This Monday, our class had the opportunity to receive a guest lecture from Tony Guidone, a graduate student at George Mason University composing research on the cultural impacts of international trade in Salem, Massachusetts. In his presentation, Guidone challenged our perspectives on what can be considered a primary source, introduced challenges posed by the digitization of these sources, and provided the class with useful methods for keyword searching in these documents.
Guidone opened his presentation by asking our class for a definition of a primary source, to which one of my classmates responded: an original source. Our speaker agreed and proceeded to pass around a number of textual primary sources, mostly comprised of newspapers. Once the papers had made their way around the class, Guidone then drew out two coins from his bag and explained that although texts serve as useful primary sources, artifacts such as coins also serve as primary sources and can provide different insights into the lives of individuals living at a particular time. I found this subversion of expectations to be very powerful. Many students, including myself, appeared to have been exposed to textual primary sources but had not considered the implications of examining other artifacts such as coins.
After sharing this insight with the class, Guidone then placed the two coins under the classroom’s projector and asked us to identify any differences between the two coins. Many of us noted that the two coins were colored differently, and Guidone responded by informing us that the difference in color was the result of the materials that composed the coins. He stated that the coin produced in 1943 was actually composed of a lighter substance than the coin produced in 1940 due to metal being rationed during the Second World War. Guidone went on to explain questions that experts consider about the differences between the two coins: How would an average citizen come to think about their government based on the quality of the coins that it produced? He also stated that these questions would be lost on someone examining a digitized image of these two coins.
Prior to Guidone’s lecture, our class was asked to read Ian Milligan’s essay, Illusionary Order: Online Databases, Optical Character Recognition, and Canadian History, 1997-2010. Here, he speaks on these types of issues with respect to the limitations of OCR software, stating: We can see an accuracy rate in the 40 per cent ballpark… perhaps even more than half of the information may be missed through keyword searching. Just as the weight of Guidone’s coins were lost on his audience, so are many possible primary sources for researchers. [enf_note]Ian Milligan, Illusionary Order: Online Databases, Optical Character Recognition, and Canadian History, 1997-2010, The Canadian Historical Review Volume 94 Number 4, December 2013[/enf_note]
Guidone ended his lecture by demonstrating a keyword search. Searching for the keyword ‘Asia’ in 17th century newspapers yielded few results. However, searching for the keyword ‘East’ garnered far more. He left us with a reminder that Keyword searching involves considering the vocabulary used by people living at a particular time and not our own vernacular.
