New Worlds for Old: To Conclude His Series on the Opportunities Offered to Historians by New Technology, Nick Poyntz Looks at How Recent Developments May Help to Bridge the Gap between Academic and Public History

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Digital history stands at a crossroads. Practitioners, whether programmers, archivists or bloggers, are still in a minority. It is not clear whether digital ways of working will become an everyday part of a historian's skills, or the preserve of a small band of experts. The fate of digital history will depend on how key aspects of it, many of which are currently in flux or only just beginning, develop in the future.

One of digital history's early promises was that it could expose the past to a much wider audience, building bridges between academic and popular history. Parts of this optimistic vision have been fulfilled. Social media such as blogs allow historians to connect with readers across the world and digital versions of sources, such as …