One of the dozen definitions in Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary for community is, “a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society (the academic community).” The following is the mission statement of the H-NET discussion networks:

"The vision is of creating and enhancing international, electronic communication within communities of scholars, teachers, advanced students, and related professionals and of facilitating the electronic transmission of information by those committed to research, teaching, learning, public outreach, and professional service in the humanities and social sciences. To realize this vision, scholars, teachers, advanced students, and related professionals have created electronic networks and resources dedicated to advancing research, teaching, learning, public outreach, and professional service within their own specialized areas of knowledge."
(http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/about/mission.html)

The H-NET discussion list studied here is H-OIEAHC (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture) for November 2002 (http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lx&list=H-OIEAHC&user=&pw=&month=0211). One fairly regular feature of the William and Mary Quarterly published by OIEAHC is the “Communication” section in which disgruntled authors respond to unfavorable reviews. This section provides scholars an avenue to vent. Obviously, communities need a place where diverse ideas can be aired. What an online community such as H-OIEAHC can offer is a real-time, 24/7, worldwide forum for sharing academic ideas and information. A cursory look at the available demographics of the forty-five discussants for November 2002 indicates that 58% are male and 35% are female (The sex of 7% cannot be readily determined by their first names). University affiliations predominate but other “related professionals” from museums, libraries, historical societies, and the scholarly press are also represented, as well as a few unaffiliated researchers.

While the majority of entries relate to historical queries (28), there are other areas of interest discussed. These fall under headings such as administrative (14) (fellowships, seminars, calls for papers/encyclopedia contributions, library services, requests for documents for a new editing project, and news from the National Coordinating Committee for Public History); bibliographical and historiographical inquiries (12); and technology (3). While this discussion group exudes the staid aura of the academy with the usual historical questions about the source for some quote or the relationship of the Seminole Wars and politics, moments of supportiveness shine through. When a graduate student in France inquired about how to establish the value of currency in Massachusetts in the 1620s, thirteen responses from around the world were logged in over a two-week period. An informative debate between those who use online calculators and those who rely on multiple, traditional methods, such as comparing inventories, indicated the great wealth of information that this one question generated among the community. No other media could provide such a service in such a timely manner. (See the section under 17th-century pounds, http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lx&sort=3&list=H-OIEAHC&month=0211&week=&user=&pw)

This online discussion list provides the true community communication that is so lacking in the printed William and Mary Quarterly. It also gives its participants another prospective of history that the formal journal cannot offer by presenting three entries on history and the new media. Two entries refer to new web sites: a Plymouth Colony archive site http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/users/deetz/ and additional sites for the Dinsmore Documentation Project that is providing online versions of some classic American colonial history texts. (See for example, http://dinsdoc.com/lauber-1-0a.htm) The value of interactivity is lost, however, as the URLs are not properly hot-linked. John Saillant, the list editor, has provided his readers with a valuable article written by Richard Latner of Tulane University who contends that when “interactivity and nonlinearity become integral aspects of the research design, the technology medium does more than transmit information, it becomes a part of the message.” (http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-OIEAHC&month=0211&week=b&msg=kjsKz%2be7s9ktJwbyAis4gA&user=&pw)
Latner cites Robert Townsend of the AHA and George Mason University for his recent work on digital scholarship.

The H-OIEAHC discussion list is a real not virtual community. Wellman and Gulia cite the very architecture of the Net, its cyberlinks, as being the perfect medium for providing the “social links between groups that otherwise would be socially and physically dispersed.” (Barry Wellman and Milena Guila, "Virtual Communities as Communities: Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone," in Marc Smith and Peter Kollock, eds., Communities in Cyberspace (1999)). Studying just this one month of H-OIEAHC has provided ample evidence that a worldwide (U.S., England, Ireland, France, and Canada are represented) online history community of scholars, interested in sharing knowledge and resources is thriving. The online discussant experiences a many-to-many communication that can be both rewarding and supportive.

Christine Hughes

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