Phrasing history: Selecting sources in digital repositories

Abstract

In recent years, mass digitization has opened up voluminous text corpora to human interpretation. Full-text search lets historians now find new sources that can change their understanding of thoroughly studied historical episodes. At the same time, it forces scholars to access historical sources in a new way: through specific words. This article analyses the consequences of this new way of accessing sources and investigates which search technologies are best suited for historical source selection in digital repositories. It argues that to seize the opportunities that digitization offers, historians must refine their search technologies so that they are based on words but are less dependent on exact phraseology.

The Power of Place

“…The actors involved with the MRWS policy and the Partnership generated extensive docu-mentation, made publicly available in on-line repositories that were created at the time to provide the local public access to the process and today preserved as historical record. That we could 'follow the actors' through digital archives dedicated to the MRWS process saved us from having to devise on-line search strategies to locate widely dispersed documents (Huistra and Mellink, 2016). The key electronic archive for this study was created by the West Cumbria MRWS Partnership at the time as part of the commitment to transparency, it is left for posterity and public access at http://www.westcumbriamrws.org.uk/.…”

Risky business? Addressing the challenges of historical methods in the ‘digital age’

“…With this ease of discovery, however, comes new challenges that nurse historians must learn to navigate. The substantial volume of digital materials that are now available is seemlingly endless as a result of the progressive digitisation of analogue sources (e.g., newspapers, books, government records) and the proliferation of 'digitally-born' materials including emails, e-books, e-magazines, blogs, webpages, and social media outputs (Huistra & Mellink, 2016). The proliferation of primary and secondary sources that are now readily accessed makes it easier for the historian to stumble into rabbit-holes of unrelated or inconsequential information.…”

“…Despite the expanding possibilities for historical research, the emergence of 'big data' and digital research have created their own challenges and controversies (Cristianini, Lansdall-Welfare, & Dato, 2018;Drouin, 2014;Grossman, 2012). Concerns have been raised about: the legitimacy and quality of digital scholarship (Hitchcock, 2013;Huistra & Mellink, 2016;Knoblauch & Tomes, 2014); the ethics of digitisation (Moravec, 2017); the preservation and safeguarding of digitised sources (Gailey, 2012); the impact of digitisation on library and archive budgets (Moravec, 2017); the risk of decontextualising the analysis (Hitchcock, 2013;Putnam, 2016); the usability and reliability of analytical tools (Cristianini et al, 2018); and, whether this 'digital turn' is just a passing trend (Knoblauch & Tomes, 2014).…”

“…While many of these concerns are valid, the 'digital age' is not repealing. Rather than shying away from digital technologies, nurse historians -nurses who have formally studied historical method -need to be at the forefront of conversations about their use and impact on historical methods (Putnam, 2016, Grossman, 2012Hitchcock, 2013;Huistra & Mellink, 2016). Used correctly, such technologies can be an opportunity to address areas of methodological weakness (Knoblauch & Tomes, 2014).…”

Persepsi Peranan Murid terhadap Pembelajaran Berasaskan Dokumen dalam Mata Pelajaran Sejarah (Students’ Perceptions towards Their Roles in Document-based Lesson in History Subject)

“…Maka, pelaksanaan pembelajaran berasaskan dokumen dalam mata pelajaran sejarah membolehkan murid dapat meneroka sesuatu peristiwa sejarah dengan lebih mendalam melalui pentafsiran maklumat daripada sumber sejarah (Reisman & Fogo 2016;Reisman 2012;Hynd 1999;Newmann 2001;Rantala & Van den Berg 2015). dengan kemajuan teknologi, guru sejarah dapat mengakses pelbagai jenis sumber-sumber sejarah melalui laman web sejarah, portal arkib negara, muzium negara dan sebagainya untuk digunakan semasa proses pengajaran dan pembelajaran sejarah di dalam kelas (Breakstone & Smith 2013;Brown & dotson 2007;Huistra & Mellink 2016). Murid berpeluang untuk meneroka sejarah bagi meningkatkan pemahaman sejarah dan keintelektualan kognitif aras tinggi (Macedo-Rouetet al 2013;Merkt et al 2017).…”