This document summarizes Donald Spaeth's presentation on digital history given at the University of Glasgow in 2013. It discusses the history of computing in history from the 1980s to the present, highlighting how historians have increasingly adopted digital tools and online resources in their research and teaching. The document also examines some of the opportunities and challenges of new developments like MOOCs and disseminating teaching content more widely online.

1. From computers and history to
digital history: a retrospective
Donald Spaeth
University of Glasgow
IHR Seminar on Digital History
28 May 2013

2. Association for History and Computing,
Westfield, 1986-87

3. • ‘while there is much to celebrate about the last decade, the
fact remains that the profession is still divided between a
small minority of historians who use computers as tools for
analysing historical data and the vast majority who, while
they might use a PC for wordprocessing, remain
unconvinced of the case that it can become a
methodological asset.’ (Speck, 1994)
• or the web, online databases, archive catalogues, digital
cameras, etc. (2013)

5. body
norooms outdoors
value
object
item
room
Probate Inventories XML
Database

6. Visitation Act Book Database

7. Teaching History with Computers

8. DISH

9. Goals
• ‘students need to analyse databases actively and critically,
just as they have always examined traditional … sources’
• ‘ensuring that large generalised databases (preferably
reflecting the … entire content of a specific source) are
available to the largest possible constituency’
• ‘the utility of teaching IT and a particular subject
simultaneously’
• ‘academics … become guides accompanying their students
in an exploration of the past’

10. Carolyn Lougée,
The Would-Be Gentleman

11. Core Resources for Historians

15. Historical Problems
• Assess the extent to which the Irish were assimilated into
Britain.
• What do CEBs reveal about the gendered nature of work?
• Was a consumer society born in eighteenth-century
England?
• Did the Norman Conquest cause a tenurial revolution in
11th-century England?
• How important is the study of elections to an
understanding of politics in eighteenth century England?

16. The Future?
• MOOCs: massive online open courses
– Coursera, Udacity, edX
• Replacing lectures with podcasts
• Disseminating the best teaching
• More targetted teaching

17. Issues
• What problem?
• Intellectual property
• Assessment
– Multiple choice questions are almost as good as essays because
they spot-check participants’ deeper comprehension of the text.
‘Our ambition is actually to make the Harvard experience now
closer to the MOOC experience’ (Gregory Nagy, Classics, Harvard
University)

18. The future of history and computing
• ‘historians want to stay historians, and do not want to
delve into the intricacies of information technology’
• ‘energy has to go to more fundamental methodological and
technical research’
• ‘denying these challenges and opportunities will …
segregate the study of history from the technical
capabilities currently being developed in the information
society and will turn the computer into an awkward tool
with limited use and usability for historians’
Boonstra, Breure and Doorn, Past, present and future of
historical information science (2004)