I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.

Interdisciplinary research ftw…!

it's also a bit self indulgent and there's nothing wrong with that, if we didn't want to learn gossip from 50~5000 years ago, we would've majored in Geography or something like that

But to underline an important point you made, I think Today's Discourse Shenigans also don't realise that a core archival research skill is knowing when *not* to read - how to skip or skim. Like, they seem to think we are cursed to read every receipt in the building, but that's the fast bit tbh.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

"You have to use AI." ...why?

I guess the other thing is that history is pretty much a single-author discipline. When we put our names on our work, we're saying that our minds and our labor produced that knowledge. That if it's discovered to be rooted in lazy or unethical research practices, we will own that and take our lumps.

I read a bunch of things and I started to think maybe they weren't answering their question completely/correctly, so I formulated a new question and then had to find sources that would help me investigate it. Then I researched and analyzed and produced *new knowledge*---and that's what we ALL do!

I think everything in this thread is spot on, but the thing that most non-specialists miss is that individual historians are also the ones who decide there's even something to investigate! Based on their deep reading and expertise, they frame new questions to create new knowledge we didn't have!

What historians (and other scholars do) is create knowledge. We should use that phrase more and talk about what it means. I think we don't, and it's part of why AI enthusiasts are confused when we don't readily agree that our work can be replicated/replaced by their products.

This is HILARIOUS. By the way, this is a childish idea of research. Just focus on primary sources for a moment. You make discoveries and place facts in context by using your human imagination and understanding of historiography. The "garbage you don't need to read" is exactly what's interesting.

Do you remember that meme awhile back of the guy asking someone on the street "you have to choose between universal healthcare and trans rights," and the guy said "both, I reject your premise." That's the kind of thing all of us need to get comfortable with. Rejecting the premise.

Also, setting way too many readings in graduate-level classes leads to this: no one can read all those books in the time available

AI robs you of being capable of having that A-HA epiphany while you are doing dishes or walking the dog or taking a shower. Those are my favorite moments.

Yes! Historiography is a conversation, and citations allow us access to and participation in this conversation.

a big part of the issue surrounding the use of chatgpt/LLMs in academic research comes down to process vs. product. a lot of us know that the process of doing research matters because that's where intellectual work is done; but some "academics" and lots of techies only care about a fast product

I transcibed some documents yesterday and learned small but interesting things. It calmed and centred my nervous system and I felt happy. Wild stuff indeed

Isn't it weird that we do history, in large part, because we have a love for process? Infuriating, bang my head into the wall, beautiful process.

I had some time to do historical research yesterday. You know, reading documents, summarizing them. Following threads. I used my brain to do this. Wild, I know.

Yes. If you start with GenAi, you need to verify and check what it spits out, and that’s hard if you don’t know much to start with. All these tools are oversold and hyped, and they offer much more than they deliver, and people learning how to research are the ones who are the most short changed.

As everyone knows who has ever written a book or manuscript review, summarizing a text is essential work. It’s the first step of an analysis. If you haven’t summarized the text there is no way I believe that you have understood it.

Animal dung (on human graves) features in my book’s opening vignette, and same! I needed a heck of a lot of contextual knowledge to be able to see there was something telling there and to frame a question about it, let alone start to answer it.

I want to dare to use language as only a human can, to practice forms no machine can reliably replicate.

Anyway, I read all of these anti-AI posts in academia as love letters to our disciplines. And that, at least, gives me joy in a weary world. So thank you.

We have all made it through the longest night.

All of this thread. I understand the self interest that AI salesmen have to push their product, but the grasping way they’re doing it — the internet version of a traveling salesmen putting his foot in the door so you can’t close it — is only going to drive more people away.

The thing that is stupid about this AI argument is that it’s absolutely true that people can’t read everything in detail, but the way things work they’re pressured to pretend that they do. The exponential amount of literature was a problem pre-AI.

