Although I am not as experienced as some in the world of digital history, as a grad student in both history and information science with a concentration in archives, I have had trouble grappling with the concept of provenance and original order within digital collections. Thanks to the amazing accessibility the web offers, students and researchers (especially us historians) will often be looking at images and documents far out of the context (and order) that they are situated in within the safety of a physical archives. With this change in presentation of records and documents and focus from a collection as a whole to single, free-standing documents, the digitization of collections has prompted the questions: Is there room for provenance and original order in the digital world? I would like to see a session that addresses the changes collections go through when digitized and placed on the internet, and what that means for provenance and original order. Most especially, I hope to discuss how researchers and archivists alike (in their respective manners) should/can adapt to this new(er) challenge.
