CUKIER: Big Data: a Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Vedere inoltre di DANAH BOYD e KATE CRAWFORD, Critical Questions for Big Data, in “Information, Communication & Society”, 15/5, 2012, pp.662‑679 e, di KATE CRAWFORD: Think Again: Big Data. Why the rise of machines isn't all it's cracked up to be, in “Foreign Policy”, 10 Maggio 2013. Infine, per un esempio dell’uso della dataficazione a storia vedere JORIS VAN EIJNATTEN, TOINE PETERS e JAAP VERHEUL: Big Data for Global History: The Transformative Promise of Digital Humanities., in BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review, n.128/4, 2013, pp.55-77.

[30] Il concetto di “data driven history” è quello che ha usato il compianto PETER HABER per definire il mondo nuovo della storia digitale, nel suo Digital past: Geschichtswissenschaft im digitalen Zeitalter, München, Oldenbourg Verlag, 2011.

[31] DANIEL J. COHEN, MAX FRISCH, P.GALLAGHER, STEVEN. MINTZ, KIRSTEN SWORD, A.MURRELL TAYLOR, WILLIAM G. THOMAS III, e WILLIAM J TURKEL.: Interchange: The Promise of Digital History, in The Journal of American History, 2, 2008, pp.452-91.

[32] Anche se per loro, la rivoluzione digitale passa da una nuova conoscenza transdisciplinare e dalla collaborazione tra diverse scienze; vedere di STEPHANE LAMASSÉ, e PHILIPPE RYGIEL, Nouvelles frontières de l’historien , in «Revue Sciences/Lettres», n.2, 2014, DOI: 10.4000/rsl.411.

[33] E’ quello che rileva Claudia Favero nella sua inchiesta per sapere “What does it mean to be a digital historian in Italy and in the UK?” basata purtroppo su un numero molto circoscritto d’interviste qualificate in entrambi I paesi. L’autrice delimita nella sua analisi, problemi e contradizioni degli storici che s’interrogano sul loro lavoro con il digitale o che fanno storia digitale, in CLAUDIA FAVERO: Digital Historians in Italy and the United Kingdom: Perspectives and Approaches., in CLARE MILLS, MICHAEL PIDD e ESTHER WARD: Proceedings of the Digital Humanities Congress 2012. Studies in the Digital Humanities., Sheffield, HRI Online Publications, 2014.

[34] Defining digital humanities: a reader., cit.. Una critica dell’uniformità culturale dei digital humanities, una definizione alternative e una descrizione degli ambiti disciplinari in Europa e altrove sono forniti da MARIN DACOS e PIERRE MOUNIER: Humanités numériques – État des lieux et positionnement de la recherche française dans le contexte international., Marseilles, OpenEdittion/Institut Français, 2014, pp.29-36.

[35] Malgrado ciò, la valutazione scientifica in positivo dell’Umanistica Digitale che include anche il lavoro degli storici con il digitale, è tuttora penalizzata nei suoi aspetti transdiciplinari dall’accademia italiana. L’Associazione per l’Informatica Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale (AUICD) ha denunciato sul sito ROARS, “le gravi circostanze emerse con la pubblicazione dei risultati dell’Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale, che rischiano di compromettere in modo serio e preoccupante il futuro della formazione e della ricerca in un settore, quello dell’informatica umanistica e delle digital humanities, concordemente giudicato di importanza strategica per l’innovazione tecnologica e per la conservazione del patrimonio culturale”. (Osservazioni critiche dell’AIUCD sull’ASN).