Thoughts on Jones & Piper

I’d like to share a link and some thoughts on an excellent essay on #DigitalHistory by Mike Jones and Alana Piper, published in the highly-regarded Australian Historical Studies Journal. This journal is known for covering all aspects of Australian history, including its global context.

My main goal with this post is to give further voice to this essay and to highlight the significance of digital histories in particular. I also want to issue a call to action: how can we better support digital history efforts and secure funding to ensure their sustainability where needed?

Ngā mihi maioha and deepest thanks to Andy Potter, for bringing this paper to my attention.

Andy Fenton, CEO – NZMS

Introduction

‘Digital history started to flourish in Australia and New Zealand in the 2000s and early 2010s. But some of this momentum has since been lost due to aging technologies, a lack of supporting infrastructure, funding issues, discontinued projects, and limited teaching and training opportunities.’ Jones & Piper’s ‘state of the field’ article on digital history seeks to encourage greater reflexivity in the discipline by providing a detailed overview of the local context in Australia and New Zealand.

I felt compelled to support their endeavour and to share my own thoughts. My career has been closely interwoven with the efforts of those dedicated to creating digital history and preserving our past for future generations to enjoy and learn from. These individuals are superheroes in my eyes, and while I don’t often say it, I’m proud of my own contributions to this cause through the work of my three ‘digit(al)isation’ companies.

Read the Full article: Digital History (tandfonline.com)

My Thoughts

For over thirty years, I have been deeply invested in the documentation and digitisation of our cultural heritage. Jones & Piper’s recent article highlights key challenges in funding models for digital history, challenges which I’ve experienced firsthand, particularly in the development of sustainable platforms for collaborative content generation and for public engagement with local histories.

The Problem with Current Funding Models

Jones & Piper raise the point that the current funding models that initiate the creation of digital history platforms are inadequate as they are. While initial grants are available to support the launch of new platforms or initiatives, the very nature of institutional funding cycles mean that this funding is either time-bound or based on achieving key milestones such as corpus size. This approach naturally forces these projects to prioritise quantity over long-term quality, as the focus is often on meeting deadlines and targets rather than ensuring that the digital content remains usable and accessible into the future. What we are left with, is a lack of resources for long-term maintenance, updates, or even basic accessibility, which has led to the closure of promising platforms such as Kete in New Zealand and the near-demise of Trove in Australia.

Solutions in the Field

In response to these challenges, many digital history projects, including those I’ve been involved in, have turned to open-source solutions. After all, many digital history projects are designed for open access consumption and present opportunities for wider use accordingly. While platforms like Kete provided a vital space for community-driven digital content, their ultimate demise due to lack of funding illustrates the saddening fragility of even these open-sourced initiatives. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, commercial solutions have resulted in challenges of their own. Paid-access digital history platforms are perfectly fair if the consumer gets what they want at a fair price, after all, we cannot have everything we want for free. However, I sometimes despair that this model will lead to manipulative practices that value customer retention over what ought to be the platform’s primary concern, digitally preserving our histories. Examples of this include losing access to journals or datasets you have paid to see upon lapse of subscription, search engine algorithms that favour paid advertisements, or perhaps extreme viewpoints which you the user have not asked to see.

The article cites James Smithies, Professor of Digital Humanities at the Australian National University, who argues that, in New Zealand, the reliance on ‘central government to provide us with digital assets without contributing ourselves’, combined with the failure of those governments to effectively identify researcher requirements, means that the country has lagged behind other parts of the world in terms of large research infrastructure projects specifically designed for ‘next-generation Humanities research’. The same is arguably true for Australia.

Smithies claims it is our readiness to entrust central government and other large institutions with the responsibility of documenting our histories, coupled with their lack of expertise and desire to do so sustainably that has brought us to the crisis we currently find ourselves in. Smithies is cynical about the long term viability of government funded digital platforms. As much as I respect Smithies, I have to respond by pointing to the birth and near-death of Trove. In Trove, we have a case study in which a digital platform has both the robustness of open collaboration and the necessary ongoing funding for maintenance and continuing accessibility, a feat which was achieved by the people of Australia voicing their concerns to a listening government. The Australian government listened and have committed themselves to long term ongoing funding, so that now Trove can become a sustainable multi-generational asset for future Australians to access their history.

Recollect CMS

Partly in protest to the likes of Smithies’ 2013 contention, NZMS designed and built Recollect to help communities capture and digitally preserve their own history and cultural heritage and control how they shared it. Recollect was built from the ground up based on feedback gained from New Zealand’s GLAM sector to be a digital platform for grassroots digitisation. Recollect gives communities the platform to exercise their own voice, something that NZMS has been committed to from its inception. As I am writing this, Recollect is now in six countries with over 130 sites. But like all digital platforms, Recollect needs continued investment to sustain it and to integrate new technologies into it, especially after the recent emergence of consumer-friendly artificial intelligence.

Some Problems Facing Digitisation Platforms

Another significant issue raised by Jones & Piper is the restriction on digitising newspapers post-1950. This limitation, also seen in New Zealand’s Papers Past, stymies research and preservation efforts, especially when regional and local newspapers – critical to understanding diverse historical narratives – are lost. As historian Vincent O’Malley observed, by having just a few titles available from 1950-1995, users may unwittingly misjudge New Zealand’s historical narrative for want of access to provincial and indigenous histories. As someone who has dedicated over thirty years to the preservation of New Zealand history, I find this to be a worrying development.

Archives, Libraries and Museums are resisting digitising titles after 1950 because they cannot legally present or publish those titles online due to copyright issues. Meanwhile, the physical copies of those papers are becoming increasingly friable or damaged through handling, leading to them being literally dumped. The Preserving Local History & Educational Trust has been doing incredible work in order to address this tragic loss of relatively contemporary history in New Zealand, including literally rescuing newspapers as provincial publishers are purchased, or abandon or down-size their community offices. This is work that anyone reading this article can get involved in, see the link for YourStories at the bottom of the page.

