Early Modern Notes

A mildly diverting post at Crooked Timber today, on William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal, noting

the introduction where he extols the merits of archival research, as against the kind of “subaltern history” that pads out existing secondary sources with large dollops of theory…

Now, it’s not my field (and I recognise the rhetorical get-out-of-jail-free card in the words ‘the kind of’), but this resembles a not uncommon move amongst archive-based historians: what you might call the ‘my sources were harder than your sources’ gambit. (Think of Monty Python’s four Yorkshiremen sketch, but with historians.)

Points are awarded according to a number of factors, in particular:

a) the difficulties involved in getting to the archive;

b) the obstacles to getting into the archive;

c) the physical condition and accessibility of the documents;

d) the obscurity of the language or script of the documents;

e) the illegibility of the handwriting;

f) the monstrousness of the archivists;*

g) the discomfort levels of the environment, including the chairs, room temperature, lighting, etc;

h) the awfulness of the canteen food.

The higher your Archival Endurance Points score, the more rights you acquire to condescend to your printed-sources brethren, and to disdain Theory.

What are the equivalents in other disciplines? They must have their own pissing contests, surely?

…

*NB that I’m not suggesting archivists generally are monsters. But you don’t get AEPs for the nice ones.

Dear readers, there will be some slightly more substantial posts here again one day in the not too distant future. In the meantime, I’m thinking about wikis again (and using this as an excuse to blog at work, heh).

We hope to set up some kind of community site, most probably a wiki, to accompany the relaunched Old Bailey Proceedings. It’s intended to be a space for researchers to share notes, linkages, etc. User-generated content, social networking, all very Web2.0, I know.

So do you know of sites that I could be looking at for ideas? One model we already have is The National Archives’ Your Archives, which seems to be coming along quite nicely. There is also Footnote, “a place where original historical documents are combined with social networking in order to create a truly unique experience involving the stories of our past”, but this requires a subscription to access most of the material. Bah to that.

Suggestions gratefully received!

In my working capacity as the Oracle of the OBP Online, I was recently asked a question that went something like this (details changed):

I’m confused by all these results. If Robert Scott was hanged in 1765, who are all these other Robert Scotts? And some of them are after 1765?!

This is at first glance a slightly daft question - well, obviously, they’re all different people but with the same name, aren’t they? (The question also contains a common misconception about the source, which I’ll come back to in a moment.) And yet, at the same time, it’s not really silly at all.

They might not all be different people. In our database of the names in the OBP there are 142 instances of the name ‘Robert Scott’ (including slight spelling variations). (Mind you, this is nothing compared to a name like John Smith, which occurs more than 4000 times.) How do you decide whether one Robert Scott is the same person as another Robert Scott, or someone else altogether?

And this is without even starting on the problem that a significant proportion of those appearing at the Old Bailey were known by more than one name, and some had a string of aliases and nicknames. Oh, and the reporters (or printers…) sometimes got people’s names - even those of defendants - just plain wrong.

In other words, identifying the relationship between names and people in early modern sources is often extremely tricky, and the question ‘who the hell are all these Robert Scotts?’ isn’t so daft. Which is just as well, really, because this is precisely the kind of problem that’ll be keeping me in work for the next couple of years.

This isn’t just of concern to family historians trying to work out whether someone is really their ancestor or not. Most historians have to make these linkages, ask these questions, at some time or another in the course of their research. Most of us do it on a small scale by hand; a more select group do it on the large scale with computers and algorithms. I’ll hopefully post about both of these later. But in both cases, the process relies on weighing up and ranking probabilities.

Sometimes the answer, either way, is so obvious that the question doesn’t even need to be consciously formed. But at the other end of the scale, there are times when it’s impossible ever to know because you simply don’t have enough information, especially if a name is very common and you have very little contextual information besides the name itself. And I’m sure other historians will have encountered those frustrating borderline cases: if those documents are all referring to the same person, you have a great story. But are you certain enough to rest a serious argument on that identification?

It’s true, for example, that death is a clincher: if you know this Robert Scott died in 1765, then he can’t be the same person as that Robert Scott mentioned in records as alive and well in 1775. (At the other end of the life-cycle, birth is equally conclusive, of course.)

But are you sure he died?

The OBP doesn’t in fact tell you that Robert was hanged (this is the misconception I mentioned above); like archival records from early modern criminal courts, it normally records only the sentence that was passed. But many people sentenced to death in the 18th century were reprieved or pardoned. Unless you have corroborating evidence that the execution was carried out (this does occasionally appear in OBP), you need to be cautious.

So a Robert Scott in the database after 1765 could be the same guy after all. Told you it was tricky.

