Past, present and future of historical information science

Abstract

This report evaluates the impact of two decades of research within the framework of history and computing, and sets out a research paradigm and research infrastructure for future historical information science. It is good to see that there has been done a lot of historical information r esearch in the past; much of it has been done, however, outside the field of history and computing, and not within a community like the Association for History and Computing. The reason is that the AHC never made a clear statement about what audience to address: historians with an interest in computing, or historical information scientists. As a r esult, both parties have not been accommodated, and communications with both 'traditional' history and 'information science' have not been established. A proper research program, based on new developments in information science, is proposed, along with an unambiguous scientific research infrastructure.Chapter 1. Introduction "The historian who refuses to use a computer as being unnecessary, ignores vast areas of historical research and will not be taken serious anymore" (Boonstra, Breure and Doorn, 1990).When we wrote the lines above, fifteen years ago, we sensed that, with the coming of the computer, not only new areas of historical research would be opened, but also that computers would be able to help find solutions to many of the information problems that are so distinctive to historical science. * Address all communications to: Onno Boonstra, Leen Breure and Peter Doorn, NIWI, Postbus 41950, 1009 DD Amsterdam, the Netherlands; e-mail: o.boonstra@let.kun.nl, leen@cs.uu.nl , peter.doorn@niwi.knaw.nl . The online version of this report is also available on: http://www.niwi.knaw.nl/nl/ geschiedenis/onderzoek/onderzoeksprojecten/past_present_future_of_historical_information _science/draft_report/toonplaatje. 5Nowadays, information problems in historical research still exist and are still vast and very varied. They range from textual pro blems (what is the word that is written on this thirteenth-century manuscript? what does it mean? to which issue does it relate? why was it put there? why was the text written? who was the author? who was supposed to read the manuscript? why has it survived?) and linkage problems (is this Lars Erikson, from this register, the same man as the Lars Eriksson, from this other register?), to data structuring pro blems (how can historical contextual information be kept as metadata in a XMLdatabase?), interpretation problems (from this huge amount of digital records, is it possible to discern patterns that add to our knowledge of history?) and visualisation problems (how do you put time-varying information on a historical map?).But this does not mean that nothing has been achieved over the last two decades. On the contrary, hundreds of research projects have been initiated to tackle problems like these. Historians, linguists, literary scholars, information scientists, they all have done their share in making historical information science grow and flo...

Semantic technologies for historical research: A survey

“…The field of historical research concerns the understanding of our past and it is currently undergoing major changes in its methodology, largely due to the growing interest in and the advent of high-quality digital resources [86]. Historical data encompasses statistical information, texts, images, and objects.…”

“…History computing or Humanities computing were labels used in the pre-Internet area [22]. Many pioneers in computer aided historical anal-ysis have a background both in history and in informatics, and reflected early on about the usefulness of computational and digital techniques for historical research [86]. Though not all research dreams materialized in the primary envisioned way [93], nowadays historians in particular in the area of economic history and social history aim for world-wide, large scale collaborations.…”

Annotation as process: A vital information seeking activity in historical geographic research

“…Baker (2003) offers alternative understandings depending on the perspective taken and circumstance. Other papers impart the challenges faced when researching topics in historical geography, specifically when the findings being collected are intended for presentation in a digital format within a geographic information system (GIS) (Boonstra, Breure, & Doorn, 2004;Gregory, Kemp, & Mostern, 2003), as is the case in this study.…”

Challenges and Opportunities for Digital History

“…There have been false dawns for digital history, or "history and computing," in the past (Boonstra et al 2004). Until very recently, computers were primarily associated with performing calculations on numbers.…”