Data from the Archives Listserv

I performed a search by the topic of “government secrecy” at the Archives & Archivists Listserv archive to look how this topic is discussed by the users. The findings were not surprising, and are explained below.

More than for doing an in-depth analysis of the discourse, I performed this search because of two main goals. First, by using quantitative data, show that in fact the issues on government secrecy does not generate extensive discussion in the listserv. Indeed, the data shows that the majority of the postings related to secrecy are links or texts of news from the press or other organizations. Second, although the discourse does not see extensive, with the compiled data I was able to identify specific topics which generate some discussion in the listserv and I will compare the discourse of these discussions with the press discourse about these issues.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of hits resulting from searching the listserv archive with the topic “government secrecy.” With the exception of the category “Archivists comments,” the rest of the categories are just links to news, text of bulletins from other organizations (like “Secrecy News”) and announcement to events, like talks that covers issues of government secrecy. Only on 19 of the 69 hits, or 27 percent, there are discussions about some news related to secrecy and archives. It is important to point out that the search I performed was using the specific phrase “government secrecy.” I also performed a Boolean search (government AND secrecy) that generated over 500 hits. However, because the search engine was retrieving data that included both words in any part of the text, many of them were not really related to what my research is intended. Furthermore, randomly looking at the hits, I believe that the statistics, in terms of percentage, were not going to be significantly different.

Starting the literature review

I'm starting to write the draft for my literature review and I have found usefull to write few paragraphs to explain where I'm going with this project and how the literature review fits into the my research project. In the final version this will be part of the introduction, which will be the last section I will write. This is part of what I have written so far:

During the two terms of President Bush administration government secrecy has became a continuum topic that has raised questions even on the foundations of the country. Just as the moment I’m writing this paper, there’s a clash between the White House and Congress asking White House top officials to testify about the firings of U.S. attorneys, an investigation that relies also in the release of documents. While critics have been warning about the damage that secrecy does to democratic governments, supporters defend secrecy on the ground of the so-called “war on terror,” and the argument that the attacks on September 11 2001 “changed everything.”

This period of time calls for a better understanding on the concept of government secrecy, which should be studied from three different perspectives: historical background, theoretical framework, and a qualitative analysis of how this issue is viewed from the general public perspective. In this paper, the first two perspectives will be discussed in the literature review. Because the third perspective is broad and researcher can utilize a variety of approaches, I will concentrate on applying discourse analysis and content analysis to study the concept of government secrecy from the perspective of the press. As part of this analysis, I will apply the theoretical framework discussed in the literature review.

In terms of the data, I have been able to gather a good amount of articles from the Washington Times. A also found articles from other conservative periodicals like The Weekly Standard and Human Events. However, there are not many articles about secrecy from these publications, compared to the "liberal" newspapers like NY Times and Washington Post.

Reading response: Week 10

The Interpretive Process (The Qualitative Research Companion, Chapter 14)

While I was reading Norman K. Denzin’s essay about interpretive process I used my research project to go through the process. This helped me have a clearer idea of where I’m right now in the project and how I will develop it.

Although Denzin explains that “the subject matter of interpretive studies always biographical,” (p. 364) I believe it can also be applied to non-biographical studies, like analyzing text and any other kind of research. Like for every research progress, this process implies doing literature review, gathering data, analyzing data and writing a final report. I will mention the different steps of the process and I will relate it to my project.

1. Framing the research question

Denzin states that for the interpretive process the research question should be a how question instead of a why question. This is because “interpretive studies examine how problematic, turning-point experiences are organized, perceived, constructed, and given meaning by interacting individuals.” (p. 351) In the case of my project, I came up with two main how questions.

How different is the discourse in the press about government secrecy before and after 9/11?

How the importance of records is discussed in the discourse about government secrecy in the press for the past 14 years?

