History in the Age of Abundance?: How the Web Is Transforming Historical Research

by Ian Milligan

Believe it or not, the 1990s are history. As historians turn to study this period and beyond, they will encounter a historical record that is radically different from what has ever existed before. Old websites, social media, blogs, photographs, and videos are all part of the massive quantities of digital information that technologists, librarians, archivists, and organizations such as the Internet Archive have been collecting for the past three decades. In History in the Age of Abundance? Ian Milligan argues that web-based historical sources and their archives present extraordinary opportunities as well as daunting technical and ethical challenges for historians. Through case studies, he outlines the approaches, methods, tools, and search functions that can help a historian turn web documents into historical sources. He also considers the implications of the size and scale of digital sources, which amount to more information than historians have ever had at their fingertips, and many of which are by and about people who have traditionally been absent from the historical record. Scrutinizing the concept of the web and the mechanics of its archives, Milligan explains how these new media challenge, reshape, and enrich both the historical profession and the historical record. A wake-up call for historians of the twenty-first century, History in the Age of Abundance? is an essential introduction to the way web archives work, what possibilities they open up, what risks they entail, and what the shift to digital information means for historians, their professional training and organization, and society as a whole.

Genres: History, Technology, Nonfiction

328 pages, Paperback

Published March 28, 2019

Reviews

[Yennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Milligan brings up a lot of important questions about what does an Internet archive, and, more broadly, what does an archive from present-day "digital day" look like, especially for historians of the future? This good got me started thinking a lot about archives in relation to historical research, especially in the "digital age".

I was disappointed because there almost no mention of Asia. Everything was SO Euro-centric, almost to a fault. I was also disappointed because Milligan introduces the digital archive so compellingly but barely mentions actual big data (i.e. what about the TB of Facebook, Google, etc data?). The "big" data he brings up are actually not that big from a technological perspective.

Also, the chapters where Milligan talks about the details of how to use the command line, the history of computing, etc felt a little extra and unnecessary and like he was flaunting his expertise in this area without being super relevant to his thesis.

Overall though I enjoyed reading this book and it was a good introduction to viewing the Internet as an archive and some questions we need to start asking about this.