Developing Research Excellence and Methods

There were a couple of themes that caught my attention in Tom Haigh's presentation. He said that historians like to tell stories and I think they are not alone. We all like to hear a good story and often use stories to recount something or use it to represent a viewpoint or example of how something happened. For example oral history - interviews with people involved in a topic or their experience of a war, working in a type of industry that is no longer operating.

Hearing people's stories have becoming increasingly popular and used as case studies and or examples of good practice. 

Different historical approaches included: intellectual history; social history, cultural history, institutional history and history of practice/labour. In relation to history and information science he identified 'Information History' apparently coined by Alistair Black. I will need to check that with Dr John Crawford an ex colleague of mine who is interested in this area and knows Alistair as well as Toni Weller who was mentioned. Information history includes history of libraries, books, reading, publishing; Information Disciplines; Information Society.

The workshop task to create a group of 4 or 5 people and identify a member of the group who is actively engaged in a research project that could make use of the historical approaches was useful as it made participants think of practical applications from the presentation.

For the full details see / hear Tom Haigh's presentation