The Power of Linked Data and Genealogical Contributions

One supportive method to enhance user engagement and to potentially secure more stable, long-term funding is through the use of Linked Data. Jones & Piper rightly emphasise its importance, and I was particularly struck by the examples they cited, which I had not encountered before, such as the University of Newcastle’s Massacre Map and The Guardian’s Killing Times. These two projects powerfully present digital records of Australia’s sad history of violence between settlers and indigenous peoples. These resources, though deeply distressing in their subject matter, demonstrate the potential of linked data to create opportunities for reflection, research, and dialogue on difficult historical events.

The ability of linked data to draw connections between disparate sources of information can be transformative. As Jones & Piper point out, projects like the Massacre Map have reshaped national conversations about history, highlighting previously silenced stories. This is a powerful reminder of how digital public histories can contribute to broader public understanding. The Killing Times map, for instance, became a vital source during Australia’s 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, underscoring the role such data-driven projects can play in seeking justice and redress.

In New Zealand, we have witnessed something similar with the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Abuse in Care, which examined the abuse and neglect of children, young people, and adults in state and church-based institutions between 1950 and 1999. Digital resources like these allow for the kind of deep, transformative engagement with history that reshapes how we, as a society, understand our past and therefore our present, so we can better plan for our future.

Purpose is key here. As Jones & Piper note, professionals in the GLAM sector can teach historians valuable lessons about evaluation and impact, particularly when it comes to transforming the public’s historical consciousness. By facilitating access to such critical historical data, sometimes literally by rescuing the data from the tip, we allow for fuller and richer narratives that lead to genuine change.

Genealogical Agencies

Another important contributor to digital history, which Jones & Piper touch upon, is the role of genealogical agencies such as FamilySearch and Ancestry. While many may associate these platforms with consumer genealogy and popular TV shows like Britain’s Who Do You Think You Are? that have commercialised the pursuit of family history, their contributions go far beyond entertainment. These agencies have led the way in digitising vast quantities of historical records, from birth, death, and marriage registers to shipping lists. For me, these kinds of records are often the first point of contact for researchers and are essential candidates for digitisation, as they serve as finding aids that point to larger, more complex and rich collections.

The impact of linking data in this way cannot be overstated. By providing access to such foundational records, genealogical agencies not only create demand for further digitisation efforts but also contribute to the preservation of materials that might otherwise be neglected or lost. Their digitisation efforts extend beyond ‘big lists of names.’ For example, FamilySearch has a long history of recording oral histories and preserving local narratives, particularly in regions where written records are scarce. I’ve had the privilege of attending numerous presentations on the history of these efforts, which began in the 1960s and span continents, from Africa to the Pacific Islands. These initiatives have captured stories and preserved records that might otherwise have vanished. While some might view these projects through a particular lens of mission or commercial interest, I see immense value in making these resources available to the world today. Would anyone else have done it? I doubt it. Their global microfilming activities, too, have been critical in preserving records that could have been lost to time.

This kind of preservation work is especially important in nations where historical documentation is scarce, and it reinforces the significance of digital history. By linking data across collections and platforms, we are able to draw a more complete picture of our shared past, ensuring that even the most marginalised stories are not lost.

Breaking the Cycle of Short-Term Funding

For now, projects and tools initiated prior to 2015 continue to dominate the Australian and New Zealand digital history landscapes. This suggests at the very least a lack of growth in the field in recent years, and a loss of momentum from the comparative flourishing of infrastructures, tools, projects, and initiatives seen in the 2000s and early 2010s. Digital history is not going away, but progress requires more concerted action. More troubling still, technological change, continued reliance on short-term funding, and a lack of mature preservation infrastructure may mean a backwards step, with even the recent history of digital history in danger of being lost. The future of digital history requires us to keep investing our energy in the field to manage its particular requirements, and to realise its many exciting possibilities.

One of the key issues we must confront, something we all acknowledge but rarely act upon, is the ongoing cycle of short-term funding in critical sectors like Health, Education, Environment, Defence, Social Services, and, of course, our GLAM sector. These institutions are vital to preserving our collective memory and cultural heritage, yet they remain subject to political cycles, with funding often tied to the government of the day.

We must adopt a more forward-thinking approach similar to the Long-Term Plans used in local government. Digital platforms require the same kind of long-term funding model that one would expect for a major highway or city by-pass. These plans typically span ten (or more) years, with micro-planning over one- and three-year periods. If the government could adopt a similarly collaborative and cross-party approach, we would be far better positioned to secure the future of digital history. The crisis that nearly ended Trove should warn us that we cannot afford to risk another vital digital platform due to time-bound thinking.

As a tail-end Boomer, I can’t help but reflect on the challenges my generation and Gen X have left for future generations to deal with. It’s time for us to step up and ensure we pass on opportunities, not problems, to those who come after us. My call to action is simple: we need our public servants to work together, across party lines, to explore the fundamental principles we can all agree on; principles that ensure long-term support for our cultural heritage.

Jones & Piper conclude that additional investment is necessary to support ongoing progress in the digital history field. This investment will also ensure that past projects, and the data they have collected, remain accessible well into the future. If we can secure a commitment from all major political parties to prioritise this, we will safeguard the work of the past quarter-century. Our rich digital history can continue to be accessed, learned from, and preserved for the greater good of future generations.

Ngā mihi nui / thank you for reading,

Andy Fenton

References

Citation: Jones, M., & Piper, A. (2023). Digital History. Australian Historical Studies, 55(1), 178–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2023.2267586