Me, and My Methodology

 I want to clarify that I'm not a professional historian.  I am amateur.  And I came to my interest in history late in life (I suspect this is a not uncommon phenomenon).  It's come from a number of different directions: from a curiosity about my place of work, the Harvard College Observatory, which has led me to begin collecting and analyzing and categorizing images from its history.

It's also come from an interest in how things came to be the way they are.  Usually on very obscure topics.  For example, where did "two spaces between sentences" really come from, and then where did anyone get the idea that was bad?  My WideSpacer blog is dedicated to that, and has led me to be fairly knowledgeable about the history of printing and typography in general.  That blog also strays into other interesting bits of history here and there, like the history of the pound sign, or the first car ad, or the origins of April Fools' Day.  Some of the other random things I've looked into (but haven't yet blogged about) are the origins of various phrases, like"o.k." (already fairly well nailed down by others), "heavens to Betsy", "golly gee willikers", and others.

A lot of this work tends to focus on fact-checking and sometimes debunking myths.  I fairly conclusively proved that the QWERTY keyboard layout was not chosen to slow typists down — something others have done, but I believe I extended that research beyond what others have shown.  And of course debunking the entire myth of two spaces coming from the typewriter (but with a grain of truth, as often happens).

Methodology

I lean very heavily on Google Books for my research.  It's always the first place I look, and in very many cases provides sufficient answers such that I don't bother looking anywhere else.  This isn't always true.  I'll track down a significant source in the real world when I have to.  When there's a hole in my sources, I'll visit the library from time to time.  And my research into the origins of "a murder of crows" led me to order a fairly obscure book that had to be shipped from England.

 

Google Books has many limitations.  The main one being, that they didn't scan enough books.  Don't get me started, but overly protective copyright laws shut down what would have been a massively useful effort.  But they still scanned a lot.  More often than not, referenced books seem to be in the scanned collection.  I don't know offhand what percentage of the planned project Google completed before copyright laws shut them down but it seems to be a significant portion.

 

Searches in Google Books allow you to specify date ranges.  Most books are classified correctly, but so many aren't that you always must double check the actual publication date compared to what Google thinks it is.   And the text search is limited to Google's ability to convert printed text to real text.  Some fonts, especially blackletter, can give trip up google, as can long "s", and ligatures that are no longer in use (though most of the time Google does get these right).  And both the quality of the original and of the scan can introduce more errors.

I can account for some of these errors in searches, e.g. knowing that a long "s" might be interpreted as an "f", or a ligatured "ct" might be scanned as "et".  In addition, I also need to account for changes in spelling and common usage (e.g. "overturn" may have been more popular at some points in the past than "overthrow").

I also use HathiTrust, and archive.org, and my affiliation with Harvard gives me access to even more materials, including a wide array of journals and old newspaper collections, all available online.  Of course, Harvard also affords me the ability to use their physical libraries and even have books delivered to my office, or to have a section scanned and emailed.  Despite this I go first and foremost to the digitized sources.

I know that my heavy emphasis on Google Books and digitized sources generally may lead to some criticism of my work.  Okay.  I have a full time job and other responsibilities, and I couldn't pursue much of this work without Google Books.

Research into history should not be thought of as an absolute.  It's a conversation.  I'm doing my part to move this conversation forward.  If my Google-heavy methodology does lead to some bias, then rather than shouting that "using Google is lame", go out and find sources that show that my conclusions are wrong or biased or incomplete.  This is what I want and hope for.  I'm not trying to have the last word.  I'm just trying to advance the conversation.