Promoting the digital literacy of undergraduate historians using digitised historic newspapers

Abstract

Mass digitisation offers new possibilities for learning and teaching in higher education by making primary sources such as newspapers much more accessible for teaching. However, as Hawkins & Gildart (2010) report, in practice promoting the digital literacy of historians can be very challenging. However, the more recent experience of the author using Chronicling America for undergraduate Level 6 teaching suggests that students engage more enthusiastically with digitised historic newspapers and have a more positive experience when in particular searching functionality (i.e. the functionality of the search engine) is designed to optimise user engagement.