Liberal arts and digital humanities both place an emphasis on the disciplines of humanities as a field. They have somewhat similar objectives in regard to the content that they focus on, but have different methods; digital humanities looks at how to apply these disciplines to the digital sphere, including digitizing historical documents and other texts. This also includes digitizing and publishing of oral interviews, relating to oral history, a significant part of our COPLAC project.
Liberal arts and digital humanities overlap significantly, sharing the same objectives and overall concepts, while digital humanities translates these concepts through digital tools to places like the Internet. The connections between these two support my research process for the COPLAC digital project because the methods make oral history much more accessible and easy to document. The ability to record and digitize interviews has significantly benefitted the field of oral history, and add a level of understand to the individual experiences and perspectives throughout history.
History, as a core element of humanities, oral history in particular, is most supported by the digitizing of the concepts of humanities by relating larger events to individual experiences. In a sense, oral history would not be what it is if not for the ability to digitize and publish sound recordings of interviews. The listener not only is able to understand the unique perspective and recollection of a historical event, they are also able to better observe and evaluate the event itself.
