Teaching Students How to Research the Past: Historians and Librarians in the Digital Age

Abstract

IN 2003, A TeAm of HISToRIANS invited their peers to reflect on the long-term effects of new information and communication technologies: “Computers and their digital environments continue to enter the history profession although their benefits are not clear.... After almost a decade of web browsing and more than thirty years of computing, historians need to address what we are doing in this medium and what we ought to be doing.”1 The reflection was based on a recently completed survey that identified historians’ main concerns. Respondents wondered whether the new computer technologies would “transform the nature and practice of history” or simply facilitate access to resources while research and teaching practices remained fundamentally the same. Opinions were equally divided on this point. Respondents also expressed ambivalent views on the effects of the new technologies on their teaching. While they praised the democratizing effect of the web and digital media, they were rather pessimistic about their students’ ability to use them responsibly, and worried about the decline in their library and research skills.2 Such ambivalence undoubtedly persists among historians today. They have yet to understand the full potential of the new information technologies and to assess their benefits and drawbacks. The myriad ways in which these technologies are used in research, teaching, learning, and everyday life make this a daunting task. In this article, I would like to examine some issues linked to their impact on teaching. 3 In the 2003 survey, respondents