Lisa Spiro has created a great open source wiki, DiRt: Digital Research Tools. The wiki is dedicated to providing a comprehensive list of digital research tools. Visitors are able to browse through the list of tools already complied, write reviews of those tools, and recommend tools to be added. I wrote a review of NoteBook, a Mac program designed to organize research and files on your computer. Check out my review and create your own!!
When I initially began writing this post, it was in response to a link Dan Cohen placed on his twitter feed. Dan came to speak to our digital history class about two weeks ago. In our discussions, we began talking about the state of academia and the difficulty of achieving tenure status for professors. A few days later, Dan shared a blog by Cathy Davidson about the tenure process on his feed. As I was reading it, I began to think of the struggles that public historians also must go through in order to receive tenure. Writing an academic book is not the only way to “do” history, so why is that the only way institutions judge professors? This thought then led me to something that sparked a huge debate in our digital history class on Wednesday…not only are public historians (and digital historians) in academia held to publishing requirements, but public history students are held to traditional academic training (at least at AU). In class we had a very lively debate, which prompted me to expand on what I had originally planned to discuss in this blog.
At AU public history students are required to get traditional training as academic historians through colloquium classes and a comprehensive exam. Before I go any further let me say this…one of the main reasons I decided to attend AU’s program was because I could concentrate in both early American history and public history. I would gladly take a comp exam and complete a comp project in order to receive my two concentrations. However, shouldn’t we be allowed to only concentrate in public history if that is what we choose? Why isn’t there some sort of comprehensive exam or project for public history students? This could be because there is only one public history professor (which says so much on its own about our program) and grading all of the public history projects every January, April, and June is too much for one person to handle. However, I think it has a lot to do with the way our program (and every other similar program out there) is run. Are our administrators afraid that if they allow their students the option to not be trained as “academic historians,” they will no longer be considered a reputable institute…I think so. I mean, we aren’t even allowed to use public history sources on the comp exams, even if it is relevant to the subject. I also think this speaks to a larger problem in the field of history…many academic historians don’t see public historians or digital historians as academic. There has been much debate over this subject, and there will continue to be. But it is the academic historian’s position that is becoming extinct, so shouldn’t the institutions be changing? Our department really needs to step it up and become forerunners if they want to stay relevant.
So this my first blog post on my new website! I’ve started this blog for a class I’m taking called History in the Digital Age, I hope to keep this blog going after the class ends in June. We’ve learned a lot of really great stuff already, and we’ve only had two classes!!! On Monday (5/18) Dan Cohen came to speak to our class and he was amazing! Dan is the director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. He had a lot of really brilliant things to say regarding the field of history coming into the digital age. I’m really looking forward to learning more from him and Jeremy (our genius professor, also from CHNM).
I’m still trying to figure out how to work my website, and have been playing around a lot with it. Bare with me as I try to figure out how to run my own website! And…you can follow me on twitter!
Stay tuned for many, many more blogs! 
