References to Archival Materials in Scholarly History Monographs

Abstract

This study looks at citations of archival material in a sample of 136 recently published scholarly historical monographs produced by a selection of highly cited university presses in the United States, with the goal of discovering patterns in scholarly user reportage of archival use. The study found that 68 percent of the titles referenced at least one archival collection, that archival collections housed at universities were used more often than other types of repositories, and that the amount and type of repositories did not in most cases vary based on the subject matter of the book. The study also revealed that less than 3 percent of all archival citations in the books examined were to digital collections. The findings could potentially provide a baseline by which further and more diverse archival use and users can be measured.