Thomas Nygren and Lotta Vikström (Umeå University). This research has been founded by the “Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation”

This analysis contributes rare evidence of the benefits and obstacles associated with incorporating digitized sources in history teaching. We detect and discuss the outcome of this use through observations and evaluations of how students in upper secondary schools respond to a teaching that involves the study of digitized registers, comprising nineteenth-century individuals and populations. The results indicate that students might experience digital history as messy, stressful, complicated, meaningless and frustrating. However, digital history can also be interesting and stimulate historical thinking; promoting the use of evidence and historical empathy. This research is useful for scholars interested in history didactic research and teachers seeking to introduce or increase their use of digitized data when teaching, not only history.

Alain Michel is Associate Professor (LHEST/UEVE, France)

I will present the results of the “Usines3D” (U3D) research program and especially its web site which has recently been open (February 3rd 2012 / www.usines3D.fr).
This program concerns contemporary history of technology, but joins pluri-disciplinary forces from history, archeology and digital humanities. It develops computer models and multimedia instruments as interpretation tools which can be used in other fields of research. This program is threefold : it has a original epistemological aim, elaborates a specific methodology and (off course) produces historical knowledge.

Its purpose is first to deepen the history of industrial work and organization. The point is to highlight the concrete processes of production through the study a few relevant techno-industrial sites. The specific intention of these studies is to account for the different scales of integration (and possibly shrinking) of the activity in its environment. On this subject, explicit texts are scarce so that most of the production process is hidden in a “black box”. But other available sources (visual, oral, archaeological, statistical etc.) offer chances to apprehend part of it. The meaning of these vestiges has to be re-discovered through the creation of multimedia collections (corpus) of documents often coming from scattered archives. The numerical models we extract from these collections will make it possible to set a workplace in its territory at different levels of its documentary comprehension: from the landscape to the workshop, from the product to the machine, from gestures to processes and through the images to imagination. The validation of such type of multimedia assembly, data processing and interpretation are part of a documentary heuristic which still has to be built up. It is the first challenge of this U3D program.

The research program also aims to develop a new methodology for historical modeling. It federates partners in the fields of Human sciences, Digital Humanities and engineering sciences. It associates cultural and territorial institutions, business firms and disseminates results to a broader audience. This original coordination between human and computer sciences requires semantic interoperability between these disciplines and allows the acquisition of expertise richer than the mere sum of skills brought by the partners. The crossing of different case studies is used to test hypotheses, to enrich the study procedures, establish a method, develop a modeling ontology and propose standards. This multidisciplinary federation of complementary capabilities leads to mutual enrichment and produces a new expertise.

Finally, the results and syntheses of the various historical studies will be accessible through classical scientific publications but also through public access on a website to documentary corpus and models. The website serves both as a platform for different work teams and as a showcase for everyone. We believe it should be maintained by the national network consisting of the different partners and open to all the organizations associated with the program. This consortium has (in its field) a manifest scientific legitimacy and it should attain a sufficient size to develop a “tool case” of free software instruments and models necessary for perennial modelisations. This package will be at the disposal of all technology historians. The goal is to build together a charter of good practices and be a reference label in modeling historical heritage of industrial and technical spots.

Thomas Cauvin is PhD candidate at the European University Institute (Florence)

Northern Ireland has been touched by sectarian violence since the late 1960s and many political, social and cultural projects have attempted to improve community relations between Nationalists and Unionists. The presentation questions the use of digitalization in a context of inter-community tensions, notably by creating dialogue through virtual territory. I explore how certain websites have allowed for the re-appraisal of spatial competition in Northern Ireland. For instance, I analyze two websites devoted to the Maze Prison. It was a prison in Northern Ireland (Royal Air Force station of Long Kesk, closed to Lisburn) where para-military prisoners were jailed during the Troubles. The Maze became internationally famous in the early 1980s when Republican prisoners started the hunger strike. Although the prison was closed in 2000 and some parts have been destroyed, it is still a contentious “lieu de mémoire” in Northern Ireland. It is interesting to explore how the digitalization of the material enriches the comprehension of a site threatened to disappear. As historian of the community relations in Northern Ireland, I will also elaborate on the relevance of the two projects to understand the how new media – in particular the internet – participate in the re-appraisal of the binary opposition between Republicans and Loyalists in Northern Ireland. In a region where there has been a surfeit of visual competing representations of violence – see for instance the Republican and Loyalist murals and parades – the process of digitalization of sensible issues in public history projects may help to challenge parochial sectarian interpretations of the past.

Enrica Salvatori is Assistant Professor at the University of Pisa.

Cette contribution propose une analyse critique d’un projet de Public history qui aborde les thèmes de la récupération de l’histoire et de la construction des mémoires : la Val di Vara (vallée de Ligurie). Le projet est divisé en 3 parties:

• Territoire : catalogage du patrimoine culturel à travers l’exploration archéologique de surface, récupération de la micro-toponymie, étude de la documentation historique – le tout est ensuite stocké dans SIG sur le web;
• Mémoire :portail Web 2.0 pour la collecte de la mémoire orale des habitants âgés de la Val di Vara;
• Étude : les traditionnels articles scientifiques qui seront imprimées mais aussi résumés et mis en ligne.

Pendant le projet, le 25 octobre 2011, une inondation a ravagé la vallée. L’équipe du projet n’a pu considérer cet événement comme peu important, car il a touché l’ensemble de la communauté de la Vallée. Elle a donc décidé de tenter une collecte des photographies et de témoignages audio et vidéo de l’inondation. À cette fin, une section a été prévue sur le site, permettant aussi à l’équipe de ce projet d’étudier les conditions dans lesquelles une telle collecte d’archives fonctionne.

La question fondamentale qui sera abordée par cette contribution est la suivante : à quelles conditions un tel projet peut atteindre la/les communauté(s) auxquelles il s’adresse ? L’histoire numérique est-elle une histoire qui sélectionne fortement ses utilisateurs, notamment par la manière dont elle utilise la technologie et, notamment, le web? Comment pouvons-nous évaluer les bénéfices réels d’un tel projet? Quels sont les problèmes qui restent à résoudre?