Here is my entry on digital scholarship:
Putting scholarship into the digital realm requires at least three qualifications: a passion for pedagogy, at least a modicum of technical ability, and the belief in (and an application of) the "promise of digital scholarship." The first two prerequisites are widely encountered, more and more so as the technologically-aware generation progresses through academia. But it is apparent that many are suspicious of fusing pedagogy with technology, that the "promise of digital scholarship" is dubious and even detrimental to the teaching profession.
What exactly are the promises of digital scholarship? Considering the undeveloped nature of the enterprise theoreticians are left to analyze the limited variety of practical examples, or at the very least hypothesize and conjecture the advantages (and disadvantages) of new media. Most theoreticians are cautious in their support for digital scholarship. One theoretician praises the "richness of documentation" and the "complexity of argumentation" that new media provides digital scholarship, but at the same time points out that it may undercut the traditional "social contract" between an author and reader. In a related critique, another wonders if the "provisionality of hypertext" would lead to a scholastic environment of "perpetual revision," in which the author may defensively position his or her argument against traditional peer review. (Though these critiques may be seen as benefits to some scholars, especially those of the postmodern persuasion.) And still others point out the increased and maybe prohibitive preparation time inherent in moving scholarship to a new form altogether.
These critiques notwithstanding, some scholars are attempting to fuse technology with pedagogy, and the digital medium many are utilizing is the World Wide Web. In one online digital scholarship project, The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities, historians William G. Thomas III and Edward L. Ayers published an electronic essay with hopes to "reconstruct the process by which [their] argument was developed." To do so they implemented a "prismatic model" of hypertext that networks analysis and evidence together, allowing readers to follow their line of reasoning – arguably an entirely new form of scholarly interpretation and presentation.
But does the essay live up to what its authors say, does it fulfill the "promise of digital scholarship"? Their prismatic model is quite effective and innovative, to be sure. Their citations are comprehensive, their comparative histories are richly documented and supported, and almost all analyses are accompanied by a great amount of quantitative and spatial data. In fact, the profusion of supporting evidence is this electronic essay's most substantial, and daunting, quality. One can easily become overcome by the sheer magnitude of accompanying data the authors cite in their essay. Only when I learned to heed only the evidence that I found useful to my understanding of the argument did I feel comfortable reading the essay.
But does this essay do anything genuinely new with new media? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that, in the physical limits of space, no traditional essay could so comprehensively be supported by evidence – primary sources that are so easily accessible to the reader. No in the sense that the traditional scholarly essay has already made it superfluous for the reader to examine its evidence in any meticulous way. As long as the essay is well researched and written and well cited by reference and notes, the reader should ultimately feel satisfied with the product. (This is the "social contract" that was alluded to before.) Are there any value-added benefits to the kind of digital scholarship that Thomas and Ayers produced? If there is value in the reader witnessing all the evidence the authors scrutinized in their investigation, then yes. I came across some revealing points in the available evidence, but the time it took for the authors to assemble and present the evidence may not have been worth the effort.
Another example of digital scholarship is the website From Hogan's Alley to Coconino County: Four Narratives of the Early Comic Strip, by M. David Westbrook. The site features three electronic essays accompanied by numerous digitized newspaper comic strips from the turn-of-the-century. The author describes his work as actually one essay separated into three "threads" – that is, three sections with "no overarching thesis." Paradoxically, the author also maintains that "none of the threads can stand alone," which only begins to make sense when one reads the essays and experiences the hypertextual interconnectivity between the essays and the comic strips.
Put plainly, each essay follows an independent argument based largely upon common comic strips. By using hypertext, the author avoids "subordinating complex primary materials to a single interpretation." I find this approach to be one of the most promising upshots in the use of hypertext. Few serious historians would argue that one piece of evidence has a single, categorical interpretation. As Westbrook's essays demonstrate, hypertext has the capability to effectively represent the complexity and relativity of evidential material. The author succeeds in this by allowing the reader to negotiate the source material from different vantage points, each from a different essay with its own argument.
Westbrook, I think, does a better job utilizing new media than do Thomas and Ayers. Whereas the only perceptible use of new media in The Differences Slavery Made was the facilitated connectivity to all related evidence, From Hogan's Alley to Coconino County uses new media to contrast three independent arguments to shared evidence. The layered comic strip annotations, especially, were insightfully done. They allowed readers to consider the comic strips through multiple, interconnected interpretations – something not so easily done (although possible) in the physical universe.
The promise of digital scholarship is indeed significant, as both these examples show, but there are still many who are justifiably doubtful and wish to continue an ongoing dialogue about the ramifications of using hypertexuality for pedagogical purposes. In this case I feel that Westbrook put it best when he asserts that scholars should write "less about hypertext and more in hypertext." A dialogue about these matters is important, but only the development and study of practical examples can further the dialog as it stands now.
Notes:
1. Roy Rosenzweig, Crashing the System? Hypertext and Scholarship on American Culture, American Quarterly 51.2, June 1999, 242, 244
2. Christopher P. Wilson, This Site Under Construction, American Quarterly 51.2, June 1999, 270-271
3. Susan Smulyan, Everyone A Reviewer? Problems and Possibilities in Hypertext Scholarship, American Quarterly 51.2, June 1999 263
4. William G. Thomas III and Edward L. Ayers, An Overview: The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities, The American Historical Review 108.5, December 2003, 2.
5. M. David Westbrook, From Hogan's Alley to Coconino County: Four Narratives of the Early Comic Strip, About this essay, < http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/comics/start.html>
6. Ibid.
7. M. David Westbrook, Mixed Media: Writing Hypertext about Comics, American Quarterly 51.2, June 1999, 256-257. [Emphasis mine]