History Online or Digital History?

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History - http://www.gilderlehrman.org is a beautifully designed and implemented web-based historical resource. The website mixes an atheistically pleasing layout with rich visuals and enticing content. The Institute’s web-based presence includes online exhibitions that feature concise collections of historical resources presented around a theme or content area. Most of the exhibitions were originally published on the Gilder Lehrman Institute sponsored online publication History Now - http//historynow.org. Also included online are almost 2,000 digitized documents from the 60,000 document Gilder Lehrman collection housed at the New York Historical Society. The site includes a rich collection of podcasts from leading historians most often discussing their published works. Gilder Lehrman even has its own online store with books, manuscripts, posters, calendars, DCDs/CDs, and multimedia collections called "History in a Box." To cap it off, the Institute provides a wide collection of instructional materials ranging from very impressive "Battle Lines: Letters from American Wars" online exhibition of letters and audio to more traditional quizzes on American history topics and in between are 24 instructional modules complete with background information, selected primary sources, and specific instructional materials.

In many ways, the Gilder Lehrman site represents the best of learning digital history on the Web, but at the same time something is missing. Maybe it is the voice of teachers. Although it is obvious that Gilder Lehrman work directly with teachers through outreach efforts (History Schools, Traveling Exhibits, Saturday Exhibits, etc.), I would like to see a more open web environment that invites users to contribute information. As designed, the Gilder Lehrman site and all the related resources feel like an amped up textbook. It's everything we thought received and official history might be in the digital age, but it seems as if the site needs a bit more wiggle room - just a crack in the door to allow its users to contribute ideas and offer insights from their own work with the collections. It might be time to revisit Robert Darnton's sixth layer of scholarly interaction or as Ed Ayers put it almost a decade ago we need to encourage risk taking and collaboration to realize the potential of digital history.