Tonight my department at Curtin University, Information Studies, is teaming up with the History Council of Western Australia to present a debate on the topic “Digitsation is the death of history”. Registrations are through Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com.au/event/7267153251

Speakers for the affirmative are:

• Lise Summers who is a lecturer in our department, the president of the History Council and she works at the State Records Office.
• Meg Travers who is a research student of 20th century electronic music at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and also works at the State Records Office of WA.

Speakers for the negative are:

• Andrew Bowman is an independent researcher who has been involved in a number of digitisation projects, including a very successful one for the Carnamah Historical Society.
• David Fricker who is Director-General of the National Archives of Australia

The event will be adjudicated by Bobbie Oliver who lectures in history at Curtin University.

The event is also an icebreaker for the start of semester for our students, with a wine and  cheese for all attendees at 6pm before the debate which runs from 6:30pm until 8pm. There has been so much interest that we have had to change the venue to accommodate the numbers. We have also had several requests to livestream or record the event. In the interests of encouraging the speakers to be candid and robust in what they say, we decided not to do this. The irony, given the title of the debate, is not lost on us. The speakers have given permission for people to blog and tweet about the event, so watch for the hashtag #digideath13 . I am general bossy boots and MCing, but if I have time to tweet, I will be doing so from @infoventurer tonight.