Began studying history in the late 1940s and have not yet stopped. Have many interests, especially in the so-called Third World. Have PhD and about 335 reviews and articles. And some books.
Like it or not, errors occur throughout scholarly publishing. Some creep in, while others leap in... more Like it or not, errors occur throughout scholarly publishing. Some creep in, while others leap in. Some are utterly inconsequential, whereas others are foundational. Some result from the Rush to Pronounce, while others betray insufficient searches for, or misuse of, evidence. It falls to the academy to correct as many of these as possible, but there is a palpable reluctance to be bothered, as though correcting error were a second-rate activity. As a result, errors either go uncorrected or are corrected in conditions of lower visibility. In this article, the author discusses a few such examples and brings to bear some quantitative data to support the conclusion that, once insinuated into the public domain, errors continue to live on far more frequently than is desirable.
The authors of the set of essays on various aspects of reviewing recently published in ARD (no. 1... more The authors of the set of essays on various aspects of reviewing recently published in ARD (no. 102 [2007]:13-35) argue en ensemble that reviews continue to fill a function in scholarly communications-an unofficial system of checks and balances that can and often does set limits on how cases are presented to the public. I am less convinced of this than the authors, at least as to their value in the library acquisitions process. At any rate, the greater their value, the greater the need to optimize the production and reception by launching a number of reforms that would have the effect of providing this argument with grounds that could make it even stronger. Book reviews have long been touted as a means to influence institutional purchasing, not only of scholarly books but of all books. Focusing on the former, it strikes me that this could never have been much the case. In the days of print monopoly, substantive reviews appeared long after the books being reviewed did-anything less than a year could be considered almost miraculous. Sure, there were a few prominent organs (Times Literary Supplement, New York Review of Books, New York Times Book Review, etc.) designed to do nothing other than publish reviews, sometimes even before the books appeared in the marketplace. These still exist and still serve the same purpose, but then and even more so now, only a tiny fraction of published works could be attended to, and there was and is no reason to assume that this tiny fraction contained a disproportionate number of especially significant books, although being reviewed in these organs might have made them significant after the fact. Nowadays, of course, rather than holding a monopoly, print seems barely to be hanging on, derided by many as inadequate in the face of competing electronic formats. These have the capacity to offer book reviews more quickly than before and at whatever length a reviewer expounds but, like the TLS and others, the electronic review tools seem satisfied to publish only a few reviews, and very few works get multiple reviews across the band of electronic resources. So, while it is probably incorrect to argue that no research libraries depend on reviews to decide what to buy and what not to, it is surely the case that most such libraries, even those with qualified subject specialists, have accepted the obvious-and the expedient-and handed the task of supplying materials, especially university press publications, over to megaproviders such as Blackwell and YBP, under the hardly unreasonable assumption that these titles have already been vetted extensively enough to accept a priori that they belong in research library collections. By the time reviews of these imprints do appear, they have long since been acquired by libraries working under the assumption that they were fair grist for their mills. As to trade publications, expectations are lower, but materials are often ordered on the basis of prepublication announcements and the like, in which the only 'reviews' are the blurbs by friends of the authors that can often be found on die book jacket flap or back cover.1 In the circumstances it strikes me as highly inadvisable for libraries to wait on several reviews of a work before deciding whether to buy it, as apparently is the case at Rhodes House Library. Even with high-speed review organs such as Choice, it should be many months, and could be many years, before this occurs. Indeed, it is known to be the case that many, maybe most, academic tomes never receive as many as three reviews.2 This fact of life has little relationship to their quality, their price, or their promotion, but rather to the vagaries of the review process, not the least of which is available space and interest.3 Thus waiting for multiple reviews of any book could also be a case of waiting for Godot. And then what to do if the balance of the reviews is neither positive nor negative? On the other hand, that reviews provide "a significant amount of intellectual capital" that can prime librarians to meet the after-purchase needs of their users is less exceptionable, although it is worth distinguishing in this between reviews in library journals (usually terse and intended for librarians) and journals within the relevant disciplines. …
After returning from his third voyage to the New World, Columbus compiled the Libro de las Profec... more After returning from his third voyage to the New World, Columbus compiled the Libro de las Profecias, a notebook of biblical prophecies explaining his visions to his King and Queen. This work is reproduced here with the original Latin and Spanish texts and the English translation on facing pages.
