Thomas and Ayers, both of the University of Virginia, offer their work, “The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two Historical Communities“, as a model of building digital scholarship from “the ground up”. Their extensive research, which chronicles and catalogs the political, social,agricultural, industrial, and economic circumstances of a Union town and Confederate town within the same geographic region, presents an excellent case study about the influence of slavery in shaping society.
The authors “attempt to translate the fundamental components of professional scholarship-evidence, engagement with prior scholarship, and a scholarly argument-into forms that take advantage of the possibilities of electronic media.” Their study does so by incorporating four particular qualities. It is:
- spatial
- participatory
- procedural
- encyclopedic
I felt as though the authors did construct the site in a way that lent itself to exhibiting these characteristics. Its maps, graphs, and charts were certainly valuable evidence in the research process but could stand alone for separate study. The website engages the reader and makes him an active participant, rather than a passive viewer. Participation is crucial in engaging the “procedural” layout–with its many steps and components–which holds a great volume of material.
Despite its many promising features, the authors also note that their case study has presented areas for future digital historians to improve upon:
- how to present narrative more effectively
- how to represent event and change
- how to analyze language more precisely
- how to create visualizations as compelling and complete as narrative
I thought the site was impressive, but I think some of these areas need to be addressed, as well. The flow of the narrative seemed somewhat apparent at first–one should just follow the links/tabs in order on the left–but became harder to determine because of the volume of information. Perhaps the tabs above the text are meant to be read first to provide context (“Overview”, “Presentation”, “About the Author”, “Acknowledgements”). Additional tabs toward the top and bottom of the page–“Evidence”, “Historiography”, and “Tools”– may cause some confusion if the reader is uncertain as to where to start (these are probably not the best choice, because reading the “Summary of Argument” articles first provides context for appreciating these topics later). It becomes relatively clear that the site is not necessarily configured in any particular order, but rather grouped by concepts–arguments, methodology, points of analysis, etc.–that the reader may browse in the order he chooses. There is not one “best” way to go about perusing the site. While I understand the philosophy of allowing the reader to follow the “procedural” guidelines, which involve sifting through multiple layers, I think the page set-up could be a little more streamlined (as well as more visually engaging–the home page does not draw the reader in).
In terms of other visual questions, the maps and charts available on the site are excellent, but if one does not take the time to ” follow [the] procedures to follow the intricacy below the level of the analysis”, he may miss out on some compelling evidence. Because of this possibility, I think it might be wise to have thumbnail sketches of one or two maps on the introductory page in order to attract the reader’s attention.
With those suggestions in mind, I do think the authors did a great job of making the website “encyclopedic”–it offers a great deal more evidence and documentation than a fixed text could. In addition to a number of maps created using GIS technology, the website also contains full citations, synopses, and excerpts from each of the articles it quotes or references, and when possible, links to full-text versions of those articles. Neither of these practices would be possible when publishing in a standard journal. The website also offers an impressive set of tools–a reader can perform a full-text search, use the “Reading Record” to see which parts of the text he has viewed and which he hasn’t, and enter the citation “key” of a particular piece to be transported there directly.
While there is always room for improvement, I think Thomas and Ayers have created an excellent resource that demonstrates how beneficial technology can be in relaying complex historical data. In so doing, I think they largely achieved their goal: “In fashioning this digital presentation, in putting together components of argument, evidence, and historiography in sequences that are both modular and connected, we hope to have created a useful interpretive model [and have offered it] to the scholarly community as a first step in hopes that we might begin envisioning new forms of scholarship.”