HistoryPin

This essay focus on User Generated Content and Web 2.0 technologies in digital public history projects. A new frontier in public history practices and how to govern shared authority in the web is at stake. In the digital realm, public historians’ professional methods and codes are rewritten and reinterpreted and, because of new digital technologies, new practices have to be mastered to adapt to social media. International examples of digital projects with Big Data’s’ and crowdsourcing activities are showcased. Two different social media, Twitter and HistoryPin are inquired because of the use of documents (mainly photographs) and of specific techniques that activate the past into the present (“presentism”) in digital public history projects about WW1.

Resumen: El objetivo de este artículo es analizar cómo la historia pública digital y el contenido generado por los usuarios están estableciendo nuevas formas de actividad profesional en las redes sociales. Definiremos qué son las redes sociales, cómo contribuyen a las nuevas formas digitales de comunicación histórica y cómo los usuarios comparten datos sobre el pasado en plataformas en red. La segunda parte versa sobre el modo en que las redes sociales ayudan al oficio de los historiadores públicos digitales. Por último, se describe el tratamiento que ha recibido la conmemoración del centenario de la Primera Guerra Mundial en Twitter y el uso de las fotografías digitales o digitalizadas que circulan en las redes sociales.

Abstract: The aim of this article is to examine how digital public history and user-generated content establish new sorts of professional activity within social networks. The first part of the essay defines social networking, and explores how it contributes to new digital forms of historical communication, and how users exchange data about the past in networked platforms. The second part looks at how social networks promote the craft of digital public historians. The last section describes the way commemorations of the centenary of WWI were depicted on Twitter and
examines how digital or digitized photographs circulate in social media.

Jennifer S. Pride was the fortunate recipient of the late Courtauld Professor John House’s vast collection of stereoscopes, which she decided to donate to the Department of Art History. Several of our librarians and archivists met with Jennifer and decided on a course of action.
The primary goal of the project is to build an online collection of the material, allowing scholars and the public to enjoy and learn from it. Jennifer had learned the late professor’s collection strategy and organization, and had already begun scanning some images for her own research.
The digital collection is now available online
Expanding the project to The NYPL (New York Public Library) Lab’s Stereogranimator and HistoryPin.
As proof of concepts, both of these show that the John House Stereograph collection is deeply useful and has great potential for further study. We plan to continue to work with Jennifer and other Art Historians to explore the stories and patterns that emerge from this digitally re-presented collection.