Today, three archivists (I was one) and three historians met to discuss what skills and resources were important when teaching a capstone history subject – not as part of a dedicated ‘digital humanities’ course, but as a necessary introduction to the digital aspects of their discipline. Here are some of the things we came up with.

Perhaps typically given archivists were involved, we talked about the need for a solid, clear and sustainable mental model for naming files, structuring digital records and controlling versions. This should be an easily implemented, systematic approach which is extensible and generalisable rather than project specific, and which is independent of particular software, systems or tools. Research data management skills like this are sometimes viewed as basic or self-evident, but I continue to be surprised at how few people do this well.

We talked about managing references. Bibliographies and lists of references are essential personal resources, but in an increasingly collaborative and open digital scholarly environment they should also be managed in a form which makes them machine readable. Store citations and references as fielded data. Use software such as Zotero or other tools (making sure you have an exit strategy in place). No more Word-based bibliographies which need to be parsed further down the track before they can be shared.

On citation – and one of my personal bugbears – cite what you see. Always. Without exception. I see too many lists of references in books, journal articles and on websites where the publications and archival sources cited give no indication as to whether a journal was viewed in hard-copy or online; or do not specify whether someone referred to a physical newspaper, or microfilm, or the National Library of Australia’s digitised newspapers, or another source.

Similarly, viewing a digitised archival record online as part of a published digital finding aid is not the same thing as viewing a physical record in a reading room. The informational content may be the same, but the citation required is different. I am sure the degree to which people rely on digital and digitised resources is significantly greater than is suggested by citations. This practice of unintentional concealment needs to change.

Furthermore, people need to be taught how to cite web pages and other online resources well, and how to use metadata (including in the page source) to construct an accurate reference to what they saw. And, when citing digital sources which are not inherently static, the responsibility for ensuring a copy of the content cited is preserved and retrievable often defaults to the researcher.

When working with archival resources, or published material – anything really – historians and other researchers need to know how to digitise effectively. We need to teach people to digitise records of all types in a way which keeps them contextualised, citable, tied to provenance, preservable, discoverable and more. And historians need to know how to deal with ‘born digital’ collections. To quote a colleague, when considering primary sources they need to know how to ‘open a digital box’ in the same way they are trained to open and work with a physical box of records.

We talked about some key resources. In Australia, start with Trove. Again, it seems self-evident for those who know and love Trove, but don’t assume people know. For content outside Australia, it’s worth checking out resources like DigitalNZ (New Zealand) the SNAC prototype (United States), Archives Hub (United Kingdom) and Europeana (Europe) to get a sense of the sorts of things available.

When looking to introduce historians to digital tools and their possibilities, start with Tim Sherratt’s Trove tools and others available via WraggeLabs Emporium. Track some trends in QueryPic and think about how to develop credible, evidence-based narratives around the results. (Beware spurious correlations!).

Look at some networks using SNAC’s radial graph demo, or visualise some Twitter networks using Mentionmapp. But don’t get too carried away. It’s true, networks (like bow ties) are cool. But in general we avoided talking about ‘cool stuff’ – fancy visualisation software, mapping tools, digital curation and exhibition software, database systems and more – not because these things aren’t useful or exciting, but because people need to learn some foundational ideas and skills first. Students need to know how to navigate, interrogate and cite digital resources, and how to manage and maintain their own digital research data, before being introduced to complex analytical techniques or multi-layered dissemination options.

That’s the selected highlights, though we covered a lot more. I’m interested in what others think. What basic digital techniques, skills and ideas should we be teaching to history students, or to any students for that matter?

And before I go, a plug for those interested in digital history, digital humanities and the contemporary challenges of teaching: coming up in October this year, THATCamp Melbourne 2014, Pedagogy, to be held at the University of Melbourne. Registration is open now. Find out more at http://www.2014.thatcampmelbourne.org/