Clare Griffin's comments on The Many-Headed Monster about
the problems faced by historians wishing to participate in on-line conferences
or seminars being held in other time zones actually touches upon a wider issue
of concern. One of the surprising features of academic history in this and, I
suspect, other countries has been the absence of recordings of
conference/seminar papers and of comprehensive note-taking.
Scholars who were not present may hear about the arguments
that have been made but not know precisely how they were formulated. In May,
2015, I was privileged to hear John Walter give a paper in Trinity Hall,
Cambridge reflecting on his career and publications since the mid-1970s.
It was a fascinating occasion. But I was surprised to learn
that no arrangements had been made to record what he had to say. Future
generations of academic historians would, I strongly believe, have gained from
hearing or watching what he had to say. More recently, I have been reading
articles, books and theses from central and eastern Europe (including the
states formerly in the Soviet Union) on the English Revolution.
Much of this work is intelligent and interesting but very
much out of date in terms of the historiography it reflects. But the historians
producing this work do not, prima facie, have contacts with early modern
historians in the U.K. or the U.S.A. or other English-speaking countries.
Access to current work of the kind being provided, for example, by the
Institute of Historical Research on-line would help to mitigate this problem.
That requires more institutions and learned societies being
willing to record their proceedings and to make them available to historians
elsewhere via the internet. I am sure the benefits would be appreciated in
Kazakhstan and elsewhere.
Chris Thompson
