Clio Wired (History 696)

Structure, Interface, Search and Presentation of Sources on this Archive
When using the “Search All Collections” option (powered by Google), entering the term “mexican war,” 168 results are retrieved. These results include personal narratives, diaries, poems, literary publications, slave narratives, government documents and more. One could limit the search by browsing particular collections, such as those mentioned above. Only “True and Candid Compositions” has a search engine for the specific collection, which makes browsing rather tedious in the other collections. All of the collections are well described, with accessible information and subject headings describing the resources housed there. The presentation of sources is well done, combining images of individuals and of portions of original text (title page and spine usually in the monograph sources) and a transcribed version of the full-text. In the instance of a speech, the transcribed version is on the web-page, but there are links to images of every page of the hand-written speech. The citation information is also included for sources from the UNC library system, allowing researchers to also access the hard-copy version.

What tools would make it easier to carry out the above mentioned project?
The information appears to be well described/defined, with each collection receiving plenty of attention. It would be very beneficial to add full-text search engines to each individual collection, so researchers could limit the sources they need to sift through. “Searching” isn’t even one of the options in the navigation bar at the top of the pages in the archive.

Whether research and writing will be different in the digital era?
Researching in the digital era is definitely a different process. There is an availability of sources, sometimes with unlimited access, presenting the researcher with new opportunities and challenges. Certainly the availability of more sources to a broader audience will improve the knowledge and interpretation on any given topic. However, as Roy Rosenzweig discusses, the abundance of sources presents a new set of problems: “Historians, in fact, may be facing a fundamental paradigm shift from a culture of scarcity to a culture of abundance.” Therefore researching methodology must change. This task is further complicated by the difficulty for researchers to find the reliable archives within the vastness of the Internet. With more and more universities hosting digitization projects, hopefully researchers will turn first to the academic community for research materials.

The change in research inevitably changes writing. Nonetheless, this change is less explicit and harder to understand or predict. Historians are beginning to use the digital media as a presentation of their written works, with many going beyond traditional text to encompass the immense aesthetic, audio and video prospects existing in the digital medium. Problems of ownership, copyright and even citation are plaguing “creative property” far beyond the realm of historical publication. Therefore the value of analysis via digital media seems arguable. As Lawrence Lessig states, “creativity depends upon the owners of creativity having less than perfect control,” which is definitely the case with the Internet. Yet many scholars were comfortable with the creativity boundaries recognized in print media, and the apparently limitless possibilities of the Internet negate all that was comfortable and established.

Although we hate to admit it, and some may even disagree, change is a good thing. Ironic for the entrenched and balking historians, who in their youth hated establishment and have since claimed an open mind, that such a free-moving, equal-opportunity media would develop to rock their professional ideals as they count down to retirement. Is this a full-circle moment?