Digital History and Trove Data Guide at AHA Conference 2024

The 43rd Australian Historical Association (AHA) Conference was held at Flinders University, Adelaide from 1 to 4 July 2024. The AHA Conference’s theme, “Home Truths,” prompted participants to think about the link between ‘truth’ and the digital tools we use to explore historical data.

The ARDC’s Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Indigenous Research Data Commons (HASS and Indigenous RDC) sponsored the Digital History stream of the conference, which aimed to showcase research that draws insights from vast online collections held by cultural institutions and universities. Digital history research helps us communicate uncertainty and provide context through digital methods such as data visualisation. The Digital History stream explored modern and traditional techniques for documenting and appropriately sharing methods for recording and analysing data.

The ARDC’s HASS and Indigenous RDC provides researchers with digital tools, methods and services to enable data-driven research in humanities, arts, social sciences, and Indigenous research.

Understanding Trove Workshop

The ARDC supported free registration for a pre-conference workshop on the ARDC’s Trove Data Guide, “Understanding Trove”, with Tim Sherratt on 1 July. The workshop was also the launch of the Trove Data Guide, which Tim has developed as part of the ARDC’s Community Data Lab.

The Trove Data Guide helps researchers navigate the National Library of Australia’s Trove database and understand how to integrate it within their research projects. The Trove Data Guide was created as part of the ARDC Community Data Lab, an activity of the HASS and Indigenous RDC.

“Thanks to everyone who came to the workshop. It was great to have so much interest in developing a critical understanding of Trove and thinking about new research uses for Trove data,” said Tim.

The room was at capacity for the workshop with about 50 people in attendance, including conference participants and participants who came just for the workshop. All of the Digital History stream events were well received and at full capacity with room capacities between 20 to 40 people – attendees happily sat on the floor in several sessions! A program is available on the conference website.

The ARDC also sponsored the conference attendance of 5 researchers:

• Elizabeth Walsh, University of Tasmania
• Dr Nicholas Pitt, University of NSW
• Cate Cleo Alexander, University of Toronto
• Dr Emily Fitzgerald, University of Melbourne
• Ashley Dennis-Henderson, University of Adelaide.

They all presented at the conference, and several were selected to participate in the final panel session about digital history research methods alongside senior HASS researchers. The panel session, titled “ARDC Forum: What digital tools do we need for historical research?”, was chaired by Owen O’Neil from the ARDC Community Data Lab. It revealed a growing interest in digital history research methods, including the HASS and Indigenous RDC, with participants showing interest in getting to know ARDC tools and services. This final session had excellent researcher engagement and participation, with most of the room participating in the discussion.

Next Steps

Learn more about the “Understanding Trove” workshop in this article by Tim Sherratt. You can also view Tim’s slides for the workshop, which includes a great list of resources and tools mentioned in the concluding panel session as well as noting bursary recipients, speakers and presentations in the Digital History stream.

Learn more about the digital research tools available in the ARDC Community Data Lab.

The ARDC is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) to support national digital research infrastructure for Australian researchers.