New media in theory, new media in practice
In theory, new or digital media offers boundless possibilities to enhance history scholarship. However, in practice it does not always work out they way we want. I think we all can relate to David Bell’s first two examples. I absolutely love the ability to access newspaper and journal articles from AU’s library from home at 11 am or 11 pm, whichever fits my schedule. Or it’s so easy to simply log onto the Internet to track down an elusive quotation (or any random fact that I need!) instead of traveling to campus to visit the library. It’s also much easier to collaborate with colleagues across the country on research thanks to digital media. Yet, as my recent web review demonstrates with university archives and special collections web sites, not all digital tools are made or distributed equally. Whether it is the constraints posed by technology (dial-up modem, different standards for different browsers), cost (of accessing articles or even paying for a PC or ISP), or human beings (such as eye strain or the inability of the brain to adapt to non-linear formats), new media has made tremendous strides in the past decade, but it is still very much in development.
The Journal of the Association for History and Computing and the American Quarterly hypertext articles are great examples of digital media’s strengths and challenges. I thought the Journal was easy to navigate and loved how they listed reviews of web sites, online articles, and print/books side-by-side. However, some of the links to sites featured in older issues (such as those 1998 or 1999) are no longer active, making it frustrating for readers. The American Quarterly articles are chock full of information and visuals; a terrific way to blend the two media and allow readers to seamlessly access more information. Yet I found myself getting bogged down in hyperlinks, jumping from one topic to the next and then forgetting where I was in the “main” text. As I was simply browsing through the articles, this approach was acceptable. But I agree with David Bell’s comments that reading scholarship online can be very distracting, leaving readers questioning how much information they actually retained from the process. In addition, Roy Rosenzweig raises extremely valuable points when he notes that traditional academic reading skills (like pinpointing a thesis) may not apply with hypertext articles. Based on my experiences and these readings, I wondered if those of us in the humanities have a more difficult time using digital media based on our traditional reliance on print or text sources? Would a mathmatician have the same problem?
Roy Rosenzweig’s second article and Clifford Lynch’s overview of e-books complicate the situation further, raising issues that I hadn’t considered like ownership of e-books or the right for free access to online scholarship. It’s interesting that we expect to pay subscriptions for hard copy magazines, journals and newspapers that are delivered to our home or office, yet expect online versions of these media to be free?
In spite of these difficulties, it is clear that historians and other academics must work with new media even if the experience is not flawless or without challenges. As Bell wryly notes, it took early modern scholars centuries to fully exploit and understand the benefits of printing.
In addition, while academics may complain about the growing pains of digital media, we cannot forget the problems of print scholarship. This irony is demonstrated in the Benjamin Harrison article. Harrison turns my complaints about digital media - constrained by technology, cost, and human factors from ideally functioning - on their head and into complaints about print. He compellingly argues that print is expensive. Next, he shows the limits of print technology, maintaining that paper publishing is limited in scope and bandwidth from serving all potential readers simultaneously. Finally, the human factor involved in print, such as a slow peer review and revision process, bogs down the process.