Digitality and museal landscape – a contradiction? Critical thoughts on digitization in the museum

When visiting a museum, one expects to encounter and interact with historical objects, artefacts and their materiality. Especially after the turn of the millennium, museums increasingly introduced (and embraced) new digital components. Today, audio guides, for example, have become indispensable for many institutions. According to the National Museum of American History, it has more than 1.7 million objects “and a 22,000 linear feet of archival documents”[i] in its collection. The Deutsches Historisches Museum (German History Museum) in Berlin has also more than 60,000 historical documents and more than 900 movie clips from the past.[ii] These are too many historical objects and media to exhibit on the walls of museums. Therefore, museums have been discussing and experimenting with ways of using digital technology to make objects from their archives and storage facilities more visible. Would you expect that there will be a next level of presenting museal artefacts digitally to visitors?



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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1732

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How to deal with digital sources as a history student – workshop report part 1

Many graduate history students will be familiar with the moment (or phase) in their studies when they have to make a decision about the topic of their final thesis. Some students may already know the topic early on. Others may take a few productive detours on their way to developing their final thesis topic. I am a history student from Germany who is working on the final thesis and in the latter category. With this blog contribution, I would like to share insights into the perspective of me as a historian at the end of my graduate academic education, whose final thesis research also marked my first foray into the field of digital history.


At the beginning of my Master’s degree program at Bielefeld University, Germany, I was sure that I wanted to do research on a different topic than my Bachelor thesis. World War I, albeit an exceptionally cruel war, has always been fascinating to me. I was especially interested in researching the fate of soldiers with neurotic/ psychiatric symptoms during or after their military service (today it would be called PTSD) Therefore, my general topic was clear. What was less clear was my exact research question and, related to this, the accessibility of sources.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1709

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LeMo Lebendiges Museum Online – A reliable source for an introduction to modern German History

As a German high school or college student, you will be familiar with the scenario: A homework assignment requires you to locate reliable information about William II, theEmperor of the German Empire, and the deadline is tomorrow.  It’s late in the evening, every library is closed, and the only tool left is the World Wide Web.  If this sounds familiar to you, don’t panic. Take a moment and let me take you on a digital journey to Berlin, Germany!

The Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM), physically located in Berlin, Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (HdG) and the German federal archives, the Bundesarchiv,  provide a virtual museum called LeMo, Lebendiges Museum Online. [i] It represents a historically reliable introduction in modern German History and is the biggest virtual museum in the digital landscape in German speaking countries.

LeMo addresses everyone who is interested in German History beginning in 1800 until the present day. It is a virtual museum for everyone – K-12 students, college and university students, adults, including senior citizens.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1699

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Haller ZeitRäume – a virtual museum


The Teutoburger Forest is rich on having myths and essays about Hermann the German. [i] According to history Hermann, in Latin called Arminius, has fought the battle of Varus against the Roman Empire successfully 9 years AD. [ii]  Because of the crushing defeat of three Roman legions the Empire has sacrificed the further extension of the Roman regions – it remained in German hand.[iii]

In this heart of German history the city Halle is located and the home of approximately 21.700 residents.[iv] This medium-sized city has grown substantially in recent years. The established fashion industry with its most popular brand “Gerry Weber” and the nearby highway have contributed to the growing population. Halle is particularly well-known for its history of transportation and the tennis stadium OWL Arena. Once a year, the best tennis professionals from all over the world visit Halle to participate in the big tournament.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1685

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Conference report: Transatlantic Perspectives on Digital Hermeneutics, October 10-12, 2019, GHI

“On 10-12 October 2019, the international conference ‘Digital Hermeneutics: from Research to Dissemination’ took place at the German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington DC. The conference aimed to critically reflect on the radical impact of the digital turn on all stages of historical research, including archiving, research, analysis, interpretation and dissemination on a transatlantic level.” Read the full report by Tim Van Der Heijden, Juliane Tatarinov, and Gerben Zaagsma, C2DH, posted on November 5, 2019.

Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1661

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The Nuremberg Trials Project: Providing History for All

The GHI benefits tremendously from the help of its many talented interns. The following post was written by GHDI project intern Isabella Auerbach, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, who is majoring in European history. — Editorial note, Href

The Nuremberg Trials Project, an ongoing digitization effort by the Harvard Law School Library (HLSL), is an open-access initiative aimed at transporting the documents relating to the 1945 to 1949 tribunals to an online platform. The project, first conceived in the late 1990s, features a highly organized website that provides ample introductory information regarding the Nuremberg trials, along with the trial documents themselves.

A document provided by the Nuremberg Trials Project, containing excerpts to be used in GHDI Volume 7

I was fortunate enough to speak with Paul Deschner, the project manager for the Nuremberg Trials Project and an Application Developer at the library’s Innovation Lab, who was first brought on to the project due to his professional background in software engineering. Deschner discussed both the history and potential future of this undertaking, emphasizing the ongoing significance of these documents, which were produced over seventy years ago.