The purpose of reference notes in scholarly writing is to provide readers with the opportunity to... more The purpose of reference notes in scholarly writing is to provide readers with the opportunity to learn more about an issue or to test an author's credibility. As such, they need to include whatever details are necessary to ensure that access be maximally efficient. These data should always include page numbers for both quotes and close paraphrases. Unfortunately, this practice is remarkably uncommon in the sciences and even the social sciences. Failure to include these data is also a failure of good epistemological practice.
This paper argues that interpretations which would view pre-colonial Akan political life as ‘norm... more This paper argues that interpretations which would view pre-colonial Akan political life as ‘normative’ and structured may be incorrect, at least in so far as stool succession is concerned. Contemporaneous evidence for this early period is at best sparse and at worst simply non-existent and seldom allows even tentative hypotheses. Rather, it is necessary to infer past practices from more recent data, whether this be observation of present behaviour or recent testimony about the past. In this case I have used the testimony presented at various stool and jurisdictional disputes during the colonial period for which records survive. These are generally, of course, ex parte statements and can be used only with caution. However, there is a surprising consensus throughout these records that both the principles and the patterns of stool succession and paramountcy in the pre-colonial period were variegated and even extemporaneous although, not surprisingly, there is much dispute about the re...
This essay treats the effects of acculturation on oral historical materials. Rather than addressi... more This essay treats the effects of acculturation on oral historical materials. Rather than addressing it as a matter of ‘contamination’, that is, as a question of extraneous data entering and distorting ‘pristine’ traditions, it is considered here to be a facet of the larger question of cultural assimilation – a case of the old and familiar constantly confronting and responding to the new and strange. Seen in this way, oral data continuously adopt and adapt whatever new, relevant and interesting materials come their way in not very different – though decidedly less visible – ways from those that written data have always done. This argument is illustrated by examples from various times and places, largely situations where missionaries, newly literate members, or colonial officials, perceptibly influenced the historical views of societies on their way to becoming literate.In fact this phenomenon seems widespread enough to justify advancing a model that can be tested against specific cas...
Like it or not, errors occur throughout scholarly publishing. Some creep in, while others leap in... more Like it or not, errors occur throughout scholarly publishing. Some creep in, while others leap in. Some are utterly inconsequential, whereas others are foundational. Some result from the Rush to Pronounce, while others betray insufficient searches for, or misuse of, evidence. It falls to the academy to correct as many of these as possible, but there is a palpable reluctance to be bothered, as though correcting error were a second-rate activity. As a result, errors either go uncorrected or are corrected in conditions of lower visibility. In this article, the author discusses a few such examples and brings to bear some quantitative data to support the conclusion that, once insinuated into the public domain, errors continue to live on far more frequently than is desirable.
The authors of the set of essays on various aspects of reviewing recently published in ARD (no. 1... more The authors of the set of essays on various aspects of reviewing recently published in ARD (no. 102 [2007]:13-35) argue en ensemble that reviews continue to fill a function in scholarly communications-an unofficial system of checks and balances that can and often does set limits on how cases are presented to the public. I am less convinced of this than the authors, at least as to their value in the library acquisitions process. At any rate, the greater their value, the greater the need to optimize the production and reception by launching a number of reforms that would have the effect of providing this argument with grounds that could make it even stronger. Book reviews have long been touted as a means to influence institutional purchasing, not only of scholarly books but of all books. Focusing on the former, it strikes me that this could never have been much the case. In the days of print monopoly, substantive reviews appeared long after the books being reviewed did-anything less than a year could be considered almost miraculous. Sure, there were a few prominent organs (Times Literary Supplement, New York Review of Books, New York Times Book Review, etc.) designed to do nothing other than publish reviews, sometimes even before the books appeared in the marketplace. These still exist and still serve the same purpose, but then and even more so now, only a tiny fraction of published works could be attended to, and there was and is no reason to assume that this tiny fraction contained a disproportionate number of especially significant books, although being reviewed in these organs might have made them significant after the fact. Nowadays, of course, rather than holding a monopoly, print seems barely to be hanging on, derided by many as inadequate in the face of competing electronic formats. These have the capacity to offer book reviews more quickly