For the first question, the events of 9/11 can be established as the “problematic” and “turning-point” experience, this time not just in some individuals, but to a whole society. This question drives me into a lot of interest because of what I have found in the literature and by what is generally discuss in the media about 9/11, which is the comment that “9/11 changed the world,” using this as a justification for more secrecy. That’s why I’m splitting the research before and after 9/11. In terms of the second question, my main purpose is to interpret how archives, records, and recordkeeping systems outside the archival profession, in this case by the media. It has the purpose to call archivists about the importance of understanding how these aspects are viewed outside our profession.

2. Deconstructing prior conceptions of the phenomenon

This step is basically the preparation of the literature review for the research project. It should involve looking about prior conceptions of the topic, interpreting these conceptions and looking for gaps in the literature that need further research.

3. Capturing the phenomenon

Denzin indicates that “capture deals with what the researcher is doing with the phenomenon in the present, in his or her study.” (p. 354) I relate this step with data gathering, which in my case is retrieving editorial pieces from 6 major newspapers about the topic of government secrecy.

4. Bracketing the phenomenon

Once the researcher has captured the phenomenon, or gathering the data, it moves into defining and analyzing its structured. I related this step with the process of coding. When the researching is coding, he/she is restructuring the data in common concepts that would help him/her find trends and to better analyze the data. Which is the next step in the interpretive process: constructing the phenomenon.

5. Constructing the phenomenon

6. Contextualizing the phenomenon

Here is where the researcher interprets what he/she has constructed trough coding, in my case. This contextualization is finally redacted in a final report, which should includes (as explained by Silverman in chapter 10): introduction, literature review, methodology, data chapter and conclusion. (Silverman, p. 338)

Open government

David L. Hudson, Jr., ed., Open Government: An American Tradition Faces National Security, Privacy, and Other Challenges (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005)

Richard A. Chapman and Michael Hunt, Open Government in a Theoretical and Practical Context (England: Ashgate, 2006)

Reading the foreword and the introduction of David L. Hudson’s Open Government offers high expectations about the content of the book. The book is structure in a way that present a point and a counterpoint about specific issues related to open government. Alan Marzilli states in the foreword that “[p]erhaps more important is that listening to the other side sometimes helps one to see an opponent’s arguments in a more human way.” (p. 6) In the introduction is stated that the book examines four specific issues on open government: 1) should cameras in be permitted in courtrooms?, 2) whether FOIA’s privacy exemptions balance open government and privacy, 3) whether the press should have the right of access to the battlefield, and 4) whether the government is properly balancing open access and security during the “Age of Terror.” (p. 15) I’m interested in the last three issues.
These high expectations came to an end when I started reading the rest of the book. Basically the points and counterpoints are developed by using specific examples, sometimes just one example, that gave me the impression were used to just accommodate the authors’ personal opinions. These discussions are not accompanied by reference to past literature about the corresponding issue. In sum, by reading the book I just concluded that there are cases that demonstrate both opposing aspects about open government. Nothing new.
What I liked about the book is that is easy to read, and that within each essay it includes questions for the reader that can help to develop a more in-depth discussion.

Chapman and Hunt’s Open Government in a Theoretical and Practical Context, in the other hand, offers a broad and useful discussion of the concept of open government and its implications. In chapter 1, Michael Hunt and Richard A. Chapman discuss the concepts of open government and freedom of information. They point out that the discussion about secrecy and access to information is centered. They indicate: “The debate has therefore focused on the appropriate balance between these two sets of demands with the government slowly conceding ground in the face of increasing public awareness of both the limitations of closed government and the benefits to be derived from greater knowledge about the way that decisions are taken in government. What has not been discussed in this debate is the meaning of secrecy, its purpose in government or the related issue of privacy.” (p. 1) Hunt and Chapman argue that open government and freedom of information are not necessarily the same. In one hand, openness is limited in terms that offers what the government wants to make available, while freedom of information reflects a right of members of the public to access whatever information they wish.
Geoffrey Hunt makes an analysis of freedom of information, public accountability and whistleblowing using the Principle of Complementary (Chapter 5). This theory means the following: in a relationship between authority A and client C, A should provide account when C asks for it. If A do not comply, then C has the right to hold A accountable. Applying this theory to government, Hunt indicates that “freedom of information embodies the idea that since democratic government is accountable to citizens it has a moral duty to provide information about its activities to citizens on demand unless there is a good reason for not doing so.” (p. 44)Robert Behrens’ essay “Openness: A Perspective from the Committee on Standards in Public Life” called my attention for the use of quantitative and qualitative methods for the committees’ reports. The committee prepared a survey and conducted focus groups to study the public attitudes to openness. The focus groups, 15 in total, were used to attend the lack of research from the Commission regarding public standards of conduct in public life. These focus groups were then complemented with a survey conducted to a sample of 1,097 adults aged 18 or over. This study shows the advantages of triangulation on research.

