Electronically generated records and twentieth century history

摘要

The electronic generation of documents in modern offices will trasform the nature of archives, and also the techniques of historical research. Although considerable attention has been directed to developing research methodologies for social and economic history using computerized numeric data, almost no attention has been paid to the impact of machine readable textual records on historical writing. This article considers the advantages and disadvantages for the historian of the shift from paper records to electronic documents, and suggests a number of approaches to historical research made possible by the new technology.