Web History

The World Wide Web's illusion of collapsing time and space is suggested as one reason its history has not been as prominent as that of other technological innovations of the past century. Here scholars of communication, information, media, history, and a number of other disciplines explore examples and processes of documenting its progression in sections on web history and the object of study, web cultures, web industries and media institutions, and preserving and presenting. Among specific topics are object-oriented web historiography, historizing webcam culture, Finland as a case study of analyzing and comparing the histories of web strategies of major media companies, the dual history of online newspapers and newspapers online and web archiving in research and historical global collaboratories. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Editor: Niels Brugger is Associate Professor at The Centre for Internet Research, Aarhus University, Denmark. His primary research interest is website history, and in 2007 he started writing a history of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s website entitled The History of dr.dk, 1996-2006. He has published a number of articles, monographs, and edited books, including Archiving Websites: General Considerations and Strategies (2005) and Media History: Theories, Methods, Analysis (ed. with S. Kolstrup, 2002).