Keeping the “Promise of Digital Scholarship”
Digital scholarship might be classified as an attempt to break free from traditional print or linear forms of scholarship, elevating the craft to a higher level of interpretation and presentation through the use of hypertext, multi-media options such as audio and video components, instant access to databases and other digital enhancements unavailable in traditional media forms. Through digital scholarship, the user can cull from a variety of sources made available on and through a web-site to hopefully achieve a better, more thorough understanding of the topic at hand; and therein lays the “promise of digital scholarship.” But, is it a promise always worth keeping?
The web-site Imaging the French Revolution , by Jack Censer and Lynn Hunt, is a unique attempt at melding imagery as a historical interpretive resource with the components of digital scholarship. Utilizing forty-two images of crowd violence from the French Revolution, seven noted historians set about dissecting and interpreting an array of cartoons and prints for their meaning vis-à-vis the French Revolution. The web site is broken down into three sections. In Essays , each author examines several images in relation to a theme, such as “Representing Women in the Revolutionary Crowd,” or “Images of Popular Violence in the French Revolution.” In Discussion an on-line exchange between the authors based on six “broad questions” related to the images is presented, and in the Images section visitors can review the images for themselves and draw their own conclusions.
The site stands out as fulfilling the promise of digital scholarship in a number of ways. While at first glance, the essays found in the Essays section might appear to be similar to a linear print presentation of each author’s interpretations of various images, but they are not. The site breaks with the traditional printed linear form in its use of hyperlinks to images; while reading an author’s analysis and argument, a visitor may reference by way of a hyperlink the image being discussed. This link not only brings up a closer view of the image itself, along with the title and other vital statistics on the image, but it also offers hyperlinks to analysis by other historians presenting on the site as well as comparisons to other images – something not achievable using traditional print media. Likewise, going to the Images section and selecting an image will give information on the image as well as a link to various historians’ discussions on the image. Unique to this section is the Image Tool. This tool allows the visitor to engage in a thorough comparison of images through viewing multiple images at the same time, enlarging the images and overlaying images on top of one another. Because the very nature of this project is image dependent, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to discuss, cross reference and dissect the images in a cogent fashion using traditional print media.
While their site does not do anything “genuinely new” with relation to new media, it does use tried and true methods well. In the field of digital scholarship, the temptation to have hyperlinks going off in all different directions is very real. However, Censer and Hunt use links logically and sparingly, and only to support the arguments of the historians in question. In short, they do not allow hypertext to overwhelm their essay. Their use of the image tool, while very helpful, is not unique either. Other sites use similar “tools” to highlight and compare images as well. But, like their use of hypertext, the image tool is utilized unobtrusively and is just as it claims: a “tool” to be called upon if desired.
In an “applied experiment in digital scholarship,” the site The Difference Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities is an attempt to engage in traditional professional scholarship while taking “advantage” of digital media to explore how slavery “divided American society and culture in the years before the Civil War.” Similar to and at times pulling from the Valley of the Shadow web-site, Edward Ayes and William Thomas engage in a comparative analysis between two communities -- Augusta County, VA and Franklin County, PA -- on the eve of the Civil War, examining the “difference slavery made” in these two communities. Ayers and Thomas draw from a vast body of historical writings on slavery from such well know historians as James McPherson, Eugene Genovese and Eric Foner to engage a series of “debates” from geography to social structures and their influence on and relevance to slavery.
The site is divided into four main sections: an Introduction, Summary of Argument, Points of Analysis, and Methods, with three additional sections– Evidence, Historiography and Tools -- where the supporting data is compiled. To pull these sections together, Ayers and Thomas made extensive use of hypertext in linking the works of authors, census data, agricultural data and geographical data being used in an argument. The visitor is able to explore all the supporting details of an argument if need be, from maps to tables. But herein lays a problem. While both Imaging the French Revolution and The Difference Slavery Made make use of hypertext to weave their arguments together, The Difference Slavery Made does so to an extreme. Where Imaging the French Revolution uses hypertext sparingly and logically, never taking the visitor too far beyond the origin of the link, The Difference Slavery Made takes the visitor on an often times confusing ride in hypertextuality. Not every fact need be supported ad nausea with a hypertext link to the data. Many links have links that, in turn, have links. While Ayers and Thomas should be commended for their desire and attempt at providing as much source information as possible to support their essay, the amount of information made available, combined with the means of getting to it (and working back from it), tends to be burdensome and confusing.
One of the advantages of new media over traditional print is its ability to allow the visitor to experience or view supporting data in conjunction to reading the main body of a scholar’s work. Visitors can segue with ease into census data, tables, view and compare pictures, read additional works of a contributing author or even link to other web-sites that relate to the topic at hand. But, one of the disadvantages appears to be the danger of providing the visitor with too many options and too much information, leading to confusion and information overload. Maybe the promise of new digital scholarship should, at times, be a promise not kept rather than a promise fulfilled.