Googles of the Past: Concordances and Scholarship

Reference Type Journal Article
Year of Publication
2013
Contributors Author: Andrew Abbott
Journal
Social Science History
Volume
37
Issue
4
Pagination
427-455
Language
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Region
Chronological Period
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. 

Annotation
Examines 22 concordances created between 1850 and the onset of computerized concordances immediately after World War II.