The past was analog. The future is digital. Tomorrow’s historians will glory in a largely digital historical record, which will transform the way they research, present, and even preserve the past. But what can today’s historians do with the massive analog historical record of the past millennia?

• Up until now we have primarily focused on the digitization of texts. Nearly everyone in class has proclaimed the virtues of increased accessibility, the democratization of the web, and the manipulability of sources. Yet this will not be the case for everything. Archaeology, for example, will likely never become as heavily digitized as journals and other first person texts we historians love so much. Both in practical terms (you can’t dig for ancient ruins with a computer monitor) and in terms of quality, “analog history” has it’s merits when out in the field. Many objects can only be fully appreciated when being seen, even if it’s in a museum. This includes artwork (from stone age beads to impressionism), bones, pottery, byproducts of industry, swords, suits of armor, musket balls, etc. The level of detail that you can see in these is important. If it is allowed, being able to feel them can have quite an impact. For example, the weight of a musket or a sword, or the subtlty of the brush strokes in a painting. Much of the texture that exists in these objects can be described, but only by seeing it in person can you fully appreciate it.
• With that being said, there are some good things the digital revolution can assist with. For example, archaeologist can use computers to recreated a 3D scale model of Rome, which can help people understand the scale of the city.

But with 24 bits , you would have millions of colors at your disposal and could thus better approximate, though never fully match, the rich rainbow hues of Monet’s Water Lilies.

• This is precisely the point I was making.

What about handwritten notes? Novelist Nicholson Baker blasted libraries for digitizing (and then disposing of) their card catalogs, thereby losing valuable information in the knowing marginalia scribbled over the years

• This is a good point. Imagine if we didn’t have Da Vinci’s original journals. Some of his most compelling inventions and observations were small, crude drawings or scribbled notes on the margins of a page discussing or describing seemingly more important topics.

So, why not just stick to page images? As mere visual representations of text, page images cannot be searched or manipulated in the same ways as machine-readable text. A student looking for Truman’s views on the Japanese and the atomic bomb in a series of page images from his diary would need to read every page, just as with the analog originals.

• I’d hope that one day software would be released that would allow for searching through page images. If computers can learn to recognize faces, finger prints, etc. they should be able to learn to recognize hand written letters and words.