Multidisciplinary Research on Family Historians: Framing Current Challenges in Cultural Heritage

This literature review offers a continuum of arguments for family historians being a vital part of the digital heritage practices found in the combined ecosystem of libraries, archives and the digital humanities. In digital heritage, there is an increased focus on public participation efforts such as crowdsourcing and educational programmes, emphasising representation, inclusivity and diversity. This chapter concludes that family historians are an important resource and that collaboration with them holds the potential to advance these efforts. We discuss how existing and future research into family historians might provide answers to some of the communicative, ethical, legal and technical issues of digital heritage. This discussion focuses on collection practices, the development of digital tools and platforms, digitisation and transcription, negotiating conflicting heritage and the question of copyright and data protection. We found that research into family historians exists in a variety of disciplines such as history, sociology and information science. Four theoretical and methodological approaches were identified: the historical approach, the practice approach, the affective approach, and the critical approach. We identified more literature going back further than expected. However, research on family historians is heterogeneous and disparate; it has no core, no firm definitions and no academic superstructure. Therefore, we suggest the establishment of an interdisciplinary field focusing on family historians.