Research project: some replication

I found two articles written by Jukka Torronen in which he uses the same methodology I’m planning to do for my topic. Focusing on the topic of alcohol legislation, Torronen analyzed editorial articles from six newspapers during the period of 1993-2000 (“The Finnish press’s political position on alcohol between 1993 and 2000,” Addiction 98 (2003): 281-290). He selected approximately 200 articles and used ATLAS.ti to code the texts. He then analyzed the data using theories of discourse analysis and argumentative discourse. The paper includes a table with the terms selected for coding and quantitative data relating the topics to the articles. Torronen used the same approach for another paper, “Finnish newspapers’ positions on drug policy between 1993 and 2000,” Contemporary Drug Problems 31 (Spring 2004): 59-88.

I have also prepared an outline for my literature review and included a bibliography for its respective parts. The outline is as follows:

I. Introduction

II. Government secrecy literature

A. General literature

Feinberg, LE, “FOIA, federal information policy, and information availability in a post-9/11 world,” Government Information Quarterly 21, no. 4 (2004): 439-460

Gibbs, David N., “Secrecy and International Relations,” Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 2 (1995): 213-228

Gleditsch, Nils Petter and Einar Hogetveit, “Freedom of Information in National Security Affairs: A Comparative Study of Norway and the United States,” Journal of Peace Research 21, no. 1 (1984): 17-45

Keen, Mike Forrest, “The Freedom of Information Act and Sociological Research,” American Sociologist 23, Issue 2 (Summer 92): 43-51

Relyea, Harold C., “Government Secrecy: policy Depths and Dimensions,” Government Information Quarterly 20, no. 4 (Oct. 2003): 395-418

Roberts, Alasdair S., Blacked out: government secrecy in the information age (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Roberts, Alasdair, “National Security and Open Government,” Georgetown Public Policy Review 9, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 69-85

Rozell, Mark J., Executive Privilege: The Dilemma of Secrecy and Democratic Accountability (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994)

Sleeman, B, “Recent Literature on Government Information,” Journal of Government Information 30, no. 4 (2004): 490-493

Smock, Raymond W., “Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy? Accessing Government Records in the Wake of 9/11/2001,” The Public Historian 25, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 123-127

Theoharis, Athan G. (ed.) A Culture of Secrecy: The Government Versus the People’s Right to Know (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1998)

B. Literature from archivists and records managers

Blanton, Thomas, “The World’s Right to Know,” Foreign Policy no. 131 (Jul/Aug 2002): 50-58

Connors, Thomas James, "The Bush Administration and "Information Lockdown"," in Margaret Procter, Michael Cook and Caroline Williams (eds.) Political Pressure and the Archival Record (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006)

Cox, Richard J., "The National Archives Reclassification Scandal," Records & Information Management Report: Issues in Information Technology 22, no. 9 (November 2006)

III. Research literature

A. Discourse analysis, content analysis and argumentative analysis

Kopperschmidt, J., “An Analysis of Argumentation,” in Teun A. Van Dijk (ed.) Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Vol. II: Dimensions of Discourse (London: Academic Press, 1985): 159-168

Van Eemeren, F.H. and P. Houtlosser, “Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse,” Discourse Studies 1, no. 4 (1999): 479-497

