Follow-up to “On scholarly communication …”
July 7, 2007 at 11:33 pm | In Instruction, history, libraries, scholarly communication | 2 Comments[more scribblings]
In the “old days,” bibliography (of the enumerative kind) was important because of scarcity: researchers needed to know where things were because it was difficult to find things (articles, books, whatever). Nowadays, there’s not really information scarcity to the same degree? There’s too much information, so historians just need to know what’s really good/important. Thus, a different kind of bibliography is necessary – more things like the AHA Guide to Historical Literature (which is now getting a bit too old): an annotated list of the most important scholarship. Citation indexes become more important, as do review essays (doing cited reference searches and finding review essays need to become more central to advanced library instruction). Using wikis to create online, collaborative guides to historical literature (e.g., Mason Historiographiki). This is something I’ve advocated for before.
2 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
That wiki is great! What a wonderful idea, not just for grad students studying for a comprehensive exam, but for historians to keep up with literature outside of their specific field. This could be a great boon to community college teachers who have to go quite far afield from their research subjects. Thank you.
Comment by Clio Bluestocking — July 10, 2007 #
Tag! You’re it!
I’ve chosen your site to be “it” in a virtual game of history blog tag.
For more information, please visit the World History Blog at http://www.worldhistoryblog.com/2007/07/tagged-by-jennie.html.
Miland Brown
Comment by Miland Brown — July 11, 2007 #