One of the hallmarks of being a historian is the ability to craft an argument. The distinction in modalities through which the argument can be created has changed over time. The phrase 'digital turn' has segued the field into a new branch. The digital turn encompasses hopes, optimism, and skepticism surrounding specialized techniques such as text mining and distant reading.[1] Digital methods include tools for counting, graphing, and mapping.[1] The digital turn accelerates, allowing historians to gather information at a faster pace through web-enabled digital searches. Overall, it impacts the historians' informational landscape and a historian's labor.[2]

Lara Putnam's “The transnational and the text-searchable: digitized sources and the shadows they cast was published in 2016. Putnam's field is a historian who uses digital methods to explore labor migration and its consequences at various scales, ranging from the very intimate to the very public, in Latin America and the Caribbean. To carry out such a task, it extensively implements the use of digital historians' methodologies. Putnam writes this paper as a means to share the concerns and discoveries she has made through her labor in digital history methodologies. Putnam coined a phrase called side-glancing. She argues that instant access to topic-specific secondary sources has made glancing outside the boundaries of place-based expertise less niche and more accessible.[3] Full text searchability has made seeking individuals, place names, phrases, and titles across big data sets of publications a feasible way to trace international movement.[3] Side-glancing and borderless term-searching shape the questions historians are led into a new projectory.[3] The digitization of the knowability of past processes has shaped scholars' choices to a greater extent, while also widening the perils and ethical concerns, such as the consideration of multidimensional awareness.[4]

A year later, the digital history and argument white paper was published. This white paper was conceived at a two-day workshop focused on digital history, which directly engages with historiographical arguments and addresses the conceptual and structural challenges inherent in the scholarship.[5] The white paper features a diverse mix of scholars, gathering input from scholars at various stages in their careers and utilizing diverse digital methods in their field. The paper examines how historians craft an argument by synthesizing information to identify patterns and structures, and then contextualizing them.[6] The translation of these methods is mirrored in the digital realm. The scholars attempt to identify mirrored frameworks and also identify new issues to guide and/or avoid, with the implication of digital methodologies.

The conversation around digital collections raises concerns. Digital collections draw our attention to where our sources come from, what the sources are, and how they have been arranged. Traditionally, within the field, historians have made arguments using archival materials collected through the work of students, archivists, genealogists, fellow historians, and other contributors. There are already issues surrounding giving proper credit, and the field currently struggles to capture the labor that went into developing these research aids for argument craftsmanship.[7] In the digital realm, this translates to the copyright status of the materials and the consent for their use. A digital collection can assemble records that would otherwise be scattered, reconfiguring them to contextualize and periodize. [6]

Notes on the Future of Virginia is a multimodal example of employing digital methodologies. It is an online essay, exhibit, and interactive visualization. Offering itself as a resource and the ability to engage with the resource in a visual manner. It’s a digital collection that is thematic. By housing a collection of letters and notes from Jefferson and short texts that are categorized into fields such as Agriculture, tenancy, slave labor, and rebellion, it allows for the dissemination of information to be visualized and periodized. It visualizes a network of patterns that the user can scout out. It also offers a storyline and discourse view, serving as features that engage with the topical threads and geospatial dimensions of the exhibition. These features allow a researcher to grasp a stereoscopic view of Jefferson and Short's derivation of social, political, and economic thought within the letters formulated between 1787 and 1826. This aid could be a helpful tool to support the craft of an argument due to the arrangement of this digital collection.

NOTES:

1.     Lara Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast,” The American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016): 378.

2.     Lara Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast,” The American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016): 379.

3.     Lara Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast,” The American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016): 380.

4.     Lara Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast,” The American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016): 392.

5.     Stephen Robertson and Lincoln Mullen, “Arguing with Digital History: Patterns of Historical Interpretation,” Journal of Social History 54, no. 4 (2021): 1006.

6.     Stephen Robertson and Lincoln Mullen, “Arguing with Digital History: Patterns of Historical Interpretation,” Journal of Social History 54, no. 4 (2021): 1006-1007.

7.     Stephen Robertson and Lincoln Mullen, “Arguing with Digital History: Patterns of Historical Interpretation,” Journal of Social History 54, no. 4 (2021): 1012.

Bibliography

French, A. Scot. "Notes on the Future of Virginia: Visualizing a 40-Year Conversationon Race and Slavery in the Correspondence of Jefferson and Short,” Current Research in Digital History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2018)

PUTNAM, LARA. “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast.” The American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016): 377–402. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/121.2.377.

Robertson, Stephen, and Lincoln Mullen. “Arguing with Digital History: Patterns of Historical Interpretation.” Journal of Social History 54, no. 4 (2021): 1005–22. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shab015.