Reaction Paper #1: What is Digital History?

To answer the question "what is digital history?" many different view points must be taken into consideration. A starting point for understanding digital history can be seen in the way Cohen and Rosenzweig describe it in the introduction of their book Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web . They say,

Digital history is an approach to examining and representing the past that works with the new communication technologies of the computer, the Internet network, and software systems.

From the time the first easily accessible internet browsers have became available, different academic professions have been taking advantage of the convenience of sharing material and ideas via the WWW. Although the History profession has taken a little longer to fully begin to accept and utilize digital means of sharing and preserving history today the number of digital history projects are expanding rapidly. However, while there are becoming more and more resources available online of digitized sources, historians cannot forget the masses of resources that are still left untouched.
With the digital revolution has come many complications ranging from the standard expense problems to more complicated diverging philosophies and applications of how to use the digital technologies appropriately when considering history.
In her article History, Digitized (and Abridged), Katie Hafner explains several of the difficulties that face historians and information professionals that are seeking to digitize sources. The main problem for the Library of Congress in digitizing its special collections she explains is that it simply costs too much money.

Scanning alone on smaller items ranges from $6 to $9 for a 35-millimeter slide, to $7 to $11 a page for presidential papers, to $12 to $25 for poster-size pieces.

Additionally, the shear amount of items that are still undigitized is astronomical, while the goal is there, it seems that the feasibility of making the online source bank complete is a little far fetched.
Another problem that relates to the incomplete nature of digitized material is the manner that many historians research now that so many sources have become available online. If a historian only uses sources that are easily accessible, online or close by, than primary sources that have not been digitized and are still stashed away in special collections, than important information could be missing which could lead to gaps in the end conclusion or misinterpretation.
Another facet of this particular problem is restriction on information because of copyright infringement. Many books and sound recordings are restricted from being digitized for this reason. The overall effect is "narrowing our own understanding of our own history" as Hafner frames it.

Even with these setbacks, there are many advantages to digital history. As Brett Bobley expains in Patricia Cohen's article Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches

analyzing unprecedented amounts of data can reveal patterns and trends and raise unexpected questions for study. He offered the human genome project as an example of how an area of study can be transformed: “Technology hasn’t just made astronomy, biology and physics more efficient. It has let scientists do research they simply couldn’t do before.”

This development offers historians a whole new range of ways to view the past.

“People will use this data in ways we can’t even imagine yet,” Mr. Stowell said, “and I think that is one of the most exciting developments in the humanities.”-

Like most professionals Edward L. Ayers of University of Virginia thinks that the future of digital history is a rosy one simply because media is so pervasive in our society today. As historians begin to see the clear advantages of working with technology, digital history will only continue to grow.