Guest Post — Rethinking Disciplinary Data Regimes

Between a political policy environment focused on defunding and deleting data collections – an environment in which little can be trusted – and an onslaught of new AI tools that feed indiscriminately on data, bits of information at the intersection of rows and columns are appearing in headlines more than ever before. To avoid cultural memory loss, we must build systems that save what humanity needs across disciplinary silos rather than saving some archives and losing others through an accident of history.

Critical Archives

Studying the way we’ve studied the past is mutual work. Archivists and librarians, and scholars using their collections, have each been producing critical archives scholarship that too often remains within disciplinary and professional siloes.

When Do Citations Reflect "Impact?"

Citation practices vary between and within STM and HSS; they also vary by discipline and within disciplines. Though citation metrics presume evidence of “impact,” in fact a citation may represent a range of intentions. Given the emphasis on citation indices, isn’t it important to query what scholars are actually doing when they cite another scholar’s work?