Working Methods (of a Historian)

This was absolutely lovely.

When you take a “methods” class in graduate school for history, you learn about the different theoretical frameworks historians use. You never really spend any time talking about actual methods of going about and doing research. I always found it interesting to go and pick the brains of different professors about their actual, day-to-day working methods. of course, they tend to share similarities, but there’s always some weird little personal quirks thrown in there that each individual has found, through ongoing trial and error, works for them.

But it’s loveliest for the warm glow of nostalgia and contentment the author wraps the seemingly mundane topic of working methods with. Juxtapose this with the infinity of comparisons between different note-taking apps out there. I’d rather scratch my eyes out rather than see another one of those. This, though, I’ve already printed and added to my own files.

The Acton quote is given more extensively at http://www.strangehistory.net/2013/03/23/lord-actons-lost-wo... (the original book, _On the Writing of History_, Oman 1939, is hard to get).

Late binding of metadata is critical to my notetaking, and the primary advantage of digital over physical media. I am curious whether any technology like the Nuwa pen will be able to provide a transparent bridge between the two.

I was expecting a bridge to some form of knowledge management, given the brief reference to personal wikis and databases, plus the fact that HN loves to debate the various methods of the above. But I was happily surprised to see nothing of the sort. The author's resignation that his practical research methodologies are no doubt outdated and inefficient was a breath of fresh air.

I often find myself spending far too much time fearing that the methods I've chosen in any kind of research are faulty, which turns out to be much greater time sink than actually just absorbing the material at hand.

An analogy: time spent planning what to do with your friends/family would be better used just being with them. Likewise, becoming closer to a historical subject--whether by immersing yourself in all the relevant material or by literally imagining yourself alongside them--will return more valuable results long-term than by running a scientific experiment about them.

The tour guide is wiser than the city planner!

original title is just Working Methods but I figured it needed some context.