Presentation for the American Historical Association's Getting Started in Digital History Workshop, 7 January 2015

1. DIGITAL HISTORY / PUBLIC HISTORY
getting started in digital history workshop
American Historical Association
2016 Conference
Jason M. Kelly
Director, IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute
Associate Professor of History
IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI
jaskelly@iupui.edu
@jason_m_kelly
jasonmkelly.com
#aha16
#dighist
#gsdh

2. • How does the practice of public history change when
digital components are involved?
• How do we shape the digital sphere into a public
commons, and expand the practice of public history
outward from its physical institutions into virtual spaces?
• Where do we draw the line between digital public history
and digital history in public?
Questions

3. 10 minutes Introductions
20 minutes Taxonomies
10 minutes Sample Projects
10 minutes Tools

4. I. Taxonomies
A. What is Public History?
"Public history refers to the employment of historians
and historical method outside of academia.”
Robert Kelley, The Public Historian, 1 (1978): 16

5. I. Taxonomies
A. What is Public History?
"As public history has evolved from a quest for "alternative careers" to a way of
understanding and practicing the craft of history, it has on the campuses run
headlong into the sacred trinity of research, teaching, and service--with the
greatest of these being research embodied in refereed publications....Despite the
peer review and many other strengths, the present reward system has
contributed to an unproductive "academic vs. public" debate; encouraged a
trend towards co-opting public history by defining it as another specialized
subfield and obscured the common ground shared by the community of
professionals who practice the historians' craft. As historians, we all do research,
we all analyze and interpret our findings, and we all communicate the results. The
primary difference between public and academic history is in the area of
communication—in the audiences that we attempt to reach and in the products
that we use to convey our scholarship to those audiences.
Scarpino, Philip V., "Some Thoughts on Defining, Evaluating, and Rewarding Public
Scholarship." The Public Historian 15, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 55-61.

6. I. Taxonomies
A. What is Public History?
“public history describes the many and diverse ways in which history
is put to work in the world. In this sense, it is history that is applied
to real-world issues. In fact, applied history was a term used
synonymously and interchangeably with public history for a number
of years. Although public history has gained ascendance in recent
years as the preferred nomenclature especially in the academic
world, applied history probably remains the more intuitive and self-
defining term.”
Dichtl, J., Sacco, N. “Putting History to Work in the World” (2014).

7. I. Taxonomies
A. What is Public History?
• preservation / archiving
• interpretation / communication with public
• engagement
• management
• consulting

8. Responsibilities Modes of Practice Emphasis
Low Inform
Provide high quality, relevant, and
accessible information
Lectures, open access
websites, fact sheets,
exhibitions
Education and
information delivery
Engage
ment
Level
Consult
Provide timely, detailed analysis based
on reliable qualitative & quantitative
data
Provide research and advice
on public projects
Provide research-
based community
service
Involve
Guarantee that all communities have
equal opportunity to participate and
provide input
Design research projects in
consultation with the public
to address a community
problem
Community input in
framing research
question and
methods
Collaborate
Define and maintain structures and
processes to guarantee shared power
& decision making
Partner with community to
design and execute a
project
Integration of
community
throughout research
process
High Empower
Clearly articulate roles and
responsibilities and adapt as
necessary; consensus building and
joint decision making
Collaborative community-
engaged research project
that emphasizes community
empowerment and
transformation
Active participation
in collective action
Adapted from IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum, http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0003/105834/IAP2_Spectrum.gif
Engagement and Public Scholarship

9. Reciprocity and Public Scholarship
Successful
and
sustainable
partnerships
are mutually
beneficial.
academia
community
disciplinary conventions
funding mechanisms
promotion and tenure
institutional structures
epistemologies
history / context
methodologies
community needs
history / context
authority
ways of knowing
expectations
institutional structures
economies
authority
resources
ownership / sharing
ownership / sharing

10. I. Taxonomies
A. What is Public History?
B. What is Digital History?
“Digital history might be understood broadly as an approach to
examining and representing the past that works with the new
communication technologies of the computer, the internet network,
and software systems. On one level, digital history is an open arena
of scholarly production and communication, encompassing the
development of new course materials and scholarly data collection
efforts. On another level, digital history is a methodological
approach framed by the hypertextual power of these technologies to
make, define, query, and annotate associations in the human record
of the past. To do digital history, then, is to digitize the past
certainly, but it is much more than that. It is to create a framework
through the technology for people to experience, read, and follow an
argument about a major historical problem.”
Douglas Seefeldt and William G. Thomas, Perspectives, May 2009

11. A Digital Humanities Taxonomy

12. I. Taxonomies
A. What is Public History?
B. What is Digital History?
C. Promotion and Tenure

13. “Giving due weight to community engagement in tenure and
promotion decisions, however, requires review by peers
familiar with community engagement as well as with the
professional standards of the historian. The recognition of
community engagement in the tenure process, as it includes
professional peer review informed by the community being
served, is a critical issue facing public historians in academic
departments.”
Working Group on Evaluating Public History Scholarship (AHA, NCPH, OAH), "Tenure,
Promotion and the Publicly-Engaged Historian” (2010), https://www.historians.org/
publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2010/tenure-promotion-
and-the-publicly-engaged-academic-historian-a-report
I. Taxonomies
A. What is Public History?
B. What is Digital History?
C. Promotion and Tenure

