Defending the digital: Awareness of digital selectivity in historical research practice

Coburn, Jon

doi:10.1177/0961000620918647

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…If chosen carefully, digital methods enable us to make links between collections in a way that makes it possible to explore a much wider variety of heritage materials in a structured way. Coburn points out that there is concern about the selectivity of digitized archives and the naiveté of (other) historians in dealing with them (Coburn, 2021). He argues that in his experience historians are actually well aware of the pitfalls both of digital selectivity and the loss of context that occurs when archival items are located by search engines.…”

Section: Historians and The Use Of Digital Collectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Migrant visibility: Digitization and heritage policies

Faassen¹,

Hoekstra²

2022

Front. Hum. Dyn.

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Digitization and digital methods have had a big impact on migration history and history in general. The dispersed and fragmented nature of migration heritage that involves at least two countries and many cultural heritage institutions make it clear that migration history can be much improved by using digital means to connect collections. This makes it possible to overcome the biases that policy have introduced in private and public collections alike by selection and perspective. Digital methods are not immune to these biases and may even introduce new distortions because they often change heritage contextualizations. In this article, Van Faassen and Hoekstra argue that therefore they should be embedded in source criticism methodology. They use the example of post-world War II Dutch-Australian emigration to show how a migrant registration system can be used as a structural device to connect migrant heritage. They use methods from computer vision to assess the information distribution of the registration system. Together, connecting collections and information assessments give an encompassing view of the migrant visibility and invisibility in the heritage collections and perspectives for scholars to become aware of heritage biases.

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Section: Historians and The Use Of Digital Collectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Migrant visibility: Digitization and heritage policies

Faassen¹,

Hoekstra²

2022

Front. Hum. Dyn.

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“…Precisely such factors make digital selectivity something new. However, the associated problems can be solved by raising awareness of the benefits of digitization (Coburn 2021).…”

Section: The Role Of Archives In Overcoming Modern Challenges Of the ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Providing public access to archival materials and the problem of fact‐checking in the post‐truth era

Wang

2022

Social Science Quarterly

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This article aims to study the modern system of archives development in China and to determine a promising model of its adaptation to global challenges in the post-truth era. The research methodology is based on a mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis of statistical data that show the development dynamics of archives system in China concerning public access and the formation of modern views on the problem of fact-checking, as well as their reliability in the new historical post-truth era. For effective verification of archival facts, researchers developed an adaptation model of China's archives to global challenges of information reliability in the post-truth era. It is based on the idea of using artificial intelligence and the expert opinion of archivists. The practical use of the proposed model will contribute to improving the efficiency of archives, as well as the development of digital technologies in this area.

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“…This may explain humanities researchers' preference for browsing over searching and, when searching, for recall over precision in search results (Dalton & Charnigo, 2004). In digital information environments, a preference for browsing may also reflect an awareness of digital selectivity and concern that they are not seeing everything on a topic (Coburn, 2020; Sinn & Soares, 2014).…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

From Information to Knowledge Creation in the Archive: Observing Humanities Researchers' Information Activities

Leigh

Makri

Taylor

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Tech

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As primary sources, archival records are a unique information source at the very heart of humanities research. However, how humanities researchers move from information to knowledge creation by making meaning from archival records has not been the focus of previous empirical research. This is surprising, as creating new knowledge through (re)interpretation of records is a core motivation and outcome of humanities research; as representations of historical and social occurrences, archival records rely on researchers' interpretation of content, context, and structure to establish an 'archival' meaning of the record, before applying this meaning within their own work. Therefore, constructing knowledge from archival materials necessitates a dual process of knowledge creation to create novel insights from a hybrid interpretation of archival meaning and the researcher's own interests. This paper presents findings from a naturalistic empirical observation of 11 humanities researchers engaging in research at a national archive, centring on key information activities that facilitate knowledge creation from archival records: Scanning, Relating, Capturing and Organising. Through these activities, scholars integrate their research aims and objectives with archival meaning to generate new insights. Deeper understanding of the nature of knowledge creation in archives can benefit archivists, archive users and systems designers alike.

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Defending the digital: Awareness of digital selectivity in historical research practice

Cited by 8 publications

References 44 publications

Migrant visibility: Digitization and heritage policies

Migrant visibility: Digitization and heritage policies

Providing public access to archival materials and the problem of fact‐checking in the post‐truth era

From Information to Knowledge Creation in the Archive: Observing Humanities Researchers' Information Activities

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