User:Hydrangeans/History, historiography, and reliable sources on Wikipedia

Brief abstract

Sometimes Wikipedia editors encountering an older work of historical scholarship, still printed and sold by its press and referenced by other historians, conclude that it is a reliable source. However, older works' ongoing relevance does not necessarily equate to reliability for Wikipedia's purposes. Historians' interest in historiography—the "history of history"—motivates their interest in work whose conclusions and techniques may not reflect the current consensus but which can be learned from as examples of prior historical approaches. Since most Wikipedians are not trained as professional academics, we are not in a good position to parse out what is still and no longer consensus in an older work of scholarship. This essay therefore encourages editors to make the effort to consult recent historical scholarship on a subject rather than rely on an older title whose reliability is variable and difficult for laypersons to ascertain.

Main body

There is sometimes confusion about what constitutes a reliable source for a historical subject. Historians are interested in change and continuity over time, both in their subject and in their field. Within the discipline, the study of the former is called history. The study of the latter is called historiography, sometimes defined as "the history of history" (perhaps with the caveat "as described by historians" to separate it from the study of historical memory).

Because historians are interested in historiography as well as history, they often read and study historical scholarship created in previous generations. Sometimes historians read very old historical scholarship and will mention it in footnotes and bibliographies. Sometimes presses and journals will reprint or republish an older work, whether a book or article. There are times when this is because the work is still high quality and is convenient to cite for accurate information. In many cases, however, this is because the work is part of an ongoing scholarly "conversation" in which historians participate. If a work of scholarship, whether a book or article, has been influential, it may be appropriate—or even necessary—for a historian to cite the work in order to explicitly state contrary conclusions or interpretations; it may be appropriate for a press to reprint a book just so that it can be available for future historians to learn from and grapple with. There are cases in which a previous historian gets the facts wrong (perhaps because sources available now were not available then), weighs the evidence unpersuasively (perhaps because later source criticism cast doubt on evidence prior historians used), or offers an interpretation that falls out of favor (perhaps because old theoretical frameworks have been abandoned or new theoretical frameworks have been developed).

Historians often encourage each other to recognize that the work of history is difficult. Although historians by convention claim full responsibility for their works, being mistaken can be the result of circumstances beyond one's clear control. As a result, historians often do not criticize the work of their predecessors in a transparently debunking, "fact-checker" tone. They may even praise works of history that have serious problems. Older works with inaccuracies, faulty frameworks, or rejected interpretations are often simultaneously works that were published with reputable venues and presses and were remarkable accomplishments in their own time. As such, historians appropriately give credit where it's due to the works and their authors. That a work was an accomplishment in its time, however, does not guarantee that it is still a reliable source in the present.

(This is not universally the case. Sometimes old historical scholarship is treated with a negative, critical, "debunker" tone. Often this is the case when the scholarship was much older, i.e. multiple generations prior rather than an immediately preceding generation; and/or not merely wrong but moreover destructive, such as by propagating forms of oppression and prejudice like sexism and racism. The white-supremacist Dunning School of Reconstruction history is a well-known example of this.)

This can occasionally result in confusion for Wikipedia editors unfamiliar with the conventions of history. The inclusion of an older source in a bibliography or list of recommended reading does not always mean the source actually represents the current scholarly consensus; in other words, that a source is in a bibliography or list of recommended readings does not always mean it is a reliable source. Sometimes it means the source is relevant to understanding the historiography of the topic: the history of its history.

An example

At risk of being slightly unfair to the book singled out for this exercise, an example seems useful for illustrating the intended point of this essay.

For example, this graduate student reading list includes Perry Miller's The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939) and labels it a "classic". This is accurate; both volumes of The New England Mind are classics. Miller was a titan in the fields of American and Puritan history, and he has been called "the dean of New England history". The book "continues to shape the discourse on early New England history". One can fruitfully read and learn from the book. Nevertheless, "With the distance of time, it is obvious that Miller's detractors have made some valid criticisms", and various historians in succeeding years have argued Miller overstates the alleged unity of Puritan thought in his first volume and also overstates the declension of the Puritan establishment in his second volume (From Colony to Province). One can learn from The New England Mind. But it likely takes a trained historian to appropriately parse out what is and isn't still consensus, what is and isn't still reliable.

The New England Mind is recommended to students. You can still purchase it from Harvard University Press, and it will bear that prestigious imprint on its pages. A university-press published book recommended to readers; does that mean it is a reliable source for Wikipedia?