(To be continued…)

A few links (because the place just isn’t the same without them):

The linkage of historical records by man and computer (JSTOR subscription required)
A discourse on method, historical knowledge and information technology
Reconstructing historical communities
AHDS guide

(X-posted at The Long Eighteenth.)

Does anyone still think that wiki = Wikipedia? I fear they do and it’s one of the downsides of Wikipedia’s mindboggling success. Truth is that Wikipedia is just one particular instance of a wiki, and the software has far wider uses than for online encyclopedias (although it is cool for that too).

Wikis and blogs share certain characteristics, particularly in terms of ease of use, encouraging participation and dialogue. But wikis and blogs have different strengths.

Remember: the default format for blog software is linear and dominated by chronology; that can be subverted with some blogging software, but it takes effort. A wiki is different. It doesn’t scroll, it branches. You can just keep creating one page from within another, thanks to the simplicity of wiki markup. No HTML to learn.

If you need to produce detailed documentation for (and of) a project and you want to encourage communication and input from the workers on the project, straight-out-of-the-box wiki software offers many benefits.

The projects we’re working on involve people based at two different universities (Sheffield and Hertfordshire) and working from home around the country. We can’t just meet up in the office each day to discuss queries and resolve problems. Moreover, the nature of the main task at this phase of the project creates a particular challenge: there are nine people marking up the texts with XML code and we need them all to be as consistent in their decision-making as possible. Our wiki has proved a tremendous resource for this process.

Our first wiki, for this project, includes plenty of ‘official’ how-to documentation (which the workers were specifically asked not to touch, and they’ve been very well-behaved about that, but it would have been quite easy to put extra passwords on those specific pages to restrict editing privileges).

This was infinitely better than, say, distributing a Word document to the staff, for a number of reasons. Firstly, that particular document is a monstrous carbuncle, not far off 50 pages, full of opaque section cross-references, utterly unwieldy and horrible to navigate. Wikification enabled it to be broken into short, multiply interlinked sections that are easy to move around and use, and to keep up to date. And, for the members of the project who prefer to work from a hard copy of the instructions, there turned out to be an awesome little plugin that would turn connected wiki pages into a single, nicely styled HTML file that can be printed out.

The other main use so far is for more informal feedback from the scattered project staff. We set up an area of the wiki for them to post queries about files they were working on, leave comments, etc. We could have done all this by email, but the wiki has the major advantage that once queries and answers are recorded there, they’re accessible to everyone with a quick search, and I think it has helped to cut down a lot of repetitious questions. (The downside of that is that any inconsistencies in answers by either me or my deputy, who gets lumbered with most of this from day to day, so I can blame her if anything goes wrong, naturally) have a tendency to get picked up and commented on… Well, at least it keeps us on our toes. And better to catch these things early on rather than later, right?)

Now our other project is getting underway, I’ve set up a new wiki. (And yes, it is addictive, before you ask.) This is a more complex project in some respects, and for some of the staff it moves into less familiar historical territory, so I’ve started putting much more historical background and resources on this wiki. It will also later have similar documentation and feedback areas to the first wiki, and perhaps much more that I haven’t thought of yet.

That’s the beauty of it. There is something infinitely flexible and expandable about wikis. People are using them for all kinds of business purposes including project management, for research projects’ discussion and feedback, for teaching, and much more. Feel free to highlight any you know of in comments!

I frequently think my job is way too much fun to be classed as real work.

I expected that blogging frequency would be lower than in the past, for a while at least, but I didn’t mean to leave it so long since my last proper post (History Carnival notices don’t count). I don’t have the excuse that I have zillions of classes to prep, unlike my American blogging friends. (I wouldn’t have that excuse yet even if I had a teaching job, since the British university year doesn’t get going for a few weeks.) But the job does tend to occupy a lot of my brainspace, along with the ongoing settling-in to the new place. So, you’ll have to make do with a few random observations.

… The gaps in my knowledge of what happened to English criminal law and punishment after the second half of the 18th century are shocking. (But it increasingly seems to me that in general our gaps in understanding what happened to English criminal justice and punishment after the late 18th century are fairly shocking. Or is that just my ignorance and early modern prejudices at work?)

… Having just ordered one that I don’t have to pay for (great fun!), I am absolutely astounded at just how much high-spec desktop PC one can buy for absurdly small sums of money these days. Someone in the office suggested it’s because everyone wants laptops now, so slashing prices is the only way these lumbering mammoths are going to sell. Seems a reasonable proposition.

… In less than two weeks, I become a real ‘manager’, as there’ll be someone at the next desk I’m actually in charge of. This is somewhat scary. Much more scary than the working-in-a-real-office experience, which I think I’m settling into now.

