Historical Research and Digital History or How Much History is there in Digital History?

Abstract

The article discusses the book by H. Salmi "What is digital history?". It is the first monograph that attempts to systematize many digital history issues from the viewpoint of a historian and culture researcher. While evaluating the conceptual problems of the relationship between digital history and digital humanities as well as digital history and historical science, the author considers Salmi’s historiographic review, reference apparatus and representativeness of Internet resources links. The content of the monograph is analyzed through the prism of the national school of quantitative history experience and from the standpoint of the national model of historical information science. The performed analysis allows the author to conclude that H. Salmi reasonably emphasizes the great “disciplinarity” of digital history, its ties with the subject area of historical science. The author of the book does not ignore quantitative methods either.  His idea of the proximity of textuality and visuality seems to be interesting as well.At the same time, H. Salmi's monograph (traditionally for digital humanities) simplifies rather complex process of mathematization and informatization of humanitarian research in the second half of the 20th century. It seems that when describing the digital past, excessive attention is paid to technological progress while methods and technologies of digital data processing are relatively less in the focus.It can be concluded that the information support of historical studies can give digital history the necessary integrity and indicate a promising vector of its development.