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Twentieth Century British History 2009 20(3):396-414; doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwp036
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© The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Digital World and the Future of Historical Research1

Edward Hampshire* and Valerie Johnson

The National Archives

*Edward.Hampshire{at}nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk


  Abstract

Historians need to recognize the profound changes in the records currently being created by businesses, government and private individuals, and the implications this will have on the way they undertake research with these records in the future. An electronic revolution has already occurred over the last decade in access to records, but the records accessed either remained non-electronic in themselves, or were surrogates of non-electronic originals. The new challenge relates to the ‘born-digital’ emails, word processed documents, spreadsheets and databases that will only ever exist electronically. This will affect the application of legislation, the selection and destruction of records, their preservation, their access and even the nature and meaning of the veracity of the record. Historians need not only to recognize how this affects them, but also to become involved in these developments.


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