Confronting the Digital

Abstract

This discussion piece argues that the design and structure of online historical resources and the process of search and discover embodied within them create a series of substantial problems for historians. Algorithm-driven discovery and misleading forms of search, poor OCR, and all the selection biases of a new edition of the Western print archive have changed how we research the past, and the underlying character of the object of study (inherited text). This piece argues that academic historians have largely failed to respond effectively to these challenges and suggests that while they have preserved the form of scholarly good practice, they have ignored important underlying principles.

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