Digital history in Canterbury and New Zealand

Digital History – the use of computational methods to analyse, understand and disseminate knowledge about the past – has been evolving since the 1960s, slowly developing scholarly standards and accumulating a range of accepted technical methods. In its modern guise it is related to Public History, but it has applications across all the sub-disciplines. Public historians can use it to publish historical writing on the world wide web, or create archives of historical sources using increasingly easy-to-use software. Economic historians can analyse vast datasets that are being made openly available online, medievalists can view delicate manuscripts from anywhere in the world, and there are emerging techniques in 3D visualization, geospatial mapping, and natural language processing that offer exciting new opportunities to understand the past. All of this translates into new pedagogical opportunities and imperatives. We have never been in a position to make History more engaging for students and the general public or to open up more new vistas of knowledge, but there are few people capable of teaching the new skills – and the technologies come with a cost. While it is fair to say there is no turning back now, there are also significant challenges ahead.