Abstract
In the last three decades the web has enabled new digital means for historians to reach broader publics and audiences. Over that same period of time, archives and archivists have engaged in a parallel digital transformation. Archives are more engaged in community work through digital means and have developed methods to care for and make available digital material. This chapter explores the major convergence between the needs and practices of public historians and archivists. Historians’ new forms of scholarship increasingly function as forms of knowledge infrastructure. Archivists work on systems for enabling access to collections are themselves anchored in longstanding commitments to infrastructure for enabling the use of records. In this context, we argue for the need for historians to engage more with archivists as peers in advancing both theory and method in digital public history.
