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Cohen and Rosenzweig write:
“Having read about planning, digitization, design, copyright, and building an audience of users and perhaps contributors, readers of this book now likely understand that digital history may require just as much work — and possibly much more — than projects involving paper and ink.”
Do you agree? Why or why not?
I agree, typically the use of digital technology puts more emphasis on the end user, requiring them to do more work as the tools they need are available for them to do so. Prior to digitization certain tasks may have required outsourcing due to the process required to gain the finished product. Working with digital technologies makes the process more efficient requiring less people, but requires just as much work. The same requirements for a successful research project stays the same, but the way the project is presented, digital or not changes.
I agree! Digital history requires much more work because despite the end product, there is a lot of work that has to go into preserving the finished product. Regular backups, using XHTML instead of HTML and constantly checking for corrupted files can be very time consuming in the efforts to attempt to preserve history
‘forever’. I related this week’s reading to my family Christmas album. Usually we would take our pictures on a camera, and print them out to be placed in an album. (Ta-da!! history is preserved) However with technology, I now have countless usbs, backups and editing software in an attempt to preserve our family photos. I find this process more time consuming, and I prefer the paper and ink’ route.‘
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I agree with the author’s opinion. The requirements for creating digital history are more complex than projects involving paper and ink. I think that people have higher expectations for digital history, in particular, the design of the delivering approach. For instance, if showing history through websites, how the site is organized can be inevitably influencing audiences’ reading experiences. Thus, digital history is requiring more creativities than other paper and ink projects. Furthermore, the targeted audience is another aspect that needs more in-depth consideration. Taking the Chinese Palace Museum as an example, (English version) https://en.dpm.org.cn/ , (Chinese version) https://www.dpm.org.cn/Home.html. The target audience was explicit as shown by different languages; however, with the Chinese version, there is more detailed information on the website. Also, with the rapid development of technology, telling history digitally or reading history digitally can expand the target age group population, and developing strategies in coping with different “history learners” in different age group can be challenging.
I agree with the authors opinion. Digital history requires more work and research in order to relay important messages about pivotal moments while remaining user friendly. Digital historians, are responsible for not only for digitizing all documents but they are also responsible for the overall upkeep of the website in order to make sure that the servers can support a large amount of data. Digital technologies are constantly changing which can aid in the overall efficiency of this process. However, more work is involved within this process. This process is more tedious and more mistakes can happen.
The use of various tools certainly makes the process less time consuming but leaves room for errors than can occur with the many processes during a digital project. Relying on digital sources and tools can sometimes leave you empty handed. Also, with a digital project, the development of delivering your message to a wider audience can be an issue. creating a user friendly yet inviting design can prove to be difficult depending on what message you are trying to relay to your audience. In this sense, a digital project can be much more difficult that one of paper and ink. there are many more things to consider and construct when developing a digital project.
I would have to agree with Cohen and Rosenzweig in terms of digitization projects requiring more work than standard paper and ink. There are various technologies that are involved in a digitization project. These technologies require people who are trained in using them then training others who will be using this technology to fulfill their project. There needs to be funding available to execute this digitization project, if this is limited this hinders the extent of the project. In terms of attaining the copyright permissions, this can become complicated because there are many lengths you need to go through. Finding the audience for the digital project is difficult because this becomes world wide so the possibility emerges that there is no single target audience, but rather a larger one. Digitization is a lengthy process and involves a lot to accomplish it because of the nature of this process.
In some ways, we might think of digital history projects as more challenging because they include all of the same academic expectations of a traditional essay assignment, but with the added work of building the digital platform for communicating your research.
This is a late response, but just catching up with my work!! #sorry!
I do agree that the digital age does involve more work, in comparison to the age of paper and ink because of all the accessible resources available to us the technology-centred world we all live in.
Previously, it was sufficient enough to scribble with ink on paper to communicate and share knowledge and ideas. Nowadays, we almost have a responsibility to use the internet and technology as a platform to share and amplify our knowledge, resources and skillset, in an effort to continually boost access and accessibility.
With social media, for example, we are given a “free” platform to which we can share and learn new information. By simply creating a post, you can spread the “word” and have access to the “words” that have already been spread. Similarly, google is a free search engine that gives us access and answers to anything we simply type into the search bar. But in order for your work to pop up on the search engine, you must have knowledge in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or Google AdWords. Without this technological knowledge base and one of many extra steps after creating your work, your work might not even get found. Thus, digital historians, content creators, and people alike, are almost bound to the responsibility of creating unique content, exploring new ideas, and creating captivating research and findings that will interest and be found by people from all around the world.
What I find most interesting, is that we all have almost a responsibility to be technologically inclined and go the extra mile to put in the extra work, just in the hopes that others who do find your work, research, etc., will care and find your research valuable.
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