"This is an important book that fills an important niche: a careful and comprehensive report to the field on the development and possibilities of online history."—Stephen Brier, Associate Provost and Dean for Interdisciplinary Studies, Graduate Center, CUNY

Digital history is an emerging field that draws on digital technology and computational methods. A global enterprise that invites scholars worldwide to join forces, it presents exciting and novel ways we might explore, understand and represent the past. Hannu Salmi provides the most compelling introduction to digital history to date. Beginning with an examination of the origins of the digital study of history, he goes on to discuss the question of how history exists in a digitized form. He introduces basic concepts and ideas in digital history, including databases and archives, interdisciplinarity and public engagement. Outlining the problems and methods in the study of big data, both textual and visual, particular attention is paid to the born-digital era: the contemporary age that exists primarily in digital form. What is Digital History? is essential reading for students of history and other humanities fields, as well as anyone interested in how digitization and digital cultures are transforming the study of history.

This book is a practical introduction to digital history. It offers advice on the scoping of a project, evaluation of existing digital history resources, a detailed introduction to how to work with large text resources, how to manage digital data and how to approach data visualisation. Doing digital history covers the entire life-cycle of a digital project, from conception to digital outputs. It assumes no prior knowledge of digital techniques and shows you how much you can do without writing any code. It will give you the skills to use common formats such as XML. A key message of the book is that data preparation is a central part of most digital history projects, but that work becomes much easier and faster with a few essential tools.

Historical scholarship is currently undergoing a digital turn. All historians have experienced this change in one way or another, by writing on word processors, applying quantitative methods on digitalized source materials, or using internet resources and digital tools. Digital Histories showcases this emerging wave of digital history research. It presents work by historians who – on their own or through collaborations with e.g. information technology specialists – have uncovered new, empirical historical knowledge through digital and computational methods. The topics of the volume range from the medieval period to the present day, including various parts of Europe. The chapters apply an exemplary array of methods, such as digital metadata analysis, machine learning, network analysis, topic modelling, named entity recognition, collocation analysis, critical search, and text and data mining. The volume argues that digital history is entering a mature phase, digital history ‘in action’, where its focus is shifting from the building of resources towards the making of new historical knowledge. This also involves novel challenges that digital methods pose to historical research, including awareness of the pitfalls and limitations of the digital tools and the necessity of new forms of digital source criticisms. Through its combination of empirical, conceptual and contextual studies, Digital Histories is a timely and pioneering contribution taking stock of how digital research currently advances historical scholarship.

Digital history is commonly argued to be positioned between the traditionally historical and the computational or digital. By studying digital history collaborations and the establishment of the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History, Kemman examines how digital history will impact historical scholarship. His analysis shows that digital history does not occupy a singular position between the digital and the historical. Instead, historians continuously move across this dimension, choosing or finding themselves in different positions as they construct different trading zones through cross-disciplinary engagement, negotiation of research goals and individual interests.

Writing History in the Digital Age began as a “what-if” experiment by posing a question: How have Internet technologies influenced how historians think, teach, author, and publish? To illustrate their answer, the contributors agreed to share the stages of their book-in-progress as it was constructed on the public web. To facilitate this innovative volume, editors Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki designed a born-digital, open-access, and open peer review process to capture commentary from appointed experts and general readers. A customized WordPress plug-in allowed audiences to add page- and paragraph-level comments to the manuscript, transforming it into a socially networked text. The initial six-week proposal phase generated over 250 comments, and the subsequent eight-week public review of full drafts drew 942 additional comments from readers across different parts of the globe. The finished product now presents 20 essays from a wide array of notable scholars, each examining (and then breaking apart and reexamining) if and how digital and emergent technologies have changed the historical profession.

The 58 selections in this volume cover the history of slavery in America, moving from memories of growing up in Africa to the trials of the Middle Passage, the horrors of the auction block, the sustaining forces of family and religions, acts of resistance, and the meaning of the Civil War and emancipation, presenting 300 years in the collective life cycle of an enslaved people. Mintz's extensive introduction is followed by substantial excerpts from published slave narratives, interviews with former slaves, and letters written by enslaved African Americans. The end of the volume includes a bibliographic essay and a 40-page bibliography, making this an indispensible book for the study of slavery.