The Digital Future of Architectural History

In creating associated descriptive metadata, in tagging building entries to describe their materials, types, and, perhaps most especially, their styles, the author of metadata is practicing the historian’s craft and engaging in the historian’s stock in trade. "Name it, then we’ll know what it is," Reyner Banham suggested at the end of “The Great Gizmo.” We can name it metadata creation, but we already know what it is: architectural history. For several years Gabrielle Esperdy has been part of a team working on the development of SAH Archipedia — an online encyclopedia of American architecture sponsored by the Society of Architectural Historians. Here she explores the critical challenge of creating structural and descriptive metadata for the new resource — and argues that the digital platform has the potential "not only to publish scholarship but to produce it."