This week, ending in February 01 2018:
Today's thread is for open discussion of:
History in the academy
Historiographical disputes, debates and rivalries
Implications of historical theory both abstractly and in application
Philosophy of history
And so on
Regular participants in the Thursday threads should just keep doing what they've been doing; newcomers should take notice that this thread is meant for open discussion only of matters like those above, not just anything you like -- we'll have a thread on Friday for that, as usual.
History in the academy question.
Is there any notion of identifying where we expect to get more evidence in the future, within the academy? Say for example: satellite photography showed some interesting new ruins in Syria, but that place is a war zone, and it may take decades for archaeologists to get to it; very little is known about the Empire of X, but Y kind of evidence likely exists because we have found it for peoples in similar contexts; this known trove of untranslated texts are in a bound up in a private estate, and will not be available until the litigation is over among the inheritors, etc.
I suppose I expect these things to be known to individual historians, but my question is whether there is formal/public effort to identify this sort of thing.
What is the technical/logistical backbone of historical study like? The obvious is libraries and museums etc, but I also see projects like Seshat: Global History Databank.
I notice that the 20 year rule in this sub now lands us in 1998, the era of the Internet. How do historians plan to address the stupendous amount of historical data we are now generating?