B. The press as a source for qualitative research

Meer, Nasar, ““Get Off Your Knees”: Print Media Public Intellectuals and Muslims in Britain,” Journalism Studies 7, no. 1 (2006): 35-59

Richardson, John E., “’Now is the Time to Put an End to All This’: Argumentative Discourse Theory and ‘Letters to the Editor’,” Discourse & Society 12 (2001): 143-168

Rojecki, Andrew, “Media Discourse on Globalization and Terror,” Political Communication 22 (2005): 63-81

Torronen, Jukka, “The Passionate Text: The Pending Narrative as a Macrostructure of Persuasion,” Social Semiotics 10, no. 1 (2000): 81-98

Torronen, Jukka, “The Finnish press’s political position on alcohol between 1993 and 2000,” Addiction 98 (2003): 281-290

Torronen, Jukka, “Finnish newspapers’ positions on drug policy between 1993 and 2000,” Contemporary Drug Problems 31 (Spring 2004): 59-88

IV. Conclusions

Reading response: Week 9

Ethics in qualitative research

On Silverman’s chapter about research ethics I came across Table 9.3 (p. 327) and though about answering these ethical questions relating it with my research project. These are my answers:

1. What is the purpose(s) of your research?

My main purpose is to preserve an archival perspective to the issue of government secrecy and advocate for the importance to archivists to understand it ramifications. It also have a self-advancement purpose given that this is a topic that probably will be part of my dissertation topic.

2. Which individuals or groups might be interested or affected by your research topic?

I hope archivists and records managers became more interested in the topic.

3. What are the implications for these parties of framing your research topic in the way you have done?

I see this in some way as a call for archivists to a more proactive attitude on issues of secrecy and access of government records. But because of the type of project and I see that it will have more direct implications to myself, not only on understanding better this topic but also on me been a more active archivist. I relate this with what Silverman points out when indicating that “[i]nevitably, your personal biography will be involved in topic selection.” (p. 327)

Silverman talks about research ethics focusing on the relationship between the researcher and the subjects. Indeed, it seems that he undermines the ethical issues when studying texts for qualitative research. Talking about Max Weber, he says: “From an ethical point of view, Weber was fortunate in that much of his empirical research was based on documents and texts that were already in the public sphere.” (p. 316) Even if the documents are public, I believe there are ethical implications, specially on how the researcher use the data to come to his/her conclusions. Is the researcher willing to accept that he/she was wrong after studying the data? Or will he/she interpret the data in a way that will accommodate his/her personal beliefs and hypothesis? Documentary editing is a good example of this kind of actions.

Interviews

Regarding Gorman and Clayton’s chapter about interviews, the discussion can be summarized in two main aspects: preparation and control of the interview process. On preparing the questions it is important to ask ourselves if the questions relate with what the researcher is looking for and if it will offer the opportunity to obtain information that he/she doesn’t know (p. 129). With good preparation the researcher will be better equipped to control the interview process and face any situation that arises from it. I think this is important when conducting open-ended interviews, which in one hand offers the opportunity to gather a broader spectra of data, but in the other hand it presents the risk of causing a discussion not related to the research topic.

Research project: gathering data

The main data for my research project will come from newspapers. I started gathering articled from the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. I will also analyze data from the Wall Street Journal and other conservative newspapers. I have been doing searches on the topic of “government secrecy” looking at articles dating from 1992. One advantage of looking at articles dating back to 1992 is that I will be able to analyze the press discourse during two different presidential administrations, one democrat and the other republican. To limit my search, I’m concentrating on looking at editorials. This is because editorials will offer me a better perspective on the discourse about secrecy given that editorials are opinions about the topic, instead of just describing the news. In the case of the Chronicle of Higher Education, it will be useful because many of the articles include the opinions and perspectives from historians, political scientists and other researchers.

For what I have been looking so far, it seems data from the archives listserv and the records managers’ listserv will not be as useful as expected. This is because the vast majority of posts are just links to other news. So in this case I will use this for quantitative purposes to demonstrate one of my impressions that archivists and records managers are not engaged in discussions about the role of archives on government secrecy. So I think this part will lead me to present questions that should be addressed in the future, and that will need further qualitative research.

