My Views on Digital Research

In his essay, Googling the Victorians, Patrick Leahy outlines a few of the virtues of online research. While he does not think that it totally wipes out the necessity of library research, he does think that it has made cross referencing historical artifacts easier and faster than ever. It is also allowing people to connect not just with information but with other people. Eventually, Leahy sees the day when all offline content will be “lost” to future researchers simply because it isn’t available online and researchers will not have the skills, patience, or resolve to track it down.

I know in my own research experience, combing through books, microfilm, and journals in the library is a very time consuming task that requires the patience of Job when you can’t find what you want to find right away. During my undergraduate years I was thankfully a communications major and didn’t have to do much library research. However, I do remember doing research for my public speaking class as a freshman. This was in 1993 and the internet had not yet made its appearance at Miami University. I remember I did a speech on euthanasia. We had a primitive search engine in the library that would comb through all the journals and look up the word euthanasia. It may have even provided a summary of article, but my memory is a little vague on that. I do remember then having to go downstairs and comb through the indexed journals or microfilm and then see if the article was really worth it. I had to do the same thing with a term paper that I wrote about Shakespeare during my senior year in high school. That was frustrating in that many of the articles I wanted to use the local college library did not carry. By the time I graduated from Miami in 1997, we had the internet, but again it was in a text heavy format and I didn’t really do research with it. In 2003 I enrolled at Westminster College in Pennsylvania to get my secondary education certification in History. The first paper I wrote was about fasting in the Eastern Orthodox Church. All of my research was done using the internet and finding articles on the net. I then did additional projects where I utilized database searches, combing through journals, microfilm (still), and books. Using a database like JSTOR makes researching so much easier. As I said, most colleges don’t carry every  scholarly journal. If they do, they may not have the issue that you need. With JSTOR or other databases, you get instant access to thousands of works. It is easier to search for articles that pertain to your subject. I agree with Leahy that the internet has made contacting people much easier and this in turn has brought people together to paint a more complete picture of the historical fact/person/event in question.

Today I would most likely begin my search on Wikipedia to get the basics of whatever my subject is. I would then google the subject to see what comes up. Next, it would be on to a database like JSTOR to discover what articles exist. Finally, I would head to the campus library to see what books have been written and any other related information they might have. In 1993, books about my topic would be my first stop in the research process, then followed by journals. In 2007, combing through books is much farther down on the list.  Using search engines to narrow a search has become the common first step in any research project.  It does not mean that you eliminate the need to sit in the library and go through numerous sources.  It does mean that you spend less time on fruitless pursuits.

This summer my Father and I went to the National Archives to look up information about our family and how they came to America and when. We first looked at microfilm of registration cards that my great-grandfather would have filled out when he came through the port of Philadelphia. The problem with those cards is that the information is vague and the government recorder did not always record the correct information. In many instances it just says Germany for home address. We then turned to the geneaology database that they had and that was much better. We viewed census information on-line and actually got more information about both sides of the family. Still it took us all day and we still have more information to gather.

However, if the Archives hadn’t digitized the census records we might still be looking through hundreds of reels of microfilm without luck.

Digital Research is a valuable new tool for the historian. As we progress in this new digital age, new techniques and approaches will be found and refined, which will make research easier and less time consuming. This can only help historians.