Historians' use of digital archival collections: The web, historical scholarship, and archival research
Historians' use of digital archival collections: The web, historical scholarship, and archival research
复制标题
历史学家对数字档案馆藏的使用：网络、历史学术和档案研究
DOI：
10.1002/asi.23091
复制
发表时间：
2014
影响因子：
3.5
通讯作者：
Nicholas Soares
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Donghee Sinn;Nicholas Soares
本文报告了一项关于历史学家使用数字档案收集研究文章的经验的研究，这些研究文章发表在《美国历史评论》上。我们联系了这些作者，询问他们关于数字档案收藏的研究过程，以及他们对数字档案收藏对历史研究有用性的看法。本研究从使用数字馆藏进行研究项目的历史学家的角度，对数字一手资料的“用途”和“影响”进行了现实的描绘。研究结果表明，由于种种原因，数字档案收藏是历史研究的重要资料来源。然而，数字资料作为历史资源所拥有的权威数量存在争议。许多历史学家更喜欢原始形式的文献，但随着历史学家越来越多地参考数字格式，他们的偏好开始发生变化。随着网络发展成为一个重要的研究平台，历史学家采用了不同的研究模式，其中一种是使用随机的网络搜索来寻找数字原始资料。历史学家对数字档案收藏“使用”的理解揭示了一系列活动，包括发现、理解、解释和引用数字信息。这项研究的历史学家同时进行多项研究或为一本书进行更大的项目，他们对数字馆藏的每一次搜索都有可能为几项研究提供有用的结果。
This article reports a research study about historians' experiences using digital archival collections for research articles that they published in the American Historical Review. We contacted these authors to ask about their research processes, with regard to digital archival collections, and their perceptions of the usefulness of digital archival collections to historical research. This study presents a realistic portrayal of the “uses” and “impacts” of digital primary sources from the perspectives of historians who use digital collections for their research projects. The findings from this study indicate that digital archival collections are important source materials for historical studies for various reasons. However, the amount of authority digital materials possess as historical resources was disputed. Many historians preferred documents in their original form, but historians' preferences began to change as they increasingly consulted digital formats. As the web has developed into an important research platform, historians have adopted different research patterns, one of which is using random web searches to find digital primary sources. Historians' understandings of the “use” of digital archival collections revealed a spectrum of activities including finding, understanding, interpreting, and citing digital information. Historians in this study worked concurrently on multiple studies or on a larger project for a book, and each of their searches for digital collections had the potential to provide them with useful results for several research studies.