"Connecting" to the Past

I'm currently working on transcribing and editing the diary of a First World War soldier. The entire process has been fascinating and a poignant experience of how the past can be so easily brought to life in the present. This is my first experience approaching a research project using digital resources to assist in the completion of my work, and it has yielded some pretty exciting results. I am working from the scanned images of a primary document, which allows me greater freedom with the document - I'm not confined to an archive and can use a pen if I want to! - without losing the critical feeling and experience of working with a genuine artifact. In addition to ensuring this wonderful document is preserved in the event something happens to the original, having the diary digitized also means I have been able to make my own copy.

Now that I've moved on to the editing (which includes adding footnotes and creating a glossary to establish context/location and explain some of the slang/terminology used by soldiers in the War), the internet has proven to be an invaluable resource. There are innumerable articles, books, and collections online that have made the answers and information I'm looking for available with ease and without cost. I've been able to cross-reference the information I've found in books with what I've found online to gain a more accurate perspective of this man's experience, and what of his story I need to help tell to make it relevant and understandable to a present-day reader.

I've also been able to find more out about who this man was because of the incredible volume of open source primary documents available online. At Library and Archives Canada, I was able to view and print his Attestation papers, which document the details of his enlistment and offer amazing insight into his personal situation as well as the tenure of the times. The most exciting thing however, happened a couple of weeks ago when I was reading an entry in his diary where he talks about being awarded a medal for what he did at Passchendaele. Ever the modest soldier, he doesn't provide any details about what he did in battle to receive this decoration, but this only incensed my curiousity. I googled his name and the type of medal he won and found myself at the Library and Archives UK site, where I was given the option of viewing the original record of his medal win for £2. After being tempted by this jackpot information find, it took little convincing to enter in my visa number. Within 30 seconds, I received an email thanking me for my support and containing the link to access my document for 52 days with the ability to print it out.

Being able to see these original documents without having to leave the house or the country for that matter, is such an amazing thing. The technology available today can so effectively be used to complement or dare I say supplement, traditional methods of research. It gives historians access to things that would otherwise be unreachable and thus lost as sources for our work. To experience all these different research methods come together has been, for lack of a better word, really cool. Digitization has made possible a final product that would otherwise have been impossible for me to create. Through the internet, the present has actually become one of history's greatest allies.