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Googles of the Past

Concordances and Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Andrew Abbott
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Abstract

This article examines whether published keyword indexes to 22 British poets had any measurable effect on scholarly production related to those poets, mainly using quantitative output measures, since these are all that is available. It also draws on archival information about the individual concordances and their origins. The article tests whether concordances facilitated scholarship, or were a by-product/correlative of scholarship, or were unrelated to scholarship. The preponderance of the evidence leans toward the by-product hypothesis. More important, given the centrality of keyword indexing today, the evidence is mostly inconsistent with the facilitation argument. It is most likely that concordances emerged as a by-product and adjunct to scholarship and that their main use was by undergraduates, amateurs, and others below the elite level. Implications for the present are briefly discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , Winter 2013 , pp. 427 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2013 

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