Digital History and Government Recordkeeping
On the 21 June History & Policy organised a special online round table discussion on Digital History and Government Recordkeeping. An expert panel considered a range of questions including:
- What opportunities do digital history techniques - from tailored search interfaces to data visualisations - offer historians interested in government records?
- To what extent are digital recordkeeping practices - such as the guidance from the National Archives and the Lord Chancellor’s Code of Practice – informing recordkeeping and shaping the archives of the future?
- How far can automation and AI be relied upon to identify, file and preserve public records more effectively than human members of staff?
- Will the shift towards the born-digital and ephemeral in the materials generated by the government change the ways in which official histories are researched and written?
- How might public access to government records be transformed by digital humanities techniques?
- What are the security, data protection and Freedom of Information implications of the shift to digital records in contemporary government, and how might this affect the work of historians?
Speakers:
- Prof Ulrich Tiedau (Professor of European History and Associate Director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities)
- Tom Storrar (Head of Web Archiving at the National Archives)
- Jason Webber (Web Archive Engagement Manager at the British Library and the UK Web Archive)
- Prof Jane Winters (Professor of Digital Humanities and Director of the Digital Humanities Research Hub at the School of Advanced Study)
- Sir Alex Allen (Advisory board member at the Oxford Internet Institute, formerly served as the first UK Government e-Envoy)
Chair: Philip Murphy (Director of History & Policy)
