TheLen

I wonder what everyone else thinks about the issue of what I’m going to call “academic legitimacy.” Namely, the determination of whether or not a work (article, book, pamphlet, tract, website, essay, doodle) presenting itself as history is an acceptable source of information. The determination of the criteria of acceptability is problematic in and of itself, and certainly worth discussing. Should academic standards for “historical” websites apply to non-historians? How important are degrees and other professional qualifications in the digital presentation of history? The Digital History chapter touched on this issue, including:

1. George Welling’s struggle to get his colleagues to accept his website “From Revolution to Reconstruction” as an “academic venture”
2. the thorny question of whether online archives are “true” archives (see the JAH guidelines for clarification)
3. the explicit division of online history-providers into “professional historians” and “enthusiasts”

Who are the “gatekeepers” of this historical legitimacy? Can someone without an advanced degree (or even a BA) attain historical legitimacy? Do degrees and credentials even matter when so few people think critically about the material presented in websites — or books, for that matter?

Also, how would you teach students to critically evaluate websites? Would “historical legitimacy” be a factor you would encourage students to address? What other aspects of a site, beyond the content/form/audience/new media areas discussed in the JAH guidelines, would you ask your students to examine. Would you even direct students to the JAH guidelines? Or would you create your own rubric for “acceptable” and “legitimate” websites?

Lastly, how important is the intended audience when evaluating the legitimacy of a website? The JAH guidelines recognize that websites’ effectiveness depends on their accessability and that content must be tailored to the audience. Should a historical website attempt to link different communities, defined by Agre as “people who share a certain institutional location,” into one audience? Or, should each community have its own set of websites? Also, if a number of communities constitute an audience for a particular website, does that audience become a community itself?