Year: 1993
Type: article
Abstract: The use of quantitative evidence in Canadian history has increased dramatically during the last twenty-five years.While archival repositories hold much of the original (non-electronic) data, many historians have found it useful to transfer small or even large portions of various archival collections into machine-readable format.This movement of information into the electronic arena threatens archivists with the loss of their traditional role as custodians of the basic evidence on which history is written.Historians are likely to support archivists in their response to this challenge, particularly if the response involves some clarification of responsibility for machine-readable datasets.Archival institutions are in a position to help maintain and ensure access to electronic data originating in archival sources.The increase in quantitative content in Canadian historical writing reflects the gradual fading of a long-familiar division between quantitative and non-quantitative methodologies.A common image of the quantitative historian is of someone trained in social science rather than history, or of someone whose career has been dedicated to exploitation of quantitative sources.In fact, few authors rely exclusively on quantitative sources.Today it is common for an individual historian to consult a wide range of both quantitative and qualitative sources.These authors would not regard themselves as quantitative historians, even though they use quantitative data to set the context for their work or to illuminate one aspect of a larger topic.While many papers have some significant quantitative component, much of their argumentation and evidence is qualitative.Such articles appear in traditionally non-quantitative fields such as religious history' or political hi~tory,~ as well as in fields that are heavily quantitative in nature, such as demographic or economic history.Much of the use of quantitative materials reflects the efforts of social historians to give voice to people who leave no other records.In this paper we monitor the use of quantitative sources by historians in order that we may illustrate more clearly the nature of the challenge facing archivists today.The breakdown of old methodological paradigms has complicated our task.We have made no attempt to isolate a body of literature that constitutes "quantitative history."Rather, it seemed more useful to identify articles that had a significant quantitative component.This approach is broader than that employed in previous surveys, but it is more in keeping with the growing tendency to incorporate qualitative and quantitative sources ~imultaneously.~Our definition of "article" encompassed all papers, presidential addresses, and research notes; we restricted our attention to papers on Canadian topics.Length was not a criterion-short as well as long pieces were included.We excluded editors' notes, bibliographies, review articles, comments, critiques, and replies (unless the latter presented information clearly absent from the original article).
Source: Archivaria
Authors: Inwood, Kris, Reid, Richard
Language: English
Subfield: Conservation
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W2208650489