Ranke.2 just released a new lesson on Wikipedia as a source of historical knowledge focussing on ways of applying digital source criticism. The author, Petros Apostolopoulos, is a historian specialized on the production of historical knowledge by the Wikipedian community and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the C²DH.
A QUICK VIEW ON THE NEW LESSON
The lesson invites historians to adapt their critical approach to Wikipedia as a born-digital source for historical research. More specifically, it suggests ways to apply digital source criticism to Wikipedia’s infrastructure and content and to explore potential uses of Wikipedia for historians. Following the usual structure of Ranke.2, the lesson proposes a short introductory video, realized in collaboration with Gorille, and a set of (five) assignments that require no specific technical skills. The lesson can serve as a gentle introduction to born-digital sources for apprentice historians or as a critical initiation to Wikipedia for a broader public.
Translations of the lesson in German and in French are currently under preparation and should be released later in the autumn. The translated lessons will be enriched with localized reading and viewing suggestions in the target languages in addition to the ones proposed in the initial version in English. The lesson is also the fifth of the platform to integrate DARIAH Campus.
The lesson was reviewed by Marijke Huisman, Utrecht University, and Alexandre Hocquet, Université de Lorraine. It also received internal feedback by Valérie Schafer, Benoit Majerus, and Stefan Krebs. Sofia Papastamkou acted as an editor of the lesson, and collaborated closely with Sarah Cooper, who ensured the copyediting, Frédéric Reis, and who provided technical support. Andreas Fickers was also involved in various phases prior to the lessson's publication.
... AND SOME NEWS OF RANKE.2
This resource is the first to be published after a break of almost three years in the active publishing activity of Ranke.2, a project initially released in 2018. Ranke.2's most recent lessons were either published or essentially prepared in 2021. In the meantime, as a result of career evolutions and administrative imperatives, the project team was partly renewed. An effort to complete the multilingual ambition of the project was undertaken, focussing on the translation of all the contents in all three languages proposed by Ranke.2. Furthemore, a process of peer review was instored to anticipate the new lessons, and relevant guidelines for authors and reviewers were introduced. These novelties correspond to real needs of the project, and owe a lot to the current postdoctoral researcher of the project having formerly served in the editorial team of Programming Historian. The existing lessons of Ranke.2 were also enriched with metadata that indexed the research activities (TaDiRAH), but also the types of sources and the research phases of a historical research according to specially conceived (in-house) controlled vocabularies. The aim was to enable the introduction of classification and search fonctionalities that correspond to the needs of historians. Moreover, the project was presented in two international conferences (2024 OPERAS conference, Digital Humanities in the Northern and Baltic countries 8th conference, IFPH 2024) and various scientific events. The project team also organized a workshop in 2023 to enhance synergies with cognate publishing initiatives (Programming Historian, OpenMethods, Rzine, DARIAH Campus). Last but not least, the preparation of new lessons was launched in collaboration with researchers inside and outside the C²DH.
The recently published lesson is the first output of these activities, and more lessons are already in the pipeline. Ranke.2 is open to suggestions for new lessons and we are looking forward to discuss fresh ideas or receive feedback on the reuse of our existing resources!