14. "The American Historical Association’s Statement on Standards of
Professional Conduct defines scholarship as a process, not a product, an
understanding now common in the profession. The scholarly work of public
historians involves the advancement, integration, application, and
transformation of knowledge. It differs from “traditional” historical research
not in method or in rigor but in the venues in which it is presented and in
the collaborative nature of its creation. Public history scholarship, like all
good historical scholarship, is peer reviewed, but that review includes
a broader and more diverse group of peers, many from outside
traditional academic departments, working in museums, historic sites,
and other sites of mediation between scholars and the public."
Working Group on Evaluating Public History Scholarship (AHA, NCPH, OAH), "Tenure, Promotion and the Publicly-
Engaged Historian” (2010), https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/
september-2010/tenure-promotion-and-the-publicly-engaged-academic-historian-a-report
I. Taxonomies
A. What is Public History?
B. What is Digital History?
C. Promotion and Tenure

15. Peer Review & Public Scholarship
Process
Outputs
PublicAcademia
built community networks
established networks
apply for funding
sustainable infrastructure
shared governance structures
reports, exhibitions, websites, activities
design infrastructure
define public need
community transformation
articles
books
grants
extend discipline-specific knowledge
develop new research methodologies
methodological models
research grant writing
community input
academic blogs, podcasts, reports

16. I. Taxonomies
A. What is Public History?
B. What is Digital History?
C. Promotion and Tenure
Digital scholarship should be evaluated in its native digital medium, not printed out for inclusion in review
materials.
Departments need to consider how they will deal with work in a digital medium that exists in a process of
continual revision, and therefore never exists as a “finished” product.
Since digital scholarship often includes collaborations, departments should consider developing protocols for
evaluating collaborative work, such as co-authored works, undergraduate research, crowdsourcing, and
development of tools.
The development of tools and other significant methodological contributions to digital scholarship often require
funding to enable collaborations within and across disciplines. Since obtaining funding of this kind may involve
undergoing a rigorous peer-review process, departments should consider how to evaluate a candidate’s
record of successful grant proposals of this kind.
Departments without expertise in digital scholarship should consider enlisting colleagues who possess
expertise in particular forms of digital scholarship to help them evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the
work before them.
Ad Hoc Committee on the Evaluation of Digital Scholarship by Historians, "Guidelines for the Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in History” (2015) http://historians.org/
teaching-and-learning/digital-history-resources/evaluation-of-digital-scholarship-in-history/guidelines-for-the-evaluation-of-digital-scholarship-in-history

17. I. Taxonomies
II. Sample Projects

18. Example Projects Description Link
Low Inform
The Valley of the
Shadow
The Valley of the Shadow is a digital archive of primary sources that document the
lives of people in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania,
during the era of the American Civil War. Here you may explore thousands of original
documents that allow you to see what life was like during the Civil War for the men
and women of Augusta and Franklin. The Valley of the Shadow is different than
many other history websites. It is more like a library than a single book. There is no
"one" story in the Valley Project. Rather, what you'll find are thousands of letters and
diaries, census and government records, newspapers and speeches, all of which
record different aspects of daily life in these two counties at the time of the Civil War.
http://
valley.lib.virgini
a.edu
Engage
ment
Level
Consult
Soweto Historical GIS
Project
The primary objective of the Soweto Historical GIS Project (SHGIS) is to build a
multi-layered historical geographic information system that explores the social,
economic and political dimensions of urban development under South African
apartheid regimes (1904/1948-1994) in Johannesburg’s all-black township of
Soweto. Soweto (an acronym for the South Western Townships), a creation of state
power, was developed to house low-wage workers and to segregate black South
Africans from white. The application of geographic methodologies to the study of the
anti-apartheid movement reveals the complex spatial dimensions of violence,
resistance, and freedom.
http://
www.dhinitiative
.org/projects/
shgis
Involve United States of AIDS
The United States of AIDS (USOA) is a student-led digital humanities project tied to
the Humanities Action Lab of The New School for Public Engagement. We are
invested in making the oral history narratives of AIDS activists accessible and heard.
Open source applications have allowed us to index and enhance interviews by
applying keywords, outlining thematic segments, and embedding additional archival
evidence. The interviews used are from the ACT UP Oral History Project and the
African American AIDS Activist Oral History Project.
http://
unitedstatesofai
ds.com
Collaborate History Harvest
The History Harvest is an open, digital archive of historical artifacts gathered from
communities across the United States. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Department of History partners with institutions and individuals within highlighted
communities to collect, preserve, and share their rich histories.
http://
historyharvest.u
nl.edu
High Empower Morris Justice Project
The Morris Justice Project (MJP) was a critical participatory project in the Morris
Avenue section of the Bronx. MJP participants documented community member
experiences with the police through a survey of over 1000 people. After the survey
was completed and studied, the group collaborated with the Illuminator—a cargo
van equipped with video and audio projection tools, born out of the Occupy Wall
Street movement— to share data on an open wall of a Morris-area apartment
building. This digital data share served as an open letter to the NYPD and as a
space for community discussion and data analysis.
http://
morrisjustice.or
g/#/id/i8622601
https://
www.youtube.c
om/watch?
v=mliuISC2hJk
Adapted from IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum, http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0003/105834/IAP2_Spectrum.gif

19. Museum of the Anthropocene

24. I. Taxonomies
II. Sample Projects
III. Beginner Tools
A. Twitter
• #twitterstorians, #digitalhumanities, #dhist,
#publichistory
B. Wordpress
C. Online Exhibitions
• Omeka
• Building Histories of the National Mall: A Guide to
Creating a Digital Public History Project, http://
mallhistory.org/Guide/wp-content/uploads/
2015/10/BuildingMallHistoriesGuidebook.pdf
D. Mapping
• Google Maps / Google Fusion Tables
• History Pin
E. Podcasting

25. • How does the practice of public history change when
digital components are involved?
• How do we shape the digital sphere into a public
commons, and expand the practice of public history
outward from its physical institutions into virtual spaces?
• Where do we draw the line between digital public history
and digital history in public?
Questions