I’ll add - how to yoke together intriguingly disparate data and stories to create new arguments… we write and read history to share our unique perspectives on the data of the past. I read to understand another human’s perspective. It’s not about facts; it’s about truth.

Encouraging undergraduates to *start* with AI, robs them of the skills they need to begin learning how to be a history detective. And when you move up to the graduate level, AI doesn't have access to actual archives. And it cannot produce new knowledge. *YOU* have to do that.

A big part of being a historian is being a detective! Who did this? Why? Where? Why does it matter in the grand scheme of things? You have to learn how to probe, how to uncover, how to read against the grain, how to find unusual sources, how to interpret those sources. How to piece together a puzzle

A mistake a lot of people who take up teaching at universities make is to start with the assumption that their students should be just like they were as students but without the defects. Better concentration, better at deadlines at deadlines. But to get a teaching job you were 1 in a 100 or 1000.

All of this 👏👏👏 Steve clearly lays out why using AI to summarize historical writing as a starting point for inquiry goes against the standards and values of the profession.

another example of AI as tracer dye, exposing an already existing problem (and, of course, significantly worsening it)

Sometimes you read exams from students that leave you blown away with their brilliance. There's no way I can claim anything here in terms of teaching - this student came brilliant and left brilliant and my only hope is that she felt the course wasn't a waste of her talents.

This is a dumbfounding guideline. Absolutely a destructive and incompetent recommendation that was clearly made by people not qualified to judge such decisions.

Am I the only one who gets a real kick out of citation chains? Reading people's writing and footnotes, and making assessments and notes, finding the sources in the footnotes and reading them yourself, and making more notes? I...love it?

I don't want gen AI in my browser I don't want gen AI in my pc I don't want gen AI in my art I don't want gen AI in my games I don't want gen AI in my music I don't want gen AI in my movies I don't want gen AI in my books I don't want gen AI in my cart I don't want gen AI in my life

"A wonderfully readable look at the interface between book history & computer history." — @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social In "README," historian @patrickmccray.bsky.socials uses the oldest literary technology—books—to explain how computers became popular. Available now: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255348...

Generative AI is also causing me more work as a college professor, in teaching, research, and admin work.

I fervently wish that billionaires would compete with each other in building the best think tanks in the world rather than… whatever it is they do now.

This is a good argument for withdrawing entirely from using institutional LMS’s.

Im genuinely so befuddled by this; I DON'T LACK IDEAS. I have so MANY ideas and plans--its time, money, and energy I lack. I don't need genAI to make up stuff for me, my brain does that perfectly well, and I actually love that my brain does that for me.

If a garage can’t fix my car, it should not be in business. If editors and journals can’t keep out hallucinated references, they should close shop. I don’t want to hear about how hard it is to check all this stuff out how or why things slip through. This is the job entire.

When you ask a college librarian for a book, no matter how rare, expensive, or obscure, they get it for you. Without fail. Sometimes I think we forget what a marvel this is. Amazon & Google have still failed to replicate their witchcraft.

Lichen collage on lakeside rock. Northwest Territories, Canada. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends

So. What are best strategies for us as researchers? How do we divert this sewage, what infrastructural elements help drain it out of the system? What are best—and by that I mean efficient, least effortful—practices whenever we encounter this kind of crap? We need public education in info hygiene.

this is a good reminder of how things that are shitty but have been accepted as normal and inevitable can actually turn out to be abnormal and evitable with some science, time, education and political will

Over forty years of writing in a wide range of venues, in academia and for broad audiences, I have come to appreciate the importance of not having a sticky "L" key when writing about pubic affairs.

A very Canadian story.

DEI isn't why you didn't get a job. THERE ARE NO JOBS. YOU DIDN'T GET A JOB BECAUSE THERE ARE NO JOBS. If all the older professors retired? You still wouldn't get a job! Not in the humanities! Because they'll replace at best half of those lines! There will still be no jobs! None!