Archival Divides and Foreign Countries? Historians, Archivists, Information-Seeking, and Technology: Retrospect and Prospect

What is it about?

Rumors of the deterioration of the historian-archivist relationship have been exaggerated. This article first traces the evolving historian-archivist bond over the last eight decades. Second, it discusses the methods scholars have employed in studying historians, namely bibliometrics, questionnaires, interviews, and a combination. Third, it describes the results and implications of those studies in three areas: locating sources, using primary and nontextual materials, and overall information-seeking and use. Fourth, it considers the evolving and still ambivalent role of information technology in historians’ research. Finally, it suggests possibilities for future research, highlighting digital history, personal archiving, Web 2.0, democratization and public history, crowdsourcing and citizen archivists, digital curation, activist archivists and social justice, diversity and the changing demographics of the archival profession, and education and training. Though historians and archivists may not always have used their relationship to Clio’s maximum advantage, digital technology and an improved knowledge of historians’ work practices based on investigations by archival scholars engender new and better possibilities for collaboration.

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