Talk 11: Reproducibility in the Collection of Historical Primary Sources
Channel: Librarians Building Momentum for Reproducibility
Date: 03/02/2020

Title: Reproducibility in the Collection of Historical Primary Sources
Speakers: Benjamin Wiggins
Abstract: In a 2016 essay for The American Historical Review, Lara Putnam wrote that "Source digitization has transformed historians' practice…. For the first time, historians can find without knowing where to look. As a result, at an unprecedented rate we are finding connections in unexpected places: powering publication on mobile ideas and international audiences; circuits, networks, and border-crossing flows. Technology has exploded the scope and speed of discovery." As primary sources become more accessible for historians and we become able to consult more material from more archives than our predecessors, the process of data collection in historical research risks becoming even more opaque than it was for our predecessors. Historians—members of a discipline with allegiances to both the humanities and social sciences—have largely ignored calls for reproducibility. However, I contend that at least facets of reproducible research practices are increasingly necessary for historians in order to address the unprecedented access to and volume of sources that we encounter in what Roy Rosenzweig has termed our "age of abundance." In this presentation, I will outline the typical practices of primary-source data collection in the discipline of history. I will then explore which practices from the reproducible research community hold promise for the field, with a special focus on systematizing how historians consult archival materials, reporting "negative" results, and recording the uneven terrain of archival systems as archives and special collections slowly but surely digitize their materials. I invite the community to help me consider what other promising practices for reproducibility in research can and should guide the future of studying the past.

For the 2020 conference, "Librarians Building Momentum for Reproducibility"