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Research institutions are challenging academic librarians and archivists to develop new tools and services that aid in the traditional, essential tasks of research. Prototypical tools combining structured biographical information with modern cyber-infrastructure have been developed to help humanities researchers identify relationships between individuals and connections between individuals and their institutional affiliations, race, gender, and published works. Such tools promote the research task of "chaining" and support prosopography. They also advance the notion that an integral activity of academic librarians and archivists should be to develop innovative discovery platforms that support traditional research methodologies conducted in new digital environments. Great abilities are not requisite for an historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary. --Dr. Samuel Johnson, July 6, 1763 Dr. Johnson's quip that the historians' task required no more imagination or invention than the writing of cheap poetry may have been true in his day; at that time, it was possible for historians to possess encyclopedic knowledge of their subject. (1) This made it possible for historians to "merely" write historical narrations of facts. However, the explosion of printed matter in the past quarter-millennium, and of information technology in the past quarter-century, has made it all but impossible for the modern historian to have his "facts ready to his hand." Today's historians need a great deal of imagination, invention, and time to devise research strategies, cull large repositories of digital and print resources, and locate the materials needed to substantiate their work. It is the job of librarians and archivists to demonstrate imagination and invention as they design, develop, and upgrade ancillary research tools that assist scholars; for humanities' research methodologies are not static (as some may think) but dynamic, and in need of being ceaselessly adapted to serve changing needs. Modern historians, and scholars from other humanities disciplines, conduct research, and then analyze, interpret, and describe aspects of past and present society. The most time-consuming but essential of these functions involves researching and analyzing data. Although the recent explosion of digital humanities resources has made some aspects of research easier, the resultant analysis and (at times) access have become unmanageable for scholars who now heavily rely on the growing number of databases and other digital materials. (2) In 2005, Carole Palmer observed that humanities researchers view Internet and local digital collections "as one big digital blur of information, quite separate from personal or physical library collections." (3) The situation has only grown far blurrier for those humanities researchers who depend upon electronic resources to support their research. CHAINING AND THE GROUNDED THEORY APPROACH Although different subjects within the humanities require different research methodologies, most humanities researchers (for the purposes of this article we are primarily discussing PhD-level students and faculty researchers) continue to follow a well-trod path of steps. (4) In his grounded theory approach, David Ellis reduced this path to six tasks. (5) In deriving this theory he surveyed "academic staff [researchers] from the departments of psychology, economics, economic and social history, geography, sociology, education and continuing education, and prehistory and archaeology" at the University of Sheffield. (6) The tasks described in Ellis's theory have not changed over time, although the approach of researchers to each task has shifted in light of the new digital research environment. …

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Repurposing RDA’s Descriptive Standards to Facilitate Humanities Research: Making a Case for Howard University’s “Portal to the Black Experience” and Similar Neotraditional Research Tools