The Programming Historian
Yesterday Bill Turkel announced that The Programming Historian is now available. This is a book, but not as we know it. It’s published in the form of a website and is completely free to access. As the name suggests, it’s an introduction to computer programming aimed specifically at historians. The tutorials will get you doing useful things as soon as possible, even if you have no previous experience of programming. If you do know programming it’s also worth a look. I found lots of useful tips in it.
By enabling more historians to make better use of digital technology the book is helping to change the way that we do history. And it’s also helping to change the way that we present our research, because it’s a concrete example of the advantages of open access publishing on the web. This means a whole lot more than not having to pay to read it. Although the book has been published, it’s still a work in progress. New chapters will be added in future, and existing ones can be improved in response to feedback from readers. Any typos, factual errors or unclear sentences can all be corrected very easily. Comments from reviewers are displayed on accompanying discussion pages so you can see how the text developed and what people thought of it. The book can keep growing to meet the needs of digital historians: there doesn’t ever have to be a point when it’s finally finished like there is with a printed book.
Go and read it. Now.
Pingback by Early Modern Notes » New resources for making digital history — 10:27 pm, 5 May 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
[...] Bill Turkel (who I get to meet in July!), has published The Programming Historian as an open access e-book. (Gavin Robinson, who actually is a programming historian, recommends it.) [...]
Comment by William J. Turkel — 3:33 pm, 6 May 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
Thanks for the kind words, Gavin. What we’re really excited about is the community of programming historians… both those who have already come forward to help us get this off the ground, and those who will give it a try one day and get hooked :)
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 7:40 am, 7 May 2008 [permanent link to this comment]
That’s a great point. You don’t often get communities building up around printed books about history, although there is a Ronald Hutton fan group on LiveJournal. That’s got me thinking about why. It isn’t necessarily just about print vs web, because works of fiction often generate fan sites and communities on the web. It isn’t even necessarily about popularity: Terry Pratchet isn’t exactly as famous or mainstream as J K Rowling. The Gor novels are really obscure, but they’ve spawned a whole sub-culture on the web and in virtual worlds (although in that case maybe it’s down to the power of misogyny).