The Journal of American History’s guidelines for reviewing the content and effectiveness of Digital Public History projects are quite thorough, and were established through reliable methods of reviewing books and articles. However, as technology evolves, so too must the criteria for assessing the quality, accessibility, and impact of these new projects. One aspect of these guidelines that I might consider adding to is the concept of sustainability when thinking about the long term effects of humanities projects, especially when it comes to creating discourse within a particular community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In many cases, rather than fostering community discussions, historical projects become sites for the reproduction of expertise and assertion of academic authority. If we want these projects to benefit the public well into the future, we must expand the narrow concepts of historians as solely researchers and university professors, into active participants and creators of social action and change. Sustainability oftentimes depends on getting local communities involved with our projects; not only in their creation, but also through continual and lasting engagement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By adding a sustainability category to the JAH guidelines, we can place a greater emphasis on the importance of community interaction which will benefit our field perhaps more than anything else. Humanitarian projects and websites that do not take into consideration how the public and local communities will continue to use these resources when our work as creators is done, are destined to become quickly abandoned over time. Weather it be through engaging public assistance through mass digitization efforts like the National Archives, or by creating interactive websites that allow users to trace their steps through the history of a historic site in real time like Mallhistory.org, we should aim to foster discussion on the ground level as well as online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another important aspect of sustainability to consider is how these projects will be upkept moving forward, and by whom. Servers and websites cost money to operate, and unless we can incentivize public assistance by means of donations or subscriptions, historians will be entirely dependant on the benevolence of academy grants to keep the wheels of their projects turning. In the article Radical Is a Process: Public History Pedagogy in Urban Universities <\/em>the authors state that “Humanitarians’ work may be most successful when we deploy capabilities that can be used without us.” I.e, their impact is only truly felt once we as the creators become obsolete. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Journal of American History’s guidelines for reviewing the content and effectiveness of Digital Public History projects are quite thorough, and were established through reliable methods of reviewing books and articles. However, as technology evolves, so too must the criteria for assessing the quality, accessibility, and impact of these new projects. One aspect of these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}