than before and at whatever length a reviewer expounds but, like the TLS and others, the electronic review tools seem satisfied to publish only a few reviews, and very few works get multiple reviews across the band of electronic resources. So, while it is probably incorrect to argue that no research libraries depend on reviews to decide what to buy and what not to, it is surely the case that most such libraries, even those with qualified subject specialists, have accepted the obvious-and the expedient-and handed the task of supplying materials, especially university press publications, over to megaproviders such as Blackwell and YBP, under the hardly unreasonable assumption that these titles have already been vetted extensively enough to accept a priori that they belong in research library collections. By the time reviews of these imprints do appear, they have long since been acquired by libraries working under the assumption that they were fair grist for their mills. As to trade publications, expectations are lower, but materials are often ordered on the basis of prepublication announcements and the like, in which the only 'reviews' are the blurbs by friends of the authors that can often be found on die book jacket flap or back cover.1 In the circumstances it strikes me as highly inadvisable for libraries to wait on several reviews of a work before deciding whether to buy it, as apparently is the case at Rhodes House Library. Even with high-speed review organs such as Choice, it should be many months, and could be many years, before this occurs. Indeed, it is known to be the case that many, maybe most, academic tomes never receive as many as three reviews.2 This fact of life has little relationship to their quality, their price, or their promotion, but rather to the vagaries of the review process, not the least of which is available space and interest.3 Thus waiting for multiple reviews of any book could also be a case of waiting for Godot. And then what to do if the balance of the reviews is neither positive nor negative? On the other hand, that reviews provide "a significant amount of intellectual capital" that can prime librarians to meet the after-purchase needs of their users is less exceptionable, although it is worth distinguishing in this between reviews in library journals (usually terse and intended for librarians) and journals within the relevant disciplines. …
After returning from his third voyage to the New World, Columbus compiled the Libro de las Profec... more After returning from his third voyage to the New World, Columbus compiled the Libro de las Profecias, a notebook of biblical prophecies explaining his visions to his King and Queen. This work is reproduced here with the original Latin and Spanish texts and the English translation on facing pages.
The purpose of reference notes in scholarly writing is to provide readers with the opportunity to... more The purpose of reference notes in scholarly writing is to provide readers with the opportunity to learn more about an issue or to test an author's credibility. As such, they need to include whatever details are necessary to ensure that access be maximally efficient. These data should always include page numbers for both quotes and close paraphrases. Unfortunately, this practice is remarkably uncommon in the sciences and even the social sciences. Failure to include these data is also a failure of good epistemological practice.
This paper argues that interpretations which would view pre-colonial Akan political life as ‘norm... more This paper argues that interpretations which would view pre-colonial Akan political life as ‘normative’ and structured may be incorrect, at least in so far as stool succession is concerned. Contemporaneous evidence for this early period is at best sparse and at worst simply non-existent and seldom allows even tentative hypotheses. Rather, it is necessary to infer past practices from more recent data, whether this be observation of present behaviour or recent testimony about the past. In this case I have used the testimony presented at various stool and jurisdictional disputes during the colonial period for which records survive. These are generally, of course, ex parte statements and can be used only with caution. However, there is a surprising consensus throughout these records that both the principles and the patterns of stool succession and paramountcy in the pre-colonial period were variegated and even extemporaneous although, not surprisingly, there is much dispute about the re...
This essay treats the effects of acculturation on oral historical materials. Rather than addressi... more This essay treats the effects of acculturation on oral historical materials. Rather than addressing it as a matter of ‘contamination’, that is, as a question of extraneous data entering and distorting ‘pristine’ traditions, it is considered here to be a facet of the larger question of cultural assimilation – a case of the old and familiar constantly confronting and responding to the new and strange. Seen in this way, oral data continuously adopt and adapt whatever new, relevant and interesting materials come their way in not very different – though decidedly less visible – ways from those that written data have always done. This argument is illustrated by examples from various times and places, largely situations where missionaries, newly literate members, or colonial officials, perceptibly influenced the historical views of societies on their way to becoming literate.In fact this phenomenon seems widespread enough to justify advancing a model that can be tested against specific cas...
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