… Right now, I’m playing around with wikis, since we’re thinking of setting one up for the projects. This is something I’ve avoided for some time now; I feared they’d be terribly addictive. (I think I was right. Wikis are dangerous.) If anyone has good tips or links for using wikis for work-related collaboration, documentation, support and so on, do pass them on. It’ll be much appreciated.

I’ve been stressing about finishing my book since, well, it feels like forever. I’ve been avoiding the conclusion for weeks (since the last fevered push, in fact). And what do I find when I finally open the file and look at it?

It’s a breeze. It’s virtually done. I even pretty much got that final concluding paragraph down (well, half of it: still want that knockout final sentence really). What was I worrying about again?

I don’t quite understand why my perceptions of where I’d got to with this thing were so far removed from the reality. I could have had this polished off with a few hours’ work any time in the last few weeks. Instead, I kept avoiding it because I was convinced it was a hideous deformed monster baby requiring radical surgery for which I didn’t have the time (or inspiration).

Two lessons from this:

1. I am a compleat fule.

2. If you’ve been putting off finishing that paper or chapter for the last month because you think it’s a pile of utter dreck, you could be as mistaken as I was. Stop avoiding it and do something about it.

Getting plenty started, yeah. Opening of files. Staring at files. Sporadic typing and saving of files.

Closing finished files with air of virtuous satisfaction and sending them away, not so much. (Or, to put it another way, my To Do list looks the same as it did at the start of the week. Although I know I have Been Doing stuff.)

Why are some weeks like that?

I have two job applications in hand. One must be completed and posted within the next two weeks (and the other needs to be substantially done by then, although I’ll have a few days to finish it off after the Christmas break) and the sooner I can get it done the happier I’ll be.

So, of course, I’ve spent half of the afternoon tinkering with the materials for the course that I’ll be teaching next semester, which doesn’t start until the end of January.

Feeling all the more love for my department today: my new office computer is on the way!

OK, it’s not new exactly. But only One Careful Owner and it’s been lovingly reconditioned specially for me.

I might even go and spend more time in my office if I have a usable computer. And put up some posters and use the shelves and install some drinkable coffee and make it sort of cosy, like normal people do.

I could work towards building those architectural piles of stuff (technical term, I believe) that people hide behind when they want to be left alone.

Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate.

Can’t work out what to take apart and how to put it back together again.

Good news: This year’s progress report is proving much less painful to write than last year’s effort. Somewhere along the line I actually did stuff. I even had a few of them ideas thingies.

Gulp: The UWP editors have read my book manuscript and their comments are probably sitting in my pigeonhole in the department office right now. I’ll go up to look this afternoon.

Useful post from Public Brewery. I’ve only reviewed one article for a journal so far (it wasn’t very good, sadly); this is the sort of advice that would have come in handy. And it might help anyone in the throes of submitting to a journal for the first time.

I cannot get this conference paper finished. It’s driving me CRAZY. Grrr.

Because I let it all pile up: spending all afternoon putting bibliographical stuff into EndNote. I am so bored. (And if I’m bored doing it, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be bored reading about it.)

Because I let it all pile up, 2: filing. Oh yes, I shall soon be even more bored.

More piles of stuff: I have to clear my desk. I might even follow the profgrrl’s example and start using it again properly.

Only 3 classes of the course to go (one already pretty much prepped). Then I’ll have essay project thingies to mark. Then summer in the National Library of Wales! Book MS finished and will go in the post any day now. It’s been a hectic month or so, but hopefully posting will be a bit more regular again now. If I can think of something to write.

Elections, that’s it, I was going to do some more about elections.

Anyway, just down the corridor from me, a PhD student is in the final stages of writing up (thesis on early 14th-century Ruthin [borough in north-east Wales] court rolls. Good stuff, I think, though much more quantitative than anything I could do). Possibly also in the final stages of sanity. Blood, sweat and tears ain’t in it. I’m reading stuff and saying, ‘This sounds fine to me…’ But he seems to be afflicted with chronic tinker-itis now. Is there any way of convincing a paranoid student that what he’s written is emphatically not absolute, incomprehensible crap?

But I can’t talk really. OK, I may be fine (not to say vain) when it comes to writing, but I’m really bad about my teaching. I worry about everything endlessly. (Are they talking enough? Did I explain that subject clearly? Should we have done such-and-such? Why can’t I get them talking more? Why do I waffle so much? Why do I take so long over doing everything? Are those marks really fair? Why don’t they talk more? How will I cope with a real teaching job? Am I just crap?)

I must not worry so much. I must not worry so much.

PS: it’s my birthday next week! (If you’re wondering when, I share it with a certain royal personage. I think that’s nearly all we do have in common. I am also quite a few years younger, I should add.)

Isn’t it nice when you go to the office and there’s a package waiting for you in your pigeonhole, which turns out to be your article offprints. Yay!

Pity about the essays for marking lurking in there though.