Historical scholarship: “it wasn’t always so”

In an essay, “Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?” Tom Scheinfeldt suggests that the field of history is seeing a shift from a century of theoretical questions framed in monographs to a greater emphasis on methodology, collaboration, and organization. Over a century ago, he notes that bibliography was central to the academic enterprise in many areas of history. Folklore, as a field, was also focused on methodological and organizational concerns. Scheinfeldt points to models provided by online applications like Zotero and Wikipedia as part of this new direction. Scheinfeldt is the Managing Director of the Center for History and New Media. You can read his blog at Found History. His argument is worth considering in relation to previous discussions of scholarship and both the land grant colleges and the New Deal. Departments of history that see themselves as disciplinary silos, working unto themselves to defend “standards,” may not be much aware of, much less addressing this change quite yet.