History of the Documents

Documents relating to the Nuremberg trials were published almost immediately after the conclusion of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), the earliest of the thirteen trials.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1606

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The Bauhaus Bookshelf: A Gateway to Original Bauhaus Sources and Publications

The bauhaus bookshelf is a bilingual (German-English) online resource created by Andrea Riegel, a partner at the Düsseldorf-based communication design agency Riegel+Reichenthaler. Riegel also created  Design is fine. History is mine, a popular blog on design and art history. The bauhaus bookshelf, a labor of love launched in 2019, combines access to reproductions of original Bauhaus publications with a timeline, excerpts, photographs, and other contextual information. The download is for personal, non-commercial use only. While many events and publications in 2019 celebrate the Bauhaus centennial, the bauhaus bookshelf is the only comprehensive online gateway to original Bauhaus publications and sources.

Href interviewed Andrea Riegel, the virtual bookshelf’s creator and curator.

What inspired you to develop the bilingual bauhaus bookshelf?

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1489

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Bauhaus Wissen für alle: das virtuelle Bauhaus Bücherregal

Das bauhaus bookshelf ist ein zweisprachiges virtuelles Bücherregal, das von Andrea Riegel konzipiert und umgesetzt wurde. Andrea Riegel, Partnerin beim Düsseldorfer Gestaltungsbüro Riegel und Reichenthaler, hat schon Design is Fine, History is Mine, entwickelt, eine beliebte Plattform zur Design-und Kunstgeschichte. Andrea Riegel hat das bauhaus bookshelf in ihrer Freizeit entwickelt und 2019 Online gestellt. Das sehr schön gestaltete virtuelle Bücheregal verbindet den Zugang zu digitalisierten Originalquellen mit einer Zeitleiste, Auszügen, Fotos und anderen Informationen über den historischen Kontext des Materials. Die meisten der Reproduktionen wurden von  Bibliotheken, Archiven und Museen über Creative Commons Lizenzen (CC-BY-SA-4.0) zur Verfügung gestellt und Nutzer können das Material über die Seite für die private Nutzung herunterladen. Zwar erscheinen zum Bauhausjubiläum in diesem Jahr eine Reihe neuer Publikationen und es finden sehr viele Veranstaltungen statt, aber das bauhaus bookshelf ist die einzige Webseite, die Nutzerinnen einen übersichtlichen Zugang zu Originalquellen und Publikationen eröffnet.

Interview mit Andrea Riegel

Was hat Sie dazu inspiriert, das zweisprachige Bauhaus bookshelf zu entwickeln?



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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1563

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Happy International Women’s Day!

Today is a perfect occasion to feature the Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv, the digital German women’s archives, as well as Atria, the institute on gender equality and women’s history.

The DDF, launched last year, is a new portal dedicated to making selected historical sources documenting the history of women’s movements in (mostly) German speaking countries available online to a broad public audience. The portal features thematic essays that provide context for selected documents, as well as biographical essays on key actors, for example on Louise Otto Peters or Clara Zetkin. The portal combines digitized sources from over 40 archives, libraries and other memory institutions that are collecting resources documenting the history of women’s and lesbian movements.

The currently 46 essays focus on analyzing specific sources, such as Claudia Schoppmann’s essay about Anna Elisabet Weirauch’s novel trilogy Der Skorpion, or cover broader thematic areas based on a range of sources, such as on the influence of the 19th century bourgeois women’s movement on the professionalization of social work.

Particularly relevant for today is Kerstin Wolff’s essay on the history of the International Women’s Day, which was initiated by the International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen in 1910, and first celebrated in Denmark, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Switzerland and the United States. Wolff highlights the role of Clara Zetkin und Käte Duncker in mobilizing support for International Women’s Day as part of the campaign for women’s suffrage.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1469

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Collaborative Description: Opening Access to the Georgian Papers

Launched by Her Majesty The Queen in 2015, the Georgian Papers Programme (GPP) is an interdisciplinary partnership to conserve, digitise and catalogue 425,000 pages of material held by the Royal Archives and Royal Library relating to the Georgian period, 1714–1837, encompassing the reigns of the five Hanoverian kings (George I, George II, George III, George IV, and William IV). The papers include private, official, and financial material pertaining to the monarchs and their families, papers of various courtiers and ministers, and in addition records which relate to the running of the Georgian royal households. The papers are invaluable in all areas of eighteenth-century study, for they shed light on matters of political, social, economic and military history, as well as international relations and medical knowledge in the Georgian period.

Round Tower, Windsor Castle
Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018
Round Tower, Windsor Castle
Royal Collection Trust /
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018

The Georgian Papers Programme is expected to take ten years to complete, with the core cataloguing work taking place within the walls of Windsor Castle, in the Royal Archives and Royal Library. The Programme’s principal partners are the Royal Archives and Royal Collection Trust (RCT), King’s College London (the academic lead), the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (lead American partner), and the College of William & Mary.[1] The Programme has taken an ambitious approach to developing an integrated workflow that simultaneously supports access, cataloguing and dissemination of digital facsimiles and transcriptions to create a virtuous feedback loop between the expertise of archivists and academics. The Programme has two ultimate ambitions: to optimise public, freely available access supported by enhanced metadata and interpretation; and, to provide a collaborative workspace in which scholars may explore, interrogate and manipulate data using a variety of online tools.



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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1356

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