Digitization has usually been considered a facilitator of what has been called “big” history. While digital history projects increasingly make good and sensitive use of individual and granular records and use them to bring human complexity into a larger analysis, the digitization of published material and archives have mostly been discussed by historians in aggregate: they are valued chiefly for their ability to give us “big data” about phenomena in the past. Yet for those interested in questions and methodologies of microhistory, biographical history, history from below, and other kinds of what we might call ‘small” history, the digitization of archives and individual records is an equally transformative development. This article will examine the way that digitization has changed how historians discover, concatenate and communicate small stories in their narratives and arguments. I will consider the practice and the ethics of telling and digitizing individual histories and suggest some different ways of dealing with the new boundaries—and boundlessness—that the “mass digitized turn” throws up, particularly for historians working in the period after 1800. Finally, amidst an increased emphasis on digitization and big data in the field of history, I want to assert the continuing power of all kinds of small histories to explain the past and to connect it to our present, and ourselves.

中文翻译：

---

埃米特的英寸：数字时代的小历史

数字化通常被认为是所谓“大”历史的推动者。虽然数字历史项目越来越多地善用和敏感地使用个人和细粒度的记录，并使用它们将人类的复杂性带入更大的分析中，但历史学家主要讨论已出版材料和档案的数字化：它们的价值主要是因为它们的能力为我们提供有关过去现象的“大数据”。然而，对于那些对微观历史、传记历史、自下而上的历史以及我们可能称之为“小”历史的其他类型的问题和方法感兴趣的人来说，档案和个人记录的数字化同样是一个变革性的发展。本文将研究数字化改变历史学家发现方式的方式，在他们的叙述和论点中串联和交流小故事。我将考虑讲述和数字化个人历史的实践和伦理，并提出一些不同的方法来处理“大规模数字化转向”引发的新边界和无限，特别是对于 1800 年之后工作的历史学家。最后。在历史领域越来越重视数字化和大数据的情况下，我想断言各种小历史的持续力量来解释过去并将其与我们的现在和我们自己联系起来。