Daniel Evans's Dissertation Defense
PhD candidate Daniel Evans will present his dissertation defense, “The Layered Incompleteness of Historical Data:
Newspaper Directories and the Construction of the Bibliographic Record, 1869–1925.” His dissertation committee includes Assistant Professor Zoe LeBlanc, Professor J. Stephen Downie, Associate Professor Ryan Cordell, Associate Professor David Smith (Northeastern University).
Abstract
This dissertation examines how commercially produced newspaper directories shaped the historical record of the American press and how that record was subsequently remediated into digital data that scholars use today. Between 1869 and 1925, George P. Rowell & Co. and N.W. Ayer & Son compiled annual directories that listed thousands of newspapers across the United States, and recorded their locations, circulation figures, political affiliations, publication frequencies, and physical dimensions. Although produced as instruments of the advertising market rather than as bibliographic reference works, these directories were widely adopted by librarians, historians, and other scholars as authoritative inventories of the nineteenth-century press. This dissertation critically examines that adoption and the reasoning behind the adoption of these directories by developing a framework called layered incompleteness, which models how gaps in historical datasets are produced at multiple stages by distinct actors operating under various, and sometimes competing, incentives.
Questions? Contact Daniel Evans.