Preserving Digital History

The Skills

There are many skills involved in preserving history via the internet. I found it interesting how much knowledge in coding is involved, and I now have a greater respect for those who construct websites. This is really the first time I have encountered this material before. I have noticed it can be very tedious looking at the formation of the symbols and letters used to form code. Here is an example:

Historians as Architects

What I found most interesting in this reading was the comparision between historians and architects, which can be found here. The comparison is accurate. Digital historians construct a foundation to support all of the information they wish to display. Historians, like architects, must ask themselves several questions:

1. Who is this targeting?
2. What is the layout?
3. What do I need to include?
4. Is this aesthetically pleasing?

After asking these questions, historians construct a “home” for all of their information. Like a home or a building, the information is subject to change or reconstruction. There are also many factors they must take into account when constructing a website:

• Type of database
• Type of server
• Type of software

With this in mind, historians can successfully construct the ideal website to preserve information.

Importance

Digital historians provide the public with the opportunity to retrieve information at any time. By creating a “home” for the content, internet users have endless amounts of information at their disposal. Search engines are the best way to give the maximum amount of options to retrieve information. We have historians to thank for the ease of performing research.

~ by mmaggi117 on September 2, 2012 .