Archivists as Peers in Digital Public History

Abstract

In the last three decades the web has enabled new digital means for his-torians to reach broader publics and audiences. Over that same period of time, ar-chives and archivists have engaged in a parallel digital transformation. Archivesare more engaged in community work through digital means and have developedmethods to care for and make available digital material. This chapter explores themajor convergence between the needs and practices of public historians and archiv-ists. Historians’new forms of scholarship increasingly function as forms of knowl-edge infrastructure. Archivists work on systems for enabling access to collectionsare themselves anchored in longstanding commitments to infrastructure for en-abling the use of records. In this context, we argue for the need for historians toengage more with archivists as peers in advancing both theory and method in digi-tal public history.