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Historians and Their Information Sources Historians and Their Information Sources Margaret Stieg Dalton and Laurie Charnigo This article reports on a survey of historians and a citation analysis un- dertaken to revisit the questions treated in Margaret F. Stieg’s 1981 article published in College & Research Libraries. It examines which materials historians consider to be the most important and how they discover them. Their attitudes toward and use of electronic materials were also studied. Many characteristics of historians’ information needs and use have not changed in a generation: informal means of discovery like book reviews and browsing remain important, as does the need for comprehensive searches. Print continues to be the principal format. What has changed is that the advent of electronic resources has increased historians’ use of catalogs and indexes in their efforts to identify appropriate primary and secondary sources of information. n 1750, Lord Chesterfield thousands of lile scraps of information.”2 dismissed history as “only In the course of their research, historians a confused heap of facts,” use sources of information that include unless there were maps and “government and institutional records, chronologies at hand to organize it; in newspapers and other periodicals, pho- 1980, the historian John Cannon assigned tographs, interviews, films, and unpub- the sense-making role to the historian. To lished manuscripts such as personal Cannon, the historian was “essentially a diaries and leers.” These materials are bringer of order to the past, a perceiver of the raw materials of research, the primary paerns.” What had taken place between sources. To enrich analysis and interpre- those two statements was the evolution tation, they seek secondary sources that of a new cra—that of the professional are the writings of other historians and historian.1 of scholars in other disciplines, especially The business of the historian is to “re- in the social sciences, that offer theories search, analyze, and interpret the past,” and insights to illuminate the object of or as one historian has described it, “It’s study. Evidence plus interpretation are the collecting of data, it’s the collating the substance of historical study.3 of data, it’s thinking about it, piecing it It is no coincidence that historians have together, trying to extract meaning from been prominent in the development of it and trying to establish paerns out of research libraries; Justin Winsor, librarian Margaret Stieg Dalton is a Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama; e-mail: [email protected]. Laurie Charnigo is an Education Librarian in the Houston Cole Library at Jacksonville State University; e-mail: [email protected]. 400 Historians and Their Information Sources 401 of Harvard from 1877 to 1897, is only the 278 (27%) usable surveys were returned, best known. As their interests expanded of which 184 (66%) were by mail and 94 beyond political history to encompass (33%) were online. In October 2003, a economic, social, and cultural interests, follow-up survey of seven open-ended from concentration on leaders to include questions was sent to sixty-six respon- ordinary citizens of every race, color, dents to the March survey who had ex- creed, and gender, and from the United pressed their willingness to be contacted States and Western Europe to the entire if the authors had further questions (see globe, historians pressed consistently for Appendix B). Exactly half of the sixty-six ever more comprehensive research col- responded; many thoughtful, insightful lections. The redefinition of acceptable answers were obtained. sources to legitimize those that present “Information sources” is a term that popular culture expanded their informa- means different things to different tion needs still further. Diffuse (some people. Librarians usually use it to sig- exasperated collection development of- nify the bridges that get scholars to the ficers would add insatiable) is the only sources of the primary and secondary adequate description of the information material they need for research, whether needs of historians.4 those bridges are in print, electronic, or This study, a sequel to the study pub- human form. Historians sometimes use lished in 1981 by Margaret F. Stieg on the the term in the same sense but also may information needs of historians, examines use it to mean the primary and second- the information sources used by histori- ary material that is the raw material of ans to identify material for both research their research. The format of the survey and teaching.5 It addresses the sources was designed to accommodate both in- historians consider important, how they terpretations, and the results reflect this locate them, and what their preferences definitional variation. and priorities are. Particular aention is To obtain complementary information, paid to the role of electronic resources. citations in books and articles were ana- A transformation in how information is lyzed. Because what people do oen fails delivered to scholars has taken place in to match what they say—a behavior pat- the past twenty years, and the information tern to which historians were considered available has changed in both character unlikely to be an exception—perception and quantity. How have the practices of and reality can be two different things. historians changed? If, for example, historians assert that At the beginning of March 2003, a six- audiovisual materials are very important page survey, accompanied by a personal to their work but never cite them, the con- leer, was sent to a random sample of 986 trast has to raise doubts about the value historians chosen from history depart- of the assertion. Two separate sets of data ments of universities in the United States were created, one based on fiy citations classified by the Carnegie Classification randomly selected from each of five books of Institutions of Higher Education as and five journals clustered around the doctoral/research universities—extensive year 2001 and the other selected from five (see Appendix A). The survey also was books and five journals clustered around available online. Three weeks aer the 1975. The books selected for analysis initial mailing, an e-mail that included were chosen from among those awarded the link to the online survey was sent in prizes by the American Historical As- the hope of increasing response. Atotal of sociation on the assumption that these 402 College & Research Libraries September 2004 books represented the profession’s idea forty-five Ph.D. history students in rela- of excellence. The five journals were tion to information events. Delgadillo and those journals of historical scholarship Lynch also studied history graduate stu- that had the highest impact factor in the dents, paying particular aention to the ISI rankings. Each data set included the similarities and differences between their author, brief title, date of publication, information-seeking behavior and that of language, type of publication, and LC established scholars. Duff and Johnson’s number of every bibliographic reference focus was on the search for information in the citations.6 within archives and Hernon’s on the use of government publications by histori- The Literature of Information Seeking ans. Green’s article aempted to test the At the time of the Stieg study on the effectiveness of following up citations in information needs of historians, studies footnotes by generating twelve questions of information behavior were relatively in the humanities, four of which had some infrequent. They have since become so historical element, and then comparing common that they are now a “flood.” aempts to identify seed documents by Donald Case estimates the number of searching bibliographic sources and us- publications on the subject of informa- ing footnotes.8 tion behavior at more than ten thousand Pertinent studies that emphasize what in the 1990s alone. This literature can be historians do rather than the how and categorized into studies that look at the why can be divided into those that, like use of channels and sources of informa- Stieg’s 1981 study, look at information use tion, studies of the seeking of information by individual scholars broadly and those and the encounter with information by that focus on a particular aspect or type the individual, and studies of the inter- of information use. In only a few cases is pretation and meaning that individuals the population in these “what” studies derive from information. It can be divided limited to historians; more frequently, on the basis of the population studied, the historians are one of the groups of schol- research method employed, and the type ars in studies that look at the informa- of information sought. In addition, the tion paerns of social scientists and/or corpus includes efforts to develop models, humanists.9 Such studies include the theories, and paradigms of information pioneering work done at Bath University behavior.7 under the leadership of Maurice Line on Studies that take historians as their the information needs of social scientists, population and that emphasize how and work that included some areas of history, why they seek the information they do and the Sheffield studies of the informa- include those of Peter Hernon, Donald tion needs of humanists, which included O. Case (1991), Charles Cole, Roberto historians. Susan S. Guest studied the Delgadillo and Beverly P. Lynch, Rebecca use of bibliographic tools by humanities Green, and Wendy M. Duff and Catherine faculty members at SUNY Albany and A. Johnson. Case’s study described how Rebecca Watson-Boone summarized the twenty American historians chose their picture of the humanist as of the mid- research topics and how they progressed 1990s. Constance C. Gould’s assessment, as they sought information in libraries based on interviews with scholars in the and archives, recorded and organized humanities, is a straightforward summary their findings, and wrote about their sub- of the types of sources need by historians.
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