Many of the archivists in this weeks reading asked
themselves how the archives affect historians. As a historian-in-training, I
admire the desire from one professional discipline to consider changing their
methods in order to benefit another. I also wonder if historians would ever do
the same. Do historians, who rely on archives for a great majority of their
research, consider the big picture about the archives that they use? Should
they?
When historians do research they want to make sure that
their interpretations add to the existing historiography of a subject. Duff,
Craig, and Cherry’s study asked historians how they became aware of and located
primary sources, with archivists, finding aids, and footnotes being most
popular. (Duff, Craig, and Cherry, 13-14) From my research experience, I have
most often become aware of sources through footnotes and colleagues. While this
allows me to read a primary source firsthand, it also means that I may be
missing out on archives collections that may have value to my topic just
because they were not used in past historians’ work.
Mary Pugh urged archivists to be reflexive about the
assumptions they make and suggested that subject fields could be a great way to
make archives more accessible. (Pugh, 42) Pugh’s conclusions are relevant to
digital archives today. The ability to connect collections by subject could
urge historians to try new collections that they possibly would not have found
otherwise. Like archivists thinking about access, I feel like historians should
think about the way that digital tools can expand their audience. This type of
access to historical research involves the historian stepping outside of familiar
historiographical conversations and also acknowledging that history is a
collaborative process despite how solitary the historian in the archives may
seem.
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