What have historians been arguing about... The role of digital archives

Archives and the use of primary sources sit at the heart of working or studying within the discipline of history. In the twentieth century, digital humanities, and more specifically digital history, emerged as a discipline or sub-discipline alongside the development of computerised library systems, though its roots lie in the older human desire to compile and order information. While Crymble has written about the complexity of identifying the origin of computing in historical research, it is often deemed to have been established following the development of Web 2.0 and the widening availability of access to personal computers in the early 2000s. The creation of digitised archives and materials was initially celebrated as a great opportunity for the discipline of history. However, the emergence of the digital archive and digitised sources have had consequences that were not predicted and their role has been debated...