Marin Escalera

What is Public History? What is Digital History?


When talking about Public history and digital history many people at first glance aren’t too sure of what they mean. Some may believe that it’s the history of the public and the history of digital sources. This is understandable since when compared to other histories the first word gives you a clear idea of what it’s about. For example, U.S history is about the United States, Military history is about military affairs and so forth so it’s natural that people believe that the same applies to these two. Although that is not the case since it’s is more aligned to how oral history and social history are named. This is quite fitting because their origins actually tie into these two types of history.
 
Public history finds its formal origins in the 60s though the concept of public history stems from what is referred to the GLAM section of history. This includes galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Since public history is often defined as history that is accessible to the public outside of academia. Though the history that helped it become its own area of study is the rise of social history in the 1960s. As noted by Serge Noiret, Mark Tebeau and Gerben Zaagsma in the Handbook of Digital Public History “Social history helped to shift the engagements with ‘the public.” Then when the advancements of technology came along digital history also began to grow. With public spaces such as museums, libraries, achieves and galleries also using them to improve their spaces. Digital history, similar to public history is a newer area of history though it’s more widely known beginning comes from the turn of the century when digital humanities began.
Since both histories are fairly new they do hold similarities and sometimes are even confused in a way. They both allow history and sources to be accessible to the public and provide a space of experimenting and collaboration. They also have the benefit of being interdisciplinary due to the flexibility they hold. Despite these similarities they do have their difference and own issues. With Public history being about listening to the public and adapting to what is needed but also not the public to control the history. Also something unique to public history is that since it is public it’s held in venues and be seen in person in contrast to digital history which is limited to online platforms. Though this brings the issue of public history since it is stationed in one place not all people have the ability to go and see it. So in order to try to keep things accessible this is where digital history comes in. Digital history allows you to see sources from all over the world and lets you connect with those that are far away. Overall creating an accessibility that allows you to learn things that may have not been possible outside of the digital frame. Though an issue that has come from this that many academics have come across is the pay wall that have become more and more common for sources. These pay walls can vary in price with some being quite expensive so it really limits those who can get past them. Bringing the overall question of is public and digital history truly accessible?
Looking both at digital history and public history they tie in together and have even formed another area of study known as digital public history. Despite this, these two histories aren’t always interchangeable since not everything that is public history is digital history and not everything that digital history is public history. With some locations that are a part of public history not having digital versions thus only being available in person as seen with many museums. Then with digital sources that are dedicated only to scholars and locked away to only be accessible to scholars are not public history since they are not accessible to the public despite being online. So overall despite public history and digital history having their issues they are fairly new areas of study that have allowed other areas of history to grow and improve. With time these areas of studies will also find ways to grow and improve and may even allow for new areas to emerge as well just like they did.
 

Works cited

Serge Noiret, Mark Tebeau and Gerben Zaagsma, “Introduction” in Handbook of Digital Public History (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, 2022)