This week's readings highlight the reluctance many professionals in the humanities still feel towards adopting new research methods prompted by the digital age despite the numerous solutions that have been developed to better navigate and make sense of the almost infinite number of sources readily available to anyone with a computer connection. For example, authors William Turkel, Kevin Kee and Spencer Roberts in their article "A Method for Navigating the Infinite Archive," offer a more contemporary approach to research, believing all information should initially be made digital and kept in a cloud. Then scholars should sort and manage this abundance of information (at least their citations) with the help of a database before sharing their work with others. Essentially these authors believe the systematic approach of compiling a literature review, formulating questions, embarking on archival work, field work or experimentation and finally summarizing one's results and conclusions in the form of a conference paper, journal article or longer publication is no longer a possibility due to the exponential amount of information being digitized or created in digital form.
One important question that arises from this set of readings is if these authors (surely among others) are offering solutions to today's research concerns and scholars like Ansley T. Erickson are writing articles that act as case studies that demonstrate the advantages and ease of using databases, such as File Maker Pro and Zotero, during the research process, why are professionals in the humanities still reluctant to accept such approaches, remain skeptical of online sources and believe teaching students how to incorporate such tools in their research is someone else's responsibility? The results of this reluctance are described in Charlotte Lydia Riley's article, "Beyond Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v: Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age." In her article Riley describes how students were often encouraged or required by their professors to use VLEs, email and JSTOR, but were often left without guidance on how to adequately use such resources or were actively discouraged from using other types of online resources. Furthermore, undergraduate students recalled avoiding online sources because they were unsure how to accurately reference them or felt that the presence of online citations would diminish their work in the eyes of their lecturers. Riley concludes her article by saying "ultimately, there should be no distinction for students or teachers between online and traditional historical sources; there should always be a distinction between reliable and unreliable historical sources." Her conclusion certainly relates back to Erickson's article when he mentions how academic subfields shape what we read and, in return, guide what research topics we purse. If students are ruling out digital sources in favor of traditional sources just to please their instructors, these students may be missing out on valuable information that could dramatically alter their research questions.
Turkel, Kee and Roberts attempt to identify some of the reasons why digital sources have not been so widely accepted in academia. They elaborate on the fear that embracing digital sources might lead students to only consult sources they can access from the comfort of their own bedrooms without consulting more obscure sources only found in hardcopy form in archives or libraries. These sources may be too fragile to digitize or perhaps other collections used more frequently are the ones designated to be digitized first. However, there must be other reasons behind such reluctance not mentioned within these readings. Is it possible professors still want to be known as an expert on a specific subject and fear the loss of recognition if they instead agree to a more collaborative effort to produce knowledge? Is it also possible many professionals cannot recognize the potential of what their projects could become if they embraced digital tools? In this week's readings we read how WASM and WASM International became more than just a database and journal with the help of Alexander Street Press and libraries buying subscriptions to their project after their initial grant money ran out, but one has to wonder how many projects built by enthusiastic teams must eventually be abandoned due to lack of funding. It is possible academics fear the risk involved in opening up their research to a team effort exploring newer, digital platforms and newer methodologies.