David Boder: From Wire Recordings to Website

As historians, we are confronted with an abundance of data in digital form that can be searched, annotated, analysed, presented and reused with the help of a broad array of digital tools.

But what do we know about how digital technology affects the artefactual and informational value of a source?

When looking through the lens of source criticism to digitized and digital born sources, there are so many mediating processes going on before a source can appear on our screen that historians run the risk of getting detached from the original context of the source.

The basis of this lesson David Boder: From Wire Recordings to Website are the recordings that David Boder made in 1946 in order to preserve the history of the Holocaust. These recordings of interviews conducted with a wire recorder were made newly available when the interviews were digitised and published online in 2009.

This lesson includes animations, a quiz and assignments to test your understanding of the content.