Research Survey: Historians and Subscription Primary Source Databases

Though this survey is directed to historians, they want participants regardless of AHA membership. This is a chance to help inform the AHA about access to primary sources relevant to historical scholarship.

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The AHA is investigating access to research databases and other resources used by historians. Independent and unaffiliated scholars, as well as historians at smaller institutions often do not have access to subscription materials necessary for their work. We would like you to answer a few questions that will help us determine what we can do to help scholars with this problem. We are looking for responses from anyone who considers themselves a historian, regardless of AHA membership status, so please pass this survey on to your colleagues. Your responses will be extremely helpful to the AHA’s efforts to promote historical education and research, and we thank you for taking the time to help us gather this important information.

This survey is brief and should take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete. Please respond by October 4, 2017 and do not hesitate to contact zjackson@historians.org if you have any further questions or comments.

The purpose of this survey is to allow the AHA to look into the extent of the problem of access to digital primary and secondary source databases for historical research. Many proprietary databases are only offered through university or other institutional subscription and are thus only available to scholars whose institution subscribes. This means that scholars without affiliations and those at places that do not subscribe to the resource they need are unable to access the materials they need.

When answering these questions please think only of subscription digital research collections (either primary or secondary source), such as JSTOR, Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Proquest Historical Newspapers, etc. Do not list or refer to materials that can be accessed for free. This brief questionnaire has a maximum of 9 questions and should take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete.

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