The answer is more complicated than the surface details would suggest. There is absolutely accurate information in The New England Mind. Yet using that information on Wikipedia will be a challenge because the whole work is set in frameworks and includes interpretations which could be at odds with a current consensus. So why is the book recommended? Why is it still sold? It is because those seeks to become historians of New England have much to learn from Miller about the source base, about how that source base can be interpreted, about the conversation later works were situated in, etc., and that can help them understand how they might themselves research, interpret, and write history.

We, however, are Wikipedians. Some of us, surely, are in-training to become or are professional, academic historians. However, it is probably the case that the vast majority of us are not. (Since the vast majority of humans are also not historians, as is the case with many professions.) Those of us contributing to historical pages are likely interested in history, and that is wonderful! History is not exclusively the purview of academics. However, we do need to be mindful of our limited perspective. It is easy to become convinced while reading a single, older book that it is wonderfully accurate and advances the best interpretation of the topic while being unaware—as a layperson understandably so—of a vast world of more current scholarship on the topic.

The encouragement

Consulting and referencing older works is often tempting because they are more easily available through the Internet. Both volumes (1) (2) of The New England Mind can be checked out from the Internet Archive's Open Library, accessible to anyone who registers a free account. Meanwhile, more recent titles about Puritans and other Christians in early America and the Atlantic World such as (to give a few very inexhaustive examples) America's God: From Jonathon Edwards to Abraham Lincoln by Mark Noll (Oxford University Press, 2002), The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism edited by John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and The Puritans: A Transatlantic History by David D. Hall (Princeton University Press, 2019) are not readily available for check out on Open Library. A Wikipedian, eager to crack on with edits, might understandably be tempted to rely on the older book that is more immediately accessible: The New England Mind.

I encourage Wikipedians to recognize the difficulties and serious potential pitfalls of relying on and referencing older sources and to resist this inclination. All are certainly free to read The New England Mind, and I would encourage all to do so. I daresay there ought to be a page for The New England Mind; it's certainly been written about enough in reviews and historiographic essays. However, for the purposes of contributing to Wikipedia, the more recent works will provide more accurate scholarship that better speaks to the contemporary consensus. New England Mind and America's God were both reviewed through university presses, but New England Mind's reviewers lived in the 1930s (and 1950s, in the case of the second volume) while America's God's reviewers lived in the twenty-first century. Which book is more likely to represent "current scholarly consensus" on subjects like Puritanism and American Christianity, or for a hypothetical page about "Puritan theology"?

I recognize that this is asking for exertion. It is easy to set up an Open Library account; it is harder to acquire copies of books like America's God and The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism. However, the effort is well worth it. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people may view a page. The difference in interpretations between generations of scholarship can be vast.

There are ways to seek access to more recent publications without breaking the bank. If you are reasonably active as an editor, you can qualify for access to the Wikipedia Library which provides access to academic books and journal articles through (to name just a few) Brill, Cambridge Core (which in fact provides digital access to The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism), DeGruyter, EBSCO Information Services, Edinburgh University Press, and JSTOR, among others. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia is also available through Wikipedia Libraries, and its articles are current, credited, footnoted, and peer-reviewed.

Qualifying for the Wikipedia Library can take time. If you have not qualified for the Wikipedia Library or are interested in a book not available through the Wikipedia Library, and you have access to another library (perhaps a public library), consider learning about what book request services are available. You may be able to submit a request to the library that they purchase a book. Libraries may also participate in interlibrary loan services so you can request and check out a book even if it is not in the library's local collections. This can make it possible for you to access works not easily available online or even on Wikipedia Library or your local library.

Finally, it is worth noting that all Wikipedians willing to participate in good faith ought to feel welcome, even if their circumstances do not enable them to access a local library or the Wikipedia Library. If recent scholarly sources are out of your reach, this essay in no way means to state you cannot or should not contribute to Wikipedia. There are still valuable contributions you can make. As another essay states, scholarly citations are not a requirement for a page to exist or even be considered quality, as the case may be; nevertheless, "Finding and using scholarly sources is a best practice", and it is one I here encourage.

A summary

Resist the inclination to use an older work of scholarship just because it is accessible and was well-regarded in its time. Do the extra work to peruse and reference more recent scholarship. This can require exertion, but it is productive and useful to Wikipedia to avoid the reproduction of inaccurate interpretations which no longer express scholarly consensus.