Working group on history and IT
The Working Group on History and EDV eV (AGE) is a registered association that has set itself the task of promoting the use of EDP as a means of research and teaching in history . The association, based in Bochum, is also the German branch of the International Association for History and Computing (I-AHC).
history
As the PC became more widespread in the humanities as well, historians from various universities and scientific institutes in Germany joined forces at the beginning of the 1990s to initially develop criteria for a historical IT system that primarily focused on quantitative methods. It quickly became clear that in view of the possibilities of IT use, for example image processing, which were already emerging at that time, pure IT alone would not be sufficient. So it was decided to set up a working group that would consider as many fields as possible of the use of electronic data processing in historical studies. The use of EDP in research and teaching in the humanities should be encouraged and critically reflected in all its facets. At a workshop “Databases in History” held on March 28, 1993 by the University of Bremen, a call was finally made for the establishment of a national, registered association for history and EDP, since similar associations already existed in all neighboring countries and became “Association of History and Computing ”(AHC). Until then, the connection between IT and history in Germany was established exclusively by the “Quantum” association and the historical social research magazine , with the quantifying history being the focus almost without exception.
Based on this impulse, the Working Group on History and EDV eV (AGE eV) was founded on November 6, 1993 at the Institute for European History in Mainz. The association expressly did not want to appear as a competitor to "Quantum", but rather to be a forum for exchange for an ever larger circle of historians who did not want to limit themselves to the use of word processing and almost inevitably to problems when using more demanding, subject-specific applications bumped. The founding members were: Ulrike Albrecht, Jürgen Seele, Klaus-Peter Busche, Clemens Dillmann, Andreas Kunz, Ralph Ponemereo, Dieter Schott and Wolfgang Spickermann .
The newly founded Working Group on History and EDV (AGE) registered association with the Bochum register of associations under 14 VR 2783 as a non-profit organization. V. and subsequently German National Branch of the AHC. In 1994 the AGE had 35 members, today it has more than 100 members. The first annual conference took place from 23-25. March 1994 at the Society for Scientific Data Processing in Göttingen. Since then, workshops and conferences have followed annually, most of which have been held in November for several years.
Since 2017, the board has consisted of Leif Scheuermann (1st chairman), Johannes Ibel (2nd chairman), Patrick Reinhard (treasurer), Ingo Stoffel (secretary) and Wolfgang Spickermann (assessor) as well as Maximilian Kalus, Jörn Kobes and Krešimir Matijević (co-opted Assessor).
tasks
The Working Group on History and EDV sees itself as an association to promote the use of EDP as a means of research and teaching in the historical sciences.
Among other things, the following serve to achieve the goals:
- Organization of conferences and lectures (at least one conference with workshop takes place every year)
- Publication of scientific publications
- Information service for members
- Coordination of IT-supported projects in research and teaching
- Cooperation with organizations with the same or similar goals
Cooperations
There are still closer relationships with the Working Group for Quantification and Methods in Historical and Social Science Research (QUANTUM) at the Center for Historical Social Research (ZHSF / GESIS) at the University of Cologne.
literature
- Working Group on History and EDV (Ed.): History and EDV: Problems and Progress - Problems with Progress? 1. Conference of the Working Group on History and EDV 1994 in Göttingen. Bochum 1997.
- Martin Fell, Wolfgang Spickermann , Lothar Wierschowski (Eds.): Machina computatoria. For the application of EDP in the ancient sciences (= computers and antiquity. Volume 4). St. Katharinen 1997.
- Manfred Hainzmann, Christoph Schäfer (ed.): Old history and new media (= computer and antiquity. Volume 5). St. Catherine's 2000.
- Klaus Freitag, Kai Ruffing (Ed.): Contributions to e-learning and geo-information in the historical sciences (= treatises of the working group on history and EDV. Volume 1). St. Katharinen 2005.
- Jörn Kobes, Kai Ruffing , Wolfgang Spickermann (Eds.): 20 Years Working Group on History and EDP (= Treatises of the Working Group on History and EDV. Volume 2). Gutenberg 2013.