The aspect in which I’m struggling is on how I’m going to code the data. I’ll need to look for more information about this aspect of research.

Week 8: Readings response

I will like to comment on Gorman and Clayton’s explanation of the nominal group technique (NGT).This technique is given following a number of steps which includes: participants writing down silently their responses to a question, brainstorming, discussion and a final vote to rank the importance of the ideas. Although it seems that this technique offers an advantage to the researcher to develop a group discussion on a better organize way, I wonder how much this could affect the data gathered for qualitative analysis. One of the main characteristics of qualitative research is its flexibility in the way the researcher gather data by doing in-depth interviews and focus groups. Does NGT limit the participant’s explanation of his/her views? Gorman and Clayton indicate that one of the disadvantages of NGT is that the researcher can only address one issue at a time (p. 154). Can this be a limitation to analyze the participants’ opinions in a broader sense?

Some light at the end of the tunnel

One of my main struggles in my project is the difficulty to find articles about government secrecy which present a theoretical framework and empirical evidence to explain the theories. I finally found a very good article which addresses these issues. David N. Gibbs’s article titled “Secrecy and International Relations” (Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 2 1995: p. 213-228) explains three theories to analyze government secrecy, focusing on foreign policy. These theories are: External Threat approach, Bureaucratic Politics approach, and Internal Threat approach. External Threat means that government use secrecy when concern with national security, specially to conceal information they don’t want other countries to know. Bureaucratic Politics suggests that information is classified because of arcane feuds or operating procedures. Finally, Internal Threat indicates that secrecy is used to mislead the public of their policies. The latter is the theory more vastly explained by the author and it uses the crisis at Congo in the 1960s as an example to support this theory. Relating this article to my project, I’m looking into more literature about these theories, with emphasis on more recent publications. In addition, some questions have come into mi mind related to the data I’ll be analyzing. Which is the approach that better explains the press discourse on government secrecy? What about the discourse from archival professional organizations, political scientists, and historians?

Regarding the data, I already started saving newspaper articles from different sources dating from the early 1990s. I will be analyzing only editorial pieces, which would present a better opportunity to analyze the arguments of the press, instead of looking at news events.

Some notes about this week's readings:

Hammersley indicates that “the goal of ethnographic research is to discover and represent faithfully the true nature of social phenomena.” (H&M, p. 66). To reach this goal, researchers use ethnography to submerge into in-depth participant observations, fieldwork, and in-depth interviews. What is different from other methodologies is that in ethnography the researcher experience the setting firsthand. In other words, the researcher role in the setting is much more than an outsider writing observations. Hammersley states that one of the most valuable features of ethnography is “its commitment to seeking to understand the perspectives of others, rather than simply judging them as true or false.” This approach is not exempt, however, from the debate on whether this methodology can be used to develop a strong theory, or if it is just an approach to present a descriptive story of a particular setting.

How ethnography is placed into practice? The descriptions given in John Van Maanen’s essay (H&M, Ch. 5) and Silverman’s chapter 3 basically calls for paying careful attention to details, which can be accomplish with discipline and practice. Specifically on fieldnotes, both Van Maanen and Silverman indicates that at the same time the researcher is making observation, he/she is also analyzing the data collected.

Week 6 Readings Response

The concept of qualitative research is mostly related to doing interviews and observations. Indeed, most of the discussions on the literature about this methodology give emphasis to these techniques. However, the analysis of texts from documents at the archives, or the internet or other mediums also offers a strong tool to develop qualitative research.

Chapter 10 in Gorman and Clayton explains how to do historical investigation and how this methodology can be applied to qualitative research. Although sometimes historical research is wrongfully related to just doing a description of events, its real value relies in that is a strong tool to answer the questions of why and how. In addition, it helps to study the context in which events took place. (see p. 173).

