Convergences

More Praise for Document Collections

A couple of weeks ago, I praised the usefulness of Google Books for anyone interested in historical documents. Three other sites deserve similar mention:

Cornell University's 907,750 page Making of America collection, "a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints."

The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum, which has numerous photos, maps, essays, and (scroll down on the main page for a list) a wonderful collection of digitized contemporary articles on the building of the transcontinental railroad and its times, and then links to further documents etc.

The Libary of Congress' American Memory collection is a rich vein, including in particular the Congressional Record and its predecessors going back to the Continental Congress.

The relevance to a website concerned with telecom, innovation, and intellectual property? -- The issues at the center of contemporary debates are not new. If a contemporary tech or telecom tycoon sat down with the Big Four of the Central Pacific, they would quickly find many common issues to discuss (including how to deal with a rapacious political system).

Business and economic history receive too little attention. Judge Harold Leventhal, an administrative law expert of a generation ago, once said "[This] is the kind of issue where a month of experience will be worth a year of hearings." Our society has generations of experience with many regulatory issues, but this resource is simply not brought to bear on present issues. It is easier, and more profitable for the lawyers, to hold hearings and opine about theory.

In Praise of Google Books

Since I have an interest in that great American epic,the building of the transcontinental railroad, and in the parallels between current public policy debates and earlier railroad controversies, Google Books is wonderful. It provides access to many obscure sources that were formerly available only at major libraries, and difficult to find even then unless one knew exactly what one sought.

Who knew that the 1870 Report of the Commissioner of the U.S. Land Office contains crucial information on railroad construction costs, or that The Political Reformation, a pamphlet put out by the Democrats in 1884, contains cheerfully cynical insights into the venality of the U.S. Congress by Collis P. Huntington, one of the founders of the Central Pacific'?

One benefit of the improved access should be an improvement in knowledge of history. A great problem is that the story of an era gets written a time or two, and then everyone cribs from this work, until, perhaps, a new paradigm is written, and everyone cribs from that. Very few people have access to the sources, and thus the ability to challenge the narrative is limited. The digitization of great libraries is changing this, expanding access and opening up the process to all.