Wednesday 6 December 2017

How Humanists use a Library (1965)


From the doctoral dissertation of Christine Madsen (HERE) the following on the 1965 work of J.E. Burchard:

Starting with a conference paper given in 1965 by John E. Burchard, an historian tasked with explaining the working style of humanists to the computer scientists at MIT, there have been periodic attempts to uncover the information seeking needs and behaviours of humanists ... Most of these works support Burchard’s original characterization of humanists as particularly dependent upon primary resources; favouring monographs over journal articles for secondary resources; working alone and preferring not to delegate their literature searching (as is often the case in the sciences); finding historical materials as relevant as contemporary ones; and using browsing and serendipitous discovery as a vital part of the research process.

Burchard, J.E., (1965). How humanists use a library. In: C.F.J. Overhage and J.R. Harman, eds. Intrex: report
on a planning conference and information transfer experiments. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 41-87.

Image from Here.