A recent article in the New York Times talks about some recent grants by the Levy Foundation to private organisations or institutions to digitize their archives. It emphasizes the positive, that such digitization is unearthing works which were previously uncataloged.
If you are a researcher that had worked with both paper and digital archives, what are your thoughts? Is it possible to conduct comprehensive research from digital archives alone, or must one imperatively see the paper in person?
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All students and faculty of the Department of International History are welcome to post items and questions related to history and politics in current events, research topics, research methods, study-abroad experiences, life at HEID...
Tous les étudiants et corps enseignant de la section d'histoire internationale sont bienvenus pour signaler des articles et les questions liées à l'histoire et à la politique dans les évènements actuels, les domaines de recherche, méthodes de recherches, les échanges académiques, la vie à HEID…
Tous les étudiants et corps enseignant de la section d'histoire internationale sont bienvenus pour signaler des articles et les questions liées à l'histoire et à la politique dans les évènements actuels, les domaines de recherche, méthodes de recherches, les échanges académiques, la vie à HEID…
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1 comment:
I think that depends. If you are looking for a specific article, digitised archives are great. However, if you are "fishing", i.e. you are not looking for anything specific but for what the general opinion was on a specific aspect, it's still better to have the actual paper copy of a newspaper. The same applies if you just want to gather some general information on an issue. Like this you can find articles that you wouldn't have found in the digitised archives (for instance because the headline didn't match with your search criteria. As with most things in history, there is no real straightforward answer...
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