Case Statement - National Council on Public History

with a familiarity of a wide range of technologies that they can take as a “digital toolbox” to use as
required in their public history careers. Ideally, they will feel comfortable using a range of technologies,
know where to turn for advice and assistance, and have a clear grasp of the ways that digital history
alters historical practice, research, communications, and understanding.
In the spring of 2011, I attended a THATcamp at George Mason University that had a
tremendous impact on my thoughts about digital history. It was at that gathering that I fully grasped the
implications of digital humanities/digital history as a movement rather than a methodology, and one
that intentionally sought to transform the nature of academia. I was deeply impressed by the spirit of
the meeting, the boldness of the vision, and the technical skills of the people around me. It was
intellectually thrilling, but also unnerving at the same time. It convinced me of the importance of digital
history, and the scope of its potential impact on academia and the historical profession. I wondered how
the faculty of Shippensburg University could best serve our students to operate in a world where digital
resources would be transforming history and public history practice.
As part of our department’s effort to review our curriculum, I undertook a survey of graduate
public history programs in March 2012, and one of the questions I asked public history program
directors was to comment on the place of digital history in their curriculum. I summarized the results in
a blog post I wrote for History@Work entitled, “The Future is Here: Public History Education and the
Rise of Digital History”:
Almost two-thirds (64.5%) of the responding program directors reported that graduates of their
programs would be leaving with competency in digital history and new media. Fifty-nine percent
of public history program directors indicated that content on digital history and new media had
been integrated into existing courses, and fully 46.2% stated that their programs had added one
or more new courses on the study of new media or digital history. The directors also reported
that more than one-third of public history programs are preparing their students to create or
author digital history or new media resources (35.9%).
These results confirmed for me that our public history programs needed to do more to expose ours
students to digital history, but the question that remained unanswered in my own mind was precisely
how technical that training needed to be. What does competency in digital history really mean? What
constitutes an appropriate and valuable level of technological training for most public history students?
And to what extent could a lack of digital history expertise that does not extend beyond the skillful and
thoughtful use of Web 2.0 resources impede the job prospects and careers of our students? Should we
training public historians who can also fully manage the technical end of complex and sophisticated