Stephen Robertson

THE PROPERTIES OF DIGITAL HISTORY This article offers a definition of digital history that focuses on the core affordances of the personal computer and the process by which those properties come to be exploited. I begin by outlining ...

No AI, but my “Properties of Digital History” (2022) is an overview of developments in what has been done - and is open access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Launching an interactive digital map and database of Detroit’s historic Black-owned businesses. Check it out at freedomenterprise.org

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

I'd been looking forward to the digital version of the book - is that still coming?

Been hearing about the horrific climate Harvard U Press for some time: www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

A watercolor of a thin waterfall in the mountains, and an associated rainbow emerging from the mist

“When Information is Networked” — My tribute to Clifford Lynch, who sadly passed away last week. Cliff saw before anyone else how digital technology would enable new forms of research and learning, and completely transform the production and dissemination of knowledge

Last week we learned that 6 of our active NEH awards—totaling $789k in unspent funds—were immediately terminated by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.This is obviously a blow, and a serious one, to our work.But we will carry on. To see our terminated grants rrchnm.org/news/carryin...

It’s a solution but the “neatest” solution would be a digital monograph which could incorporate the data. These are beginning to appear for just this reason, that print formats no longer fit our research

Y'all. I get that a small scholarly org can be nimble and take on a lot of quick, grassroots work. It's super important and exciting. But that should not encourage you to insult the hardworking professionals who are keeping large scholarly orgs moving in astonishingly difficult circumstances.

@historians.org & the AHA Digital History Working Group are applying for an NEH digital humanities grant. Historians, please take this quick 2-question survey about your interest in digital tools & methods for research/teaching. Help shape future DH workshops & share with interested colleagues.

In the era of AI, perhaps we need to return to the term the AHA used instead of digital historian in 1999: the proposal for the e-Gutenberg project aimed for publications "without elaborate links to documents and databases, or “bells and whistles,” according to the jargon of the e-people."

Digital Dissertations Traditionally, a text-based narrative dissertation has served as the signature capstone element of the doctoral research degree in history....

I just updated the info on this option: historyarthistory.gmu.edu/graduate/phd...

Why do people transcribe @librarycongress collections? What do volunteers get out of crowdsourced transcription? Our article "Giving back, learning, relaxing, & having fun: personal motivations & impacts of a virtual volunteer transcription program" is out now! rdcu.be/dXXRs @tjowens.bsky.social

This is really useful. I’m trying to work out where LinkedIn fits in all this. I’ve never taken it seriously but various institutional activities have pushed me to be present there and it does seem active in some way?

Reposting this for all the new arrivals

Page one of a handwritten letter by Benjamin Curtis (1886)

Transcription of a handwritten letter by Benjamin Curtis (1886) completed by ChatGPT

New post, “A Large Language Model Walks Into an Archive…” explores how historians can use off-the-shelf LLMs to work with primary sources 📜 cblevins.github.io/posts/llm-pr...

A conference poster about the digital monograph Harlem in Disorder including a diagram of the 3 layers of the monograph and the links between them.

Just back from presenting my digital monograph, Harlem in Disorder, at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Legal History - including this poster, which I hope helps convey the multilayered format of the publication as well as its arguments about the legal aftermath of the disorder.

My friend Leah Meisterlin shared with me a new, collaborative 3D mapping project: Exploring Seneca Village depicts the African-American village destroyed by NYC to make way for Central Park envisioningsenecavillage.github.io

See also her team's 🏆🤩 Mapping Historical NY atlas: mappinghny.com

A New Viral Texts Database Back in 2020, Viral Texts Project co-PI Ryan Cordell—henceforth “I,” as I’m also the one writing here—wrote about our collective failure to develop and maintain a database of the reprints we have unco...

Soft launch on a Friday afternoon, but I’m too excited to wait—we finally have a new database providing search & download access to the Viral Texts Project’s "speculative bibliographies" of C19 newspaper reprinting

Huge thanks to iSchool PhD student Daniel Evans for making the impossible possible!

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New to me as a way of promoting my digital monograph Harlem in Disorder - a reddit AMA (ask me anything) at r/AskHistorians (www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...) on October 17 - thanks to @dhowlett1692.bsky.social for the invitation - @stanfordpress.bsky.social 🗃️

I attended a meeting in May about the NYPL's Backlist Revival Project. They are working to make a lot of these titles available. See: networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

The home page of the Locating London's Past website, including a map illustrating thefts 1674-1819, and a panel on the right with information about the site and links.

Really pleased to announce the launch of a thoroughly updated version of Locating London's Past: locatinglondon.org - new functionality, better mapping, cleaner data. @ihr.bsky.social @long18thsem.bsky.social @ihrhistorylab.bsky.social

A hugely important issue for the future of historical research.

CHR Book Launch: Stephen Robertson's "Harlem in Disorder" Monday, September 23, 2024 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT

Looking forward to talking with Scott Berg about how you can use the digital medium not just to remediate a book but to extend it so the form fits your argument and offers the narrative of your research that footnotes no longer can: chr.gmu.edu/events/16028 (you can join us on Zoom)

Happy to announce the MLA’s new “Guidelines for Evaluating Digital Scholarship”: www.mla.org/About-Us/Gov.... It represents 2 years of work by our MLA Committee on Information Technology to revise the previous, narrower “Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media.”

I asked for three words that come to mind when you think of studying history. Here's what students said vs. what you all said on here:

The Secret Keeper of New York City After forty-plus years with the New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Kenneth Cobb ’78GSAS knows where all the files are buried.

A lovely profile of Ken Cobb, Assistant Commissioner at NYC Department of Records. In 1997, Ken steered me to the papers of Mayor John Hylan, leading to my first published article.

#archivistsrule 🗃️ 👑

magazine.columbia.edu/article/secr...

CHR Book Launch: Stephen Robertson's "Harlem in Disorder" Monday, September 23, 2024 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT

Looking forward to talking with Scott Berg about how you can use the digital medium not just to remediate a book but to extend it so the form fits your argument and offers the narrative of your research that footnotes no longer can: chr.gmu.edu/events/16028 (you can join us on Zoom)

I do like the new NEH logo, which trades in the starkly 'national' crest to return to an image more evocative of the 'humanities' - but its the seal with tagline that I need on a t-shirt right now. Hat-tip to whoever opted for "Democracy Demands Wisdom' from the choices in the founding legislation