Making History Digital

The word “history” often evokes images of leather–bound books, weathered statues and crumbling buildings. Using online platforms, databases and social media, the Digital History and Introduction to Cyberinfrastructure in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Creative Inquiry project is showing people that history is a living, ever– changing story that is as present on a MacBook as it is in a textbook.

The project, led by Dr. Vernon Burton from the Department of History, approaches an old topic from a new perspective. The team of students compile databases and websites that bring historical trends, topics and records to online platforms. Some of these platforms, such as the database of Confederate soldiers’ records, will be useful to scholars as they study the soldiers’ experiences during the Civil War. The students use Microsoft Excel to record data on soldier events such as when men joined and came out of the Confederate army. Additional soldier records of events that occurred while enlisted and after the war are also included. These variables can potentially reveal how the war affected people, such as whether those who fought or those who stayed home benefited more economically. The students learn how to build a database and link it to other databases. Building and connecting these databases makes the records more accessible and searchable than paper sources.

Students investigate a wide range of topics in attempts to bring the same technology to the historical records. For example, Corinne Foster, a senior history major, studied the history of Cherokee people living in the Clemson area. Her work included processing documents and using technology to select common words to create word clouds. Foster tracked the movement of Cherokee people across the area as settlers moved into the region, creating maps that show migration patterns. Although she works with different subject matter, her goal is the same: bringing history to an online platform to make it accessible worldwide.

While many students in the Creative Inquiry are trying to put historical records online, Collin Eichhorn, a history major who graduated in 2015, found a way to let other online platforms, such as Twitter, inform the way history is told. Eichhorn used the Clemson Social Media Listening Center to discern attitudes about the Civil War. The Social Media Listening Center provided Eichhorn and Burton with a large dataset to analyze. They were interested in the thoughts, opinions and attitudes of the general population. While the data showed the researchers how people on the internet think about events like the Civil War, Eichhorn thinks that their research will open doors to a larger conversation on how we educate the public about the nature of history.

“The success of our research is highlighted by the concept that history is not written in stone,” Eichhorn said. Instead, through websites, databases and social media research, the digital history students are trying to show that history is fluid and that it is still being written.