Just like other methodologies, doing historical investigation requires discipline and organization. In particular, emphasize is given in the importance of critically approaching historical sources and note taking. A critical approach of historical sources requires, among other things, analyzing the authenticity of the documents and its reliability. Finally, I will like to point out the fact that doing historical research does not mean that the researcher will not be able to study all the sources available, or even be able to find all the evidence (p. 168). About the latter, this is one of the mayor obstacles that researchers using government records face when dealing with issues of classification and government secrecy. Athan G. Theoharis explains how the study of the cold war era is adversely affected by the culture of secrecy indicating that “classification restrictions in effect ensured a distorted understanding of presidential decisions and priorities.” Because of this, researchers face the following dilemma: “how to interpret a knowingly incomplete record?” (Theharis, A Culture of Secrecy: The Government Versus the People’s Right to Know, p. 4)

From Silverman’s chapter on texts I found very useful his explanations about content analysis, both from and quantitative and a qualitative approach. This is form special interest of me because good part of my project will involve doing this type of research. What I see as essential for this type of analysis is the process of establishing categories, coding data, to be able to group the data in an organize way.

Some notes on my literature review

Looking into the literature about government secrecy I have found some interesting descriptions that will help me establish a broader background on the topic. This will lead me eventually to have a better understanding on the specific issues I will be analyzing. So I decided to post some comments on what I have found so far. Eventually I will post a most formal annotated bibliography, so this is a starting point.

Harold C. Relyea presents a very good overview of the history of government secrecy within the federal government in his article “Government secrecy: policy depths and dimensions” (Government Information Quarterly 20 (2003): 395-418). With this overview from the beginnings of the republic, when there were no specific policies for secrecy but where it “was sometimes exercised as a practical necessity,” to the policies established after 9/11, Relyea calls for more in-depth research. One of the events that called my attention was the signing by Pres. Truman of E.O. 10290 on September 24, 1951. This order strengthened the President’s discretion to make secrecy policy and created broader concepts that could led the creation of more official secrets. The consequence of this order was widespread criticism from the public and the press. Relyea does not goes into the specifics of this criticism, but it could be interesting to study it and compare it with the current discourse.

Relyea also argues that the government must keep in mind that secrecy they impose is momentary and that “the citizenry, in turn, accept such secrecy only in limited instances and on a momentary basis in order to have the confidence that their representatives are making decisions and policies acceptable to them.” (p. 412) However, he fails to be more specific in this argument. Because he concentrates on presenting a historical background, he does not show evidence in this regard. It is true that society accepts secrecy in limited instances, or are they willing to let the government be more secret (without holding it accountable) in the name of national security? Which are the bases of this argument?

Most of the literature I have found comes from political science journals like Government Information Quarterly. So far, I haven’t found significant literature about government secrecy from archival journals, which does not surprise me. In fact, this is one of the reasons I want to do this project. These are other articles I have found:

Feinberg, LE, “FOIA, federal information policy, and information availability in a post-9/11 world,” Government Information Quarterly 21, no. 4 (2004): 439-460

Sleeman, B, “Recent Literature on Government Information,” Journal of Government Information 30, no. 4 (2004): 490-493

Perritt, Henry H., “Open Government,” Government Information Quarterly 14, no. 4 (1997): 397-406

Lewis, Jeremy R. T., “Reinventing (Open) Government: State and Federal Trends,” Government Information Quarterly 12, no. 4 (1995): 427-455

Rieder, Rem, “Hold That Obit,” American Journalism Review 27, no. 2 (Apr/May 2005): 6

I will like also to find literature using qualitative research to study government secrecy, like case studies or articles on how to apply qualitative research to analyze topics on government issues. Any recommendations are welcome.

