Abstracts, online searching, and the humanities: An analysis of the structure and content of abstracts of historical discourse

This dissertation is an exploratory investigation into the inherent structure and content of well-formed abstracts of historical discourse. Discussions by philosophers of history and text linguists concerned with the nature of historical knowledge and its representation serve as the theoretical basis for the characteristics of "well-formedness." Three empirical inquiries, using content analysis, survey and interview techniques, and iterative category formation, supplement these perspectives with the goal of developing appropriate guidelines for abstracting historical literature.;In the first phase of the research, the content of abstracts of chemical, psychological, and historical literature were compared to the abstracting standards set forth by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The ANSI/ISO content categories of scope and purpose, methodology, results, and conclusions, only accounted for less than forty percent of the sentences in the history abstracts. The primary finding is that while the ANSI/ISO Standards seem to be appropriate guidelines for surrogation of scientific writing, they do not relate to the nature of historical discourse nor do they match the reality of available commercial or author-generated abstracts of history.;In the second phase, historians were interviewed concerning their information needs and information-seeking behaviors regarding relevant published materials. The respondents were also asked for their opinions concerning the characteristics of ideal abstracts for the field of history. The content of reference requests entered into the online versions of ABC-Clio's bibliographic databases, America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts were also analyzed.;From these document- and user-oriented investigations, a framework of essential information for abstracts of historical discourse was developed and tested vis-a-vis the content of historical abstracts. A new set of guidelines is proposed including the following types of information: specific dates and time span indicators; names of geo-political units; names of individuals, groups, institution, and organizations; identification of events; key topical terms; historical and historiographical context; purpose and scope of the text; the author's main theses; description of methodologies; and identification of primary sources. Design specifications necessary for an optimal information storage and retrieval (ISAR) system for the field of history are outlined.