While digitalization provides people with more opportunities each passing day, historians also benefit from this technological development that opens new horizons by shedding light on the past.
This is true in Turkey, where such technology has been instrumental in the ongoing digitalization efforts of numerous archives and libraries, giving researchers and students of Ottoman and Turkish studies from all over the world access to a vast volume of invaluable primary sources.
Endeavors like these, which fall in the category of digital humanities, serve as a bridge between the humanities and digital technologies, said Fatma Aladağ, a researcher at Leipzig University in Germany and founder of the Digital Ottoman Studies website.
Digital supplanting conventional?
Noting concerns that digital technologies are "taking over" academia, Aladağ underlined that the digital humanities have no such aim, but could rather be thought of as part of humankind's inevitable adaptation to the expanding role of technology in daily life.
"Can one expect our careers, research methods or the institutions where we work to not be affected by these technological developments? Of course not," she argued.
According to Aladağ, as humankind's cultural heritage becomes increasingly digital, the nature of knowledge as well as each individual's relationship with society is in flux.
It is at this juncture that the digital humanities play a critical role in understanding these changes, she underlined, adding that, by facilitating open access to sources that may have otherwise been out of reach for many researchers, digitalization paves the way for interdisciplinary work.
"Many different disciplines such as history, linguistics, literature, computer engineering and architecture, along with their characteristic methodologies and sources, can be part of a digital humanities project," she said.
Applications in Ottoman-Turkish studies
Having worked for years in her field, Aladağ pointed out the sheer volume of Ottoman archives in many languages, spanning diverse ethnicities and geographical regions, that makes the utilization of technology even more important for study.
With its deep-rooted record-keeping tradition, the Ottoman Empire left a vast collection of archival documents, hundreds of thousands of manuscripts and registers on population, tax, land and religious endowments, she said.
"If we can transform this immense volume of Ottoman archives into big data, it would be much easier to classify it according to different eras, regions and topics.
"Thus, through machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), still untapped parts of the archive will be available for researchers and students."
Digital Ottoman Studies
The Digital Ottoman Studies website, which Aladağ created, contains numerous projects, publications and databases of maps, manuscripts, photographs and dictionaries.
She also noted that the website had been recommended to researchers by academics at many prominent world universities including Harvard, Cornell and Michigan.
On the state of digitalization in Turkey, Aladağ praised ongoing efforts by archives and libraries to scan documents and make them accessible online.
However, digitalization is more than scanning source material, she said, adding that researchers should be encouraged to use spatial and network analysis, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications in their work.
Universities, and especially their humanities department, should step up efforts to train students in line with the latest currents and developments in the digital humanities field to remain relevant and in demand, Aladağ asserted.
"Therefore, students become not just consumers of information, but producers, too."