Journal Entry #4: The Challenge of Digital Scholarship

If one of the challenges of traditional scholarship is to “discover” new sources or to mine traditional sources in new ways, then one of the challenges of digital scholarship is to discover new ways to present the analysis and conclusions drawn from those sources. In this respect, new media suggests great promise bounded in part by the difficulty of being so long mired in some of the constraints of textual presentation. Embryonic efforts to harness some of the benefits of new media remind us that we have several senses to engage -- all to the benefit of historical learning and scholarship.

“Imaging the French Revolution: Depictions of the French Revolutionary Crowd” draws on the visual in ways that would not only be costly but also infeasible in a book or journal article. The site, a product of the Center for History and New Media, provides a cache of 38 images of the French Revolution which are interesting in and of themselves. The images are clear, particularly the enlarged versions, and the imaging tool, though still being refined, allows visitors to the site to do their own image analysis. The replication of these images in a traditional textual presentation would probably be cost prohibitive. Yet, even if one could get around the cost, the imaging tool that the web site offers makes new media the better choice for presentation.

The real draw for this site, however, comes through its presentation of essays on these images from a number of French Revolution scholars, as well as the site's ability to engage these scholars in an on-line discussion on the central subject of the effectiveness of using images as sources. For this site not only has an argument to make about the crowd, violence, and gender in the French Revolution - it has a methodological argument to make as well. It is time, argues scholars Jack Censer and Lynn Hunt, to treat images themselves as evidence to be read - not merely as illustrations to a textual presentation, but as evidence in their own right with a distinct language that articulates the political, social, and gender discourses of eighteenth-century France. The other scholars that contribute to the site agree with Censer and Hunt, but they don't necessarily agree how “reading” the images can best be accomplished. Indeed, this notion of scholarly interchange is where “Imaging the French Revolution” is doing something that would be difficult, probably impossible, in a traditional journal. While forums have existed in scholarly journals for years, they are static. This web site has captured scholarly give and take, and more importantly, the process and development of thought that is aided by such interchange.

Whenever a presentation form is in its infancy, it is incumbent upon us to address issues such as design that are rarely discussed in more traditional presentations. This site is extremely well designed, easy on the eyes (particularly given the extent to which the visual is stimulated), and easy to navigate. That said, there is one drawback. The use of gray text against a white background that indicates linkage does not have enough contrast and is extremely difficult to read.

Whereas “Imaging the French Revolution” engages us visually, “I Can See the Lights of Home: A Field Trip to Harlan County, Kentucky,” calls on our sense of hearing. This “essay-in-sound” can be found at the The Journal for MultiMedia History and uses oral histories gathered by Italian historian Alessandro Portelli to aurally relate some of the history of this coal mining section of the Appalachian Mountains. Portelli breaks his essay down into eight chapters of audio montage that is complete with songs, interviews, background sounds, and commentary. The site looks to advocate a new way to present history as much as it wants to tell the story of these Harlan County residents. The presentation is successful in terms of the innovation, particularly choosing to present oral history aurally. In particular, audio learners will benefit from this site that employs technology allowing them to utilize the sense through which they learn best. The sound was clear, and hearing the interviewees themselves talking is far superior to reading selected quotes. This, in short, is a presentation that, while possible outside of new media, has not really been ventured. The one drawback to the montage itself was that, on occasion, two people would be talking at once, one in the foreground and one in the background. While this was an interesting effect, it was annoyingly difficult to follow the two conversations.

The major disappointment to this site, however, was its lack of contextualization and scholarly analysis. While I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the stories, the themes of marginalization, death, religion, and class struggle that Portelli was trying to get at did not come through well. Portelli's commentary did not contextualize the stories enough for students of such a history to understand what he was driving at beyond mere antiquarian interest. Indeed, Charles Hardy, the other historian involved, asks at one point the question that Portelli never satisfactorily answers through his use of new media -- how do we connect these “snapshots that fit into a larger continuity that only you understand”? Or paraphrased, how do we connect these disparate stories in order to get at something akin to scholarly analysis? I sincerely believe it is possible using such an aural presentation, but I am not satisfied that Portelli and Hardy have done it.

I am convinced that the major benefit new media offers at this point, even in the realm of digital scholarship, continues to be in the area of convenience and access. Yet efforts such as the French Revolution and Harlan County sites discussed above are striving to push the envelope beyond merely convenience and expanded access, gingerly exploring ways in which new media can enhance how scholars present history.

Journal Addendum - Post-Class Thoughts (10/21/03):

Following our class discussion last night, I was struck by issues of quantity and quality as they relate to digital scholarship that I want to muse over further. We discussed how, in comparison to textual publishing, the often low-cost production of digital scholarship, ease of publication, and expanse of space seduces scholars into a quantity of scholarship that considerably exceeds the more traditional journal article. In this regard, I had forgotten to mention in this journal entry how much I agree with Susan Smulyan's review in the American Quarterly articles that we read. There is a reason for page limits and editors. They reel us in as scholars, suggesting that we restrain somewhat our enthusiasm for our subject and sources in order to define and articulate the work's significance and contribution. In other words, absent such limits and review, we tend to go on too long.

The two sites that I mention above are excellent contrasts to this point. The French Revolution site, while meaty, is concise in ways that I found attractive. None of the digital essays were unwieldy, so that even together, they did not overwhelm. And although the “Discussion” section of the site may have taken a while to get through and digest, it was still broken down into manageable, easily navigable pieces. Conversely, the more than two-and-one-half hour aural history presented in the Harlan, Kentucky web site is overwhelming from the outset. While the authors have divided the essay into chapters and movements (I'm still not sure what the difference is), the themes they are addressing are somewhat difficult to access. Moreover, the presence of any argument beyond the value of oral history and aural presentation is questionable. If we are to venture in the realm of the new and different, we would be wise to try to make the experience as painless as possible for those we hope to take along with us. For the “Lights of Home” site, this may have meant dividing the aural history into sections along more clearly thematic lines and providing more authorial commentary that ties the pieces together into an aural argument. As it is, the site suggests an inversion of artifact and argument in keeping with Randy Bass's observation in his review of the American Quarterly sites.

Finally, and briefly, I think there are issues of quality that we did not address last night -- not only the quality of whether the sites fulfill some promise of digital scholarship, but merely old-fashioned mistakes and typos. I have seen this in my own work, as well as in the sites we have been reviewing this semester. Indeed, there are few sites were I haven't encountered some kind of misspelling, or step or word omitted. I'm not even including technology-related errors, such as broken links, because I am trying to get at the quality issues related to the review and editing process that comes with traditional publication. Not that mistakes aren't made in that arena. I just wonder if we are not becoming more accepting of them in this new medium. Perhaps the promise of digital scholarship is that we find ways to harness new media to produce new forms of scholarship that offer up products that are sufficient in quality and quantity.