Digital Literacy and the Successful Historian

 El Borak's Myopia. elborak.blogspot.com

The idea that anyone can dive into the digital realm and stay afloat without the necessary tools is ludicrous. Just as we learned to make sense of letters, words, and phrases as children, we must now learn to make sense of the infinitely more complex world of technology. It cannot be emphasized enough how imperative becoming digitally literate is to becoming successful in today's world. History scholars especially seem to need an extra push to understand the importance of technology in their work. I'm one of them. Personally, technology scares me - mostly because I am too lazy to learn too much about it, and also because it still seems like something of a fad to me. However, the more I learn about the advances of technology and its implications for history scholarship, the more I realize that technology and digital history are here to stay. In fact, I would venture to guess that any jobs related to my major will require functional knowledge of the digital world.

The burning question on most history students' minds - besides grand theories of historical significance - is the really practical issue of how to become an employed (i.e. successful) historian. Even with the supposedly dismal number of jobs these days, there are tools now available to history students that can greatly improve their chances of finding and getting hired for a job.

First off, read Cohen and Rosenzweig's Digital History. If you have any lingering doubts about the usefulness of technology in history scholarship, that website will certainly put it to rest. This week's readings from the "Getting Started" and "Becoming Digital" sections are excellent resources on the particulars of starting out on a journey of digitization. I especially appreciated the very last part which was "Who Does the Digitizing? Should you Do It Yourself?" because it is something many historians will have to face at some point: should they be programmer/historians or simply hire an outsider to program their materials? Cohen and Rosenzweig basically come to the conclusion that it really depends on the scale of the project and what you, the historian, want to accomplish.

After becoming thoroughly convinced of the importance of technology in your career path by Cohen and Rosenzweig you may progress to Spiro's Digital Scholarship in the Humanities - especially the post "Getting Started in the Digital Humanities." In this post Spiro makes a list of things to do to become a good digital scholar, but I also want to point out that the list makes a great outline of things you can do to advance your career. Here's a shortened (and somewhat interpreted) version of the list:

• Determine what goals or questions motivate you.
• Get acquainted with the digital humanities/history.
• Participate in the digital history community (i.e. blogs, and other scholarly discourse online)
• Stay informed by reading online articles, keeping up with historical news, etc.
• Explore examples for inspiration and models online and in other digital formats.
• Pursue training.
• Learn standards and best practices.
• Find collaborators - don't forget to use online networking!
• Plan a pilot project, and don't be afraid to collaborate online via email, Skype, etc.
• Where possible, adopt/adapt existing digital tools. 

What else needs to be added to the list? To be honest, there are probably countless bullets that could be added, but Spiro offers an excellent starting point. Digital technology is the newest and sharpest tool available to scholars today and should be used actively. Knowing how to utilize technology to your advantage can bolster your already weighty intellect and provide a solid foundation for your successful career as a historian.