Hyperhistory: networked hypermedia and historical understanding in the Encyclopedia of Melbourne online project

Abstract

The Encyclopedia of Melbourne is currently being developed in an interactive online format, concerned with how to portray a city not just as a fixed and historicised place but as a complex organism, showing its development in space and time and the shifting understandings of a sense of place developed by those who live and work in it. By crafting the pathways by which information is accessible, and by shaping the layers of content and interpretation, the online Encyclopedia hopes to engender in individual users critical skills and ways of thinking that historians consider valuable in understanding the past and our place in the contemporary world. While historians have perceived the potential of digital media, progress has been constrained by intellectual conservatism, modest financial support, and various shortcomings of processes for the creation and dissemination of historical information in digital form. This paper will review ways in which historians have addressed the city in digital form, elaborate the goals of the Encyclopedia of Melbourne online project and report on its progress, and address the issue of whether networked hypermedia can be a means of facilitating critical perspectives on the past, or whether it simply complements traditional modes of disseminating historical knowledge.