Readings response: Week 4

“The objectives of qualitative research are to discover, describe and analyze the complexities of common phenomena through observation and involvement in a research setting.” (Gorman & Clayton: p. 182)

To fulfill these objectives we need to clearly define our research methodology, which is done after an initial process of preliminary preparation as explained in the readings for last week (see Gorman & Clayton, Ch. 3). Preparing the methodology also encompasses identified which strategies will be used to collect data (interviews, focus groups, observations or texts analysis). Chapter 6 of Silverman brakes down these data gathering strategies into to main concepts. One concept is research-provoked data, which applies to interviews and focus groups. The other concept is naturally occurring data, which applies to observations and analysis of written text. Is one better than the other? I think than more important than arguing if naturally occurring data is better that research-provoked data, or vice versa, what is important is that the methodology (or methodologies) selected eventually will present strong evidence to support the researcher’s findings. Or as Silverman indicates: “have the researchers demonstrated successfully why we should believed them? And does the research problem tackled have theoretical and/or practical significance?” (Silverman, p. 237)

This week readings deal more with the concept of naturally occurring data, and more specific on fieldwork. By engaging in fieldwork, the researcher “’inserts’ his or her presence into the natural setting of the subjects.” (G&C, p. 65) This explanation of fieldwork reminds me of the methodology of archival ethnography, which has as its main purpose for the researcher to became immerse in the archive’s daily work. Dr. Karen Gracy used this methodology for her doctoral dissertation and explain it in her article “Documenting Communities of Practice: Making the Case for Archival Ethnography” (Archival Science 2004, vol. 4).

From the readings of Gorman and Clayton, which explains in details how to use fieldwork and what are the different strategies for note-taking, I will like to mention two important issues. First, good note taking is am acquired skill that needs a lot of practice. This discipline of note taking also requires that the research not only records his or her observations, but also is recommended that he or she should look at the data soon after the session is finished to add other notes that are not recorded. Second, just as for the rest of the methodologies and strategies, there’s the issue of error and bias in note taking (see G & C, p. 190). To face this issue, Gorman and Clayton recommend that the researcher could control bias “through the practice of building trustworthiness.” (p. 191) I will add that to build trustworthiness, the most important aspect is to keep and present strong evidence of the researcher’s data, methodology and findings.

Ideas about my research project

After searching for more information to start working in my research project, I have found that my initial idea of studying the concept of evidence and archives in the case of Pinochet regime will be very difficult to work during this semester (mainly because of the limitations with data). I came across Alasdair Roberts book “Blacked out: government secrecy in the information age” and found very interesting one his argument that even though the current government has been trying to increase government secrecy, the development of new information technologies has also increase the leaking of secret information (ex. Abu Garib scandal). As he indicates, “from a technical point of view – leaking was also easier than ever before.” (Roberts: p. 73) These kind of discussions are of interest of me, specially on analyzing the archival implications of government secrecy.

Following Gorman and Clayton discussion in Chapter 3 (specifically on p. 39) on thinking about research design, I’m establishing a possible framework for my project:
- What should be the focus?
I will like to focus on studying the discourse on government secrecy in the United States. What are the arguments that the press has present discussing government secrecy in the past 25 to 30 years? What about groups and organizations? And more important, what is the discourse from the archival profession?
- How should this be studied?
This question deals with the possible data sources I’ll be studying. These sources will include newspaper articles (specially op-ed), selected organizations websites, archives listserve, records manager listserve. In addition, I will be reviewing the literature related to this topic.

I still struggling on developing a more specific framework, and is very probable that I will need to narrow my topic (narrow it by a specific period of time, or by specific cases).

Some notes on this week readings:
I found Ch. 3 of Gorman & Clayton the most useful of the readings for this week, probably because what is explained here is where we are right know on our research project (selecting a topic, initial questions, etc.). In addition, it includes an explanation on the relationship of historical research with qualitative research (p. 42-43). Most of the discussions about qualitative research concentrate on the methods of observation and interviewing. But as explained by Gorman & Clayton, “although the historical method is often overlooked in qualitative research texts, it certainly embodies most of the characteristics of qualitative methodology.” (p. 42) By understanding and analyzing the historical context of organizations or events, we will also understand “its historical roots, its evolution over time.” (p. 42) It would be interesting to do a more in depth analysis on why historical research is overlooked in the literature about qualitative research.

