IFPH 2017 Panel-10 Digital Heritage Vs. Digital (Public) History Chair Enrica Salvatori (University of Pisa)

1. IFPH - 10 Digital Heritage Vs Digital Public History
Digital History / Heritage, Digital Public
History: a mandatory relationship?
Enrica Salvatori - UNIPI

2. Digital Heritage
Digital History
✤ DH now: an open road
towards specialisation (not
only)
✤ sophisticated methods of
analysis
✤ amazing outputs but in
some /many cases non
useful /usable by the public

3. Digital Heritage
Digital History
✤ DH now: an open road
towards specialisation (not
only)
✤ sophisticated methods of
analysis
✤ amazing outputs but in
some /many cases non
useful /usable by the public

4. Digital Heritage
Digital History

5. Digital Heritage / Digital History

6. Dealing with the digital heritage does not
always mean making public history,
sometimes simply means applying new tools
for scientific studies and for highly
specialised research

7. BUT..
let us look at the main features of ANY Digital
Heritage / Digital History project (IMHO)

8. DH projects
✤ embrace necessarily more subjects and disciplines
(team work)
✤ are open
✤ need (public) to be sustained

9. Interdisciplinary is mandatory
✤ DH is an unavoidably and profoundly interdisciplinary field
✤ each project is a complex set of activities and skills that
crosses, by its true nature, several fields, each one with is
“new” methodology
✤ this change of practice and approach implies a sort of
methodological revolution, because it requires a team
organisation with an articulated division of work in relation
to several levels of skills (a DIGICRAFT)

10. Openness
✤ A multidisciplinary team has to use
different tools: convenience and
sustainability require open source tools
✤ A DH project means sharing data not only
among researches but also thinking how to
share the content with the general public
✤ Openness is then a natural result, even it is
also an ethical, political and philosophical
choice as the Digital Manifesto 2.0 says:
✤ the digital is the realm of the open, open
source, open resources

11. Then..
✤ who works in the field of digital heritage has to think
about how to build and manage the relationship
between the object and its public.
✤ because cultural heritage is public, because history is
OUR (the community, the group, the institution, the
nation, the scholars) interpretation of the past
✤ and sometimes it is precisely the public who allows a
digital object to continue to exist.

12. thinking to the web
web design
visual design
graphic design
interaction design
interface design
user experience
design
BUT ALSO
social network
computer graphic

13. scientific (?) communication
web site
video
ebook
cards
e-agenda
poster
folder
mailing list
gadgets
maps

14. video&audio podcast
lectures
lessons
interviews
video ads
History is a story,
so let us learn
how to tell it

15. a common (participatory) heritage
people want
to (then
should) be
able to write
their own
(contribution
to) history

16. DH is not a book
✤ Codice Pelavicino, XIII
century manuscript,
now and in the future
in an Archive (low,
accepted and
traditional social cost)
✤ Codice Pelavicino
Digital Edition, XXI
century, now LabCD
but in the future ???

17. DH need PEOPLE
✤ A DH project can sustain itself only if it proves to be
useful to a community (no matter the size)
✤ A DH project needs to be though also & mainly for the
public, i.e. who owns, writes, participates, lives its
history/cultural heritage

18. DH need Digital Public Historians
✤ If Public History is making History with the People
✤ If Digital Heritage Projects and/or Digital History
Projects have to be REALLY OPEN to the public
✤ then we need a Public Historian who knows how to be
Digital

19. info@labcd.unipi.it