History Online: Four ways go Digital

As more traditional academic disciplines, such as history, discover the applicability of and opportunity available in utilizing new technology to present history to new and younger generations, it is inevitable that different sites will approach online history in different ways.

Valley of the Shadow is the online version of the historical archive constructed by Dr. Edward Ayers, and used for his book, In The Presence of Mine Enemies (Norton, 2003). It contains primary sources (newspapers, letters, census, tax, and church records, maps, veterans, and freedmen’s bureaus) of soldiers and citizens from two counties on either side of the Civil War - Augusta County, VA and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. The site is structured as though it were a three-floor library, separated chronologically into three periods, “The Eve of War,” “The War Years,” and “The Aftermath.” The records are all transcribed and listed chronologically, often with links to scanned images of the actual document.

As for presentation, of the four historical websites, the Valley of the Shadow is the most utilitarian and straightforward. It is, simply, an online archive. Its purpose is to make primary sources available.

Do History goes a step further than Valley of the Shadow by trying to include the experience of investigating the sources, and following evidence trails that lead to the stories that historians tell. A sort of online history tutorial, the site contains the online version of Martha Ballard’s diary, transcribed over ten years by Robert and Cynthia McCausland. The diary was a primary source for Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale, and a PBS documentary film of the same name.

By using scans of the original diary, users come to understand the many difficulties of working with very old sources, replete with mistakes, vagaries, deceptions and damage. New researchers are told that “both historians and detectives know that questions are often louder than the answers, and that answers are not always clear and satisfying. We invite you to explore the diary entries and companion documents in Doing History to see if you can hear the questions and find some of the answers.”

Both Valley of the Shadow (virginia.edu) and Do History (dohistory.org) are primarily academic endeavors. They exist to purvey information, or instruct on the use of historical sources. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History website on the other hand, is, naturally, more of an online museum exhibit than tutorial or archive, and is updated the most frequently of the three. Since the actual museum is currently closed for renovation, the website is the only place to view some of the museum’s collection, including those exhibits currently visiting other museums, such as Produce for Victory, a collection of World War II posters. While the site normally exists as a way for the museum to promote itself, it is also currently the only way that the public can view large segments of the museum’s collection.

While all of the sites so far have been primarily educational in nature, the site for The History Channel, in contrast, is commercial. The online mouthpiece for the popular cable channel, The History Channel site is the only one with an attached store and blatant advertisements. Far from existing to impart information, history.com would rather sell you a DVD box set of the History Channel production. One of the most popular sections of the site, however, are the community discussion forums. The most discussed topics? No surprises here: Wars, Religion, and Current Events, followed by Sports, 9/11, and American Presidents.

Though the main page does include a search bar labeled “History 101” that claims that “History is now at your fingertips,” a few quick tries found that, much like the cable channel itself, unless you are looking for information about World War II, the Civil War or the Founding Fathers, you’re SOL.

These four websites each stand as one example of how to explore history digitally. Each has its own purpose, approach, and scope, as does each individual work of history. Whether combing comparative records from the Civil War, examining a frail diary from the revolutionary period, or pondering which set of DVD's to start with, users of these sites are presented with different means to reach different ends.