Reading response: Week 3

“To put it more directly but quite indelicately, no one cares what we think – the scholarly community only cares what we can demonstrate.” (King et al.: p. 15)

This quote is the one that most called my attention in the readings. It also summarizes in some may what I think is one of the main ideas for this week’s readings: the importance of evidence in research. Not only the researcher needs to study the literature about his/her topic and establish a strong research methodology, but in the end he/she needs to demonstrate that the project is a significant contribution to the field. For example, in discussing reliability as part of the evaluation of qualitative research, Gorman & Clayton states,

"In qualitative research, because it is frequently the researcher who acts as ‘instrument’ or data gatherer, it is difficult to establish the reliability of the researcher. However, if the researcher notes his or her own assumptions and biases so that these may, if necessary, be discounted; fully and carefully explains the data gathering procedures used; keeps thorough notes; and uses multiple sources of data to verify observations, then we are more likely to accept these data as reliable." (p. 24)

In their explanation about the various criteria for choosing a research question, King et al. list a number of possibilities researchers can look at to make a contribution to the scholarly literature. (King, et al.: p. 16- 17) All six possibilities listed are closely related to evidence. Even if the research is to strengthen or disagree in accepted hypothesis, or to bring into attention an important topic that has been overlook in the literature, the goal of your research will be to demonstrate with strong evidence the answers to your questions.

As discussed last week, and in most of the readings, one of the main criticisms to qualitative research is that the project can be very much influenced by the researcher’s personal perspectives, and though this can cause questions to the research’s validity. However, and in some way different from quantitative research, the goal of qualitative research is not to produce standard results that can be replicated by other researchers studying the same situation. The real goal is “to produce a coherent and illuminating description of and perspective on a situation that is based on and consistent with detailed study of that situation.” (Ward in Huberman & Miles: p. 174) What is important in terms of validity is that the researcher can show strong evidence supporting his or her work, which is what Ward calls “internal validity.”

Week 2: Reading response

In one of my courses at Michigan I did a study about the Gerarld Ford Presidential Library. As part of the assignment, I was asked to observe members of the staff, specially how they interact with users at the reference room. Because the number of researchers visiting the library was so low (basically one or two daily), I decided to make my observations by becoming a researcher and experience the process users go through at the library. Without knowing, I was basically doing some sort of qualitative research, and this experience came regularly into my mind while reading the assigned chapters. As Gorman and Clayton states, qualitative research “is something that every information professional does instinctively almost every working day.” (Gorman and Clayton: p. 1)

Although qualitative research is rising as a strong methodology option, this does not means it is not out from strong criticism. One of the main arguments is from those who consider qualitative research as soft. Furthermore, some argue that while quantitative research reports reality, qualitative research can be affected by the researcher’s political values (Silverman: p. 35) However, these arguments doesn’t does not takes into consideration that also analysis of quantitative data is not free from different interpretations. Silverman presents as an example the skepticism of the general public on government statistics (Silverman: p. 38).

Taking the different arguments for or against qualitative research aside, I think that it is more important to analyze how both research methodologies can be mixed for a stronger research (see Silverman: p. 48). Gorman and Clayton explain that by combining both methodologies, “the researcher is able to address different aspects of the same research question, thereby extending the breadth of the project.” (Gorman and Clayton: p. 12) For example, most of the research done on digitization and digital preservation in archives has concentrated on surveys and statistics (quantitative methods). Because of these studies, archivists are aware of the challenges and issues we face on this area. However, there’s a gap on understanding how archives face these challenges in their institutions. How they apply the recommendations for digital preservation? How this affects the organizational culture of the archive and other responsibilities? Numbers can’t offer answers to these questions. Here is where qualitative research can be helpful.

Finally, I found very interesting Gherardi and Turner discussion about the importance of research communication, and specially about regular writing as a research skill. They state: “The goal of writing every day not only helps avoid writing blocks, but gives regular practice to the qualitative researcher in externalizing thoughts about the issues and evidence of the research in hand.” (Huberman and Miles, ed.: p. 94)