Writing History in the Digital Age

While you’re correct that a Zotero source record only has a single field for notes, you can have any number of associated text (i.e. note) records related that that source.

Our apologies for this frustration. We had temporarily suspended new registrations for technical reasons but have since reactivated it, so that both new registration and commenting without registration should now be possible.

This is the lesson that I’m learning right now.  It’s so true, and so difficult.  All of the authors on our project are also discovering that you have to hit hundreds of people you know, and thousands of others, to get just a few willing to visit and contribute to the site.  Thinking about strategies in this area requires great creativity, and many of us historian types are unused to thinking creatively about human contact in the here-and-now.  But you have to do it to get a the kind of interaction that delivers on the promise of the technology.

Unfortunately, it says above that you need to enter your details in full for each comment or register once … but when you click ‘register’ it says ‘registration is not allowed’. Mildly frustrating!  :-)

Hmm … you’re asking ‘the public’ to comment on the essays in this journal, but then the first two or three paragraphs talk exclusively about ‘we historians’ etc. which might well put of ‘the public’ from commenting, I would have thought.
I can’t see how the digital revolution could not transform how historians write about the past – but it probably depends how far back you go. The past is yesterday – for yesterday’s history there must be a vast mine of information on the net, from the completely trivial (I hurt my knee, ouch – I’ve written a blog post about it) to major world news.
However, pre-web history will obviously not be affected in the same way. I’ve no doubt the way it’s written about will still be affected though and I look forward to reading more and finding out how.