Auxiliary Disciplines of History in the Age of Internet

The following article may serve a purpose of both researching the development of e-history in the framework of the Information Science and as a guide for those interested in studying the chronology and history of the state offices (archontology) by the means of Internet resources including web sites, forums and other electronic media.

"For many, the computer and the resultant Information Age heralds a time when every person, with a modicum of cost, effort, and education, can harness more information in practical ways than ever before. Some of these individuals will become skillful enough to transform the information into knowledge"

Richard J. Cox, "The Information Age and History: Looking Backward to See Us" [1]

1. How Historical Disciplines Use the Internet

The Internet has become just another subject in thousands of historical studies: the history of computers, the development of the World Wide Web, the invention of computer languages these are just a few trends in studying the most important trends of the modern Age of Information. However, much fewer studies are focused on another important phenomenon an influence of computers and the Internet on the quality and quantity of researches in history and/or political science. It may have both positive and negative effects, but this article concentrates on development of auxiliary disciplines under the influence of the Internet. The advancement of modern technologies has been continuously influencing the humanities and its auxiliary disciplines, which found a new source of information in electronic databases, media and web sites.

More than ten years have passed since the time when in 1992 a German historian teaching at the University of Oldenburg, Thomas Zielke, wrote his paper "History at your Fingertips," delivered at the Mid-America Conference in September 1992. The idea of the paper was in creating the "foundation of the History Network," a universal forum of historians and other scholar for exchanges of information. At that time the German scholar realized that "the historian who dedicates all of his work to one single topic or problem and works on it all by himself, without any help from colleagues or assistants has almost become a figure of the past - today, we historians all need to communicate with each other and we need to exchange information with each other, and in some sub-disciplines of history it has become an absolute necessity to work together in groups, and this on a nationwide, if not on an international range." Although the idea was not fulfilled in the way Zielke proposed, his basic concepts were finally realized in thousands of web sites bearing most useful material for scholarly study and general education.

Any major academic field is backed by a number of auxiliary disciplines, which mostly function to provide additional information, necessary facts or intriguing details to the main course of study. The works published in these fields often remain in relative obscurity as it is usually shadowed by main trends in academic disciplines. However, the Internet gave a chance to intensify the development of these "sub-disciplines" mentioned by Zielke, by adding a great deal of information available to much wider circle of scholars than it used to be at any time before the Age of Information began.

Many auxiliary disciplines normally associated with history or political science, such as sphragistics, phaleristics, insigniology, iconology, archontology and others existed for quite a long time not having a chance for exposure in the form of informational databases containing the information both collected by the web site authors and supplied by voluntarily contributors.

What has the age of information brought us to facilitate the research in these fields? Historians seem to have led the way in creating numerous discussion groups, building text archives and publishing their works on the Net. First effort on creating large databases of historical texts were aimed at collecting primary sources and works of historians. The author of the Historical Text Archives, Don Mabry, claims that the origin of his web site, one of the best among electronic history resources, goes back to 1990. Started as an archive of text files, it grew into a well-organized PHP-based web site containing thousands of works and texts.

As the Internet continued to expand, the methods of creating web sites became more and more sophisticated. Twenty years ago one could hardly imagine that practically all legacy of Anglo-Saxon judiciary system including decrees, charters and other regulations would become available to any researcher having an access to the Internet. Currently, by logging into the Anglo-Saxons.net: Charters, one can easily use it a real starting point for studying pre-Conquest history of England in many directions. However, a real "magic hand" for researchers is sophisticated search engine built within the web sites. Before the invention of electronic sources, it would have taken long days to trace, say, changes in the roy al styles of Anglo-Saxon monarchs, while the automation of search and selection made many studies many times more effective. What earlier could escape the eye of a human, now becomes listed in a list of search results refined by category, keywords, periods.

Auxiliary sub-discipline, which probably more than others benefited from these new inventions, was genealogy. Pushed by development of electronic databases, genealogy relies currently on a variety of special genealogical software, which enable both researchers and those trying to trace the roots of his or her ancestors to speed up the whole process. If considered on the whole, advancement of electronic genealogy might become a subject of fundamental study.

Since the time when the Web appeared in visible form including images as part of hypertext document, numismatics, sphragistics, paleography and others entered into virtual methods of low-cost publishing of pictorial material. While not being listed, for example, in such universal collection of knowledge as "Encyclopædia Britannica" (Deluxe Edition CD-ROM 2002), such discipline as sphragistics (study of seals and signets) and archontology (study of high state offices) obtained a wider exposure thanks to the works of scholars and enthusiasts presented on the Internet.

A pair of very good examples how auxiliary disciplines of history become an object of public interest might be illustrated in the following examples. Even an occasional web surfer might get interested in the history of France if his browser takes him to Sigillum, a collection of French royal seals used in the Middle Ages. The appeal of visible information becomes even stronger if combined with analytical articles. For over the years, the Heraldica web site developed by François Velde, serves as a most important portal both for those having professional interest and mere curiosity. The collection of materials presented at this web site was about 600 different pages totaling 10Mb and 2100 images totaling 38Mb as of July 2002. Summarizing the development of his project, Velde writes that he "fired up Web server on December 1994; one of 10,000 at the time!" Incredible progress in adding material to the Internet resulted in building millions of web sites. A simple inquiry via Google for "heraldry" returns about 467,000 hits, while the Google Directory enlists 15692 web sites under "Science > Social Sciences > History", 6768 for archaeology and 6829 for genealogy.

As a result of this process, humanitarian disciplines including auxiliary disciplines of history as an object of this article achieved two important advantages instant availability of enormous amounts of virtual information and effective communication between the professionals from different academic fields accelerated by participation of millions of enthusiasts.

Continued in Part 2.