Friday, September 12, 2014

Archives: Historians and the Archives


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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