Shooting the Archives: Document Digitization for Historical–Geographical Collaboration 1

Abstract

This article focuses on the practical and methodological dimensions of a somewhat‐neglected aspect of so‐called ‘digital history’: user digitization of historical documents for research projects. Increasing numbers of professional researchers, including historians and historical geographers, are embracing digital technologies as a way to speed research, collect large amounts of primary source material, and enhance their use of this material by mobilizing it from its institutional context. Yet few scholars or information managers have reflected on the implications of this vast, decentralized and idiosyncratic digitization exercise. Debates over digital history have focused mainly on the role and place of archives in the digitization of historical sources or the collection and preservation of digitally created sources, or the merits of the application of new information technologies to historical research. In this short reflection on our own research process, we consider the trend towards self‐digitization of archival sources, and share our practical experiences of document digitization for research and collaborative purposes. We contend that practitioner document digitization opens up exciting new methods for reading and analysing documents, in particular possibilities for enhanced scholarly collaboration.