Our Criminal Past: Digitisation, Social Media and Crime History
London Metropolitan Archives, 17th May 2013
The first event of new AHRC network ‘Our Criminal Past: Caring for the Future’ drew a diverse audience of archivists, academics, and librarians to London Metropolitan Archives to assess the impact of digitisation and social media on criminal history and consider the implications of using these tools for future research and dissemination.
The event was structured by three strands: session one explored the on-going digitisation of penal histories, session two considered the uses of social media for historians of crime, and the final session took the form of a roundtable where we debated the key issues that had been raised throughout the day.
The event was extremely productive in fostering debate about the future of crime history following the digital turn, and two key issues dominated the discussion overall: firstly, that collaboration between Universities, museums, libraries and archives is crucial to the future success of the field, and secondly, the advantages and limitations that digital resources and social media can bring to the history of crime.
This article was previously published on the Our Criminal Past website in 2013