...she didn't know Zotero has been around so long!

But this nice article by Daniel J. Cohen made me wonder, "Why didn't I know about this before?"

I blogged about my discovery a few weeks ago.  But Cohen presents other way that this useful tool may enhance historical scholarship.


Cohen starts off with a discussion of the relationship between a historian's final product and the information they combed through during the research process.

These printed texts are merely the tip of the iceberg—the small portion of our thought that is visible to everyone, but which sits atop a hidden mountain of judgment and research. This submerged bulk of our expertise resides in notes on paper sitting in our filing cabinets, on our hard drives, and in the recesses of our minds. If some of this knowledge surfaces at all, it is usually as ghostly traces within the summaries and conclusions of a book or article, or perhaps in the more lasting embodiment of a footnote.

In the end, what would be more interesting to other historians:  the findings couched in graceful prose, or all the gooey information they found in their research and the individual's process of thinking and writing?

I have always found process to be interesting.  Perhaps it's my design background.  When you interview for architecture jobs, potential employers want to know about HOW you think as much as what you can produce.

I think the same works in history.  Although you may get an idea of an individual's thought process through formal writing, you can't get the full picture.  Of course, a one-on-one conversation would provide insight, but that's usually not possible.  Wouldn't you love the see the notes Kenneth Jackson made when he was writing Crabgrass Frontier?  Or see the discarded sources?  I know I would.

I'm going to reference my favorite fantasy author, David Eddings, to reinforce this point.  Eddings wrote a twelve-book epic fantasy series that I read over and over and over...  But he later included a thirteenth title, The Rivan Codex.  In this book are all the background studies he wrote to form his series' universe, along with some personal notes about his writing process.  This publication cemented him as my favorite fantasy author.

Cohen hopes that Zotero will serve a similar purpose to The Rivan Codex.  Researchers will be able to share their research databases.  Information about sources can be compared.  The end goal for Cohen is that

this interaction of people, tools, and resources—what we might call an "ecology of scholarship" (which undoubtedly will include software other than Zotero)—perhaps will lead to the discovery of new knowledge by aggregating and analyzing our shared wisdom.

 Exciting, huh?