Yesterday Blog 4 History: American History & Civil War History posted about the importance of digitalisation for the future of the web. He talked about the role of online resources for remotely located historians. He also highlighted an important point regarding individual bloggers digitalising and publishing their own work.
Also yesterday Gavin Robinson posted this comment in response to this post.
He said:
’…people need to do more small scale experiments with a wider variety of techniques rather than doing nothing or jumping into a major project without trying all the options.’
Well, Blog 4 History’s latest project Soldier Studies is a great example of both the democratisation of the web and ‘small scale experiments.’ He has developed a site that acts as an important archive for digitalised material relating to the American Civil War.
For me this type of project is the future of history on the web. However, I believe that as internet historians we must push to develop a level of communication beyond these projects. We must work hard to stabilise and develop network links and wider communities. Only by doing this can we attempt to develop a system in which information collected by sites such as Soldier Studies can be correctly assimilated in to a wider context.
