nkelber

"I worry that anything digital is ephemeral..." This is a central issue for the digital humanities, which considers how to preserve our digital cultural heritage for the future. I think we can all agree that software is an important part of history. In the future, it will be increasingly important for historians to be able to use and read legacy format files and software. We need to be able to read digital documents of the past, whether they are from literary authors, government officials, or news outlets.

I disagree. Much of the digital humanities is actually of direct descent from bibliography and textual criticism. I would argue, in fact, that the field of book history owes a great deal TO digital humanities which exposed the nature of the book as a writing technology with unique textual affordances. A large amount of digital humanities work is centered on how to capture "bookness" in the digital realm including digital editions of just about any literary text, the Textual Encoding Initiative, etc.