For more than four years, I’ve been working on a digital legal history project called 9CHRIS – the 9th Circuit Historical Records Index System. The potential for historical analysis that comes from having some 40,000 briefs and transcripts available is what keeps me perpetually interested in continuing to improve this project. Each time I open one of the documents, I think of the potential that such rich detail can offer to historians and others studying the West, especially the relationship between western places, western residents, and the law.

I’ve created a system to help index digitized court records from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. These documents, which include legal briefs and trial transcripts, can be a fascinating source for western history. They were saved by the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, then digitized by the Internet Archive, and span the period from 1891 to the late 1960s. Head over to 9CHRIS, the 9th Circuit Historical Records Index System and have a look!

In June 2021, the Mining History Association held its annual meeting in a virtual format for the first time, due to COVID-19. As incoming President of the organization, after ceremoniously “accepting” the official mining pick of office, I delivered the traditional presidential address via Zoom. The talk, titled “Big and Small, They Mined Them All: Thinking About Scale in Mining History,” was really my chance to talk about the modern Nevada gold mining boom and specifically the Carlin Trend.

In working with manuscript census materials, modern data derived from them, and published documents from the Census Bureau, I found myself coming back to particular resources time and again. In a hope this might be of use to someone else, I’ve put together this list of those I use most frequently. If you have suggestions or corrections, please contact me or leave a note in the comments, below. Manuscript materials Main page for manuscript population schedules, 1790–1930, digitized from NARA microfilm, hosted on the Internet Archive: https://archive.

As I’ve noted before, manuscript records collected by the census can be fascinating and informative windows to the past. They can be used to learn more about groups of people that appear only occasionally in the historical record, and since they are generally well-structured, they can be used (with care) to ask data-driven historical questions. When most historians think of using historical census sources, it’s the forms from the decennial census of population that come immediately to mind.

Census microdata, such as that produced by the NAPP project, can help illuminate interesting issues surrounding work and labor. Investigating the history of work using microdata must begin with the questions asked by the census enumerators about employment. These varied depending on the country and year, but were generally quite simple. For example, the U.S. 1880 census form had two questions pertaining to work, and a third that hinted toward labor as well.

Historians often try not to fall in love with our sources, but sometimes I just can’t help it. For me, aside from the chatty personal journal (what historian can resist?) and the underground mine maps I’ve studied for years, my greatest fondness may be for big compilations of small bits of data, called microdata. What’s microdata? It’s small bits of information that, by themselves, might be virtually useless, but when aggregated and analyzed can show bigger trends.

This post is an explanation of the napptools scripts, including how they transform NAPP download files into a SQLite database. The tools napptools consists of three script programs: napp2csv.sh: A Bash script that uses traditional unix tools cut, sed, and tr to chop a NAPP data file into its respective columns, guided by a SAS-format command file. This also creates secondary tables in .CSV format from the variable descriptions in the SAS file.

Sometimes one just wants to query some data, right? I recently found myself again wanting to query the excellent work of the Supreme Court Database (SCDB for short), which is an important resource for legal historians and political scientists of all stripes. Several years ago, I pulled together a quick SQLite database and have used it since then. It’s now time to generate a fresh database with updated SCDB data, so I figured I would document how I do it, in case it might be useful to others.

My colleague Dr. Brian Leech, a history professor at Augustana College, and I are seeking the opinions of mining historians about the best books in mining history. The survey is anonymous. The results of the survey will be publicized at a future conference of the Mining History Association (and perhaps other academic conferences), and a journal article exploring the results in greater detail will be prepared for consideration by an academic journal in the field.

For more than four years, I’ve been working on a digital legal history project called 9CHRIS – the 9th Circuit Historical Records Index System. The potential for historical analysis that comes from having some 40,000 briefs and transcripts available is what keeps me perpetually interested in continuing to improve this project. Each time I open one of the documents, I think of the potential that such rich detail can offer to historians and others studying the West, especially the relationship between western places, western residents, and the law.

In working with manuscript census materials, modern data derived from them, and published documents from the Census Bureau, I found myself coming back to particular resources time and again. In a hope this might be of use to someone else, I’ve put together this list of those I use most frequently. If you have suggestions or corrections, please contact me or leave a note in the comments, below. Manuscript materials Main page for manuscript population schedules, 1790–1930, digitized from NARA microfilm, hosted on the Internet Archive: https://archive.

As I’ve noted before, manuscript records collected by the census can be fascinating and informative windows to the past. They can be used to learn more about groups of people that appear only occasionally in the historical record, and since they are generally well-structured, they can be used (with care) to ask data-driven historical questions. When most historians think of using historical census sources, it’s the forms from the decennial census of population that come immediately to mind.

Census microdata, such as that produced by the NAPP project, can help illuminate interesting issues surrounding work and labor. Investigating the history of work using microdata must begin with the questions asked by the census enumerators about employment. These varied depending on the country and year, but were generally quite simple. For example, the U.S. 1880 census form had two questions pertaining to work, and a third that hinted toward labor as well.

Historians often try not to fall in love with our sources, but sometimes I just can’t help it. For me, aside from the chatty personal journal (what historian can resist?) and the underground mine maps I’ve studied for years, my greatest fondness may be for big compilations of small bits of data, called microdata. What’s microdata? It’s small bits of information that, by themselves, might be virtually useless, but when aggregated and analyzed can show bigger trends.

This post is an explanation of the napptools scripts, including how they transform NAPP download files into a SQLite database. The tools napptools consists of three script programs: napp2csv.sh: A Bash script that uses traditional unix tools cut, sed, and tr to chop a NAPP data file into its respective columns, guided by a SAS-format command file. This also creates secondary tables in .CSV format from the variable descriptions in the SAS file.

In an earlier post I discussed some of the limitations of full-text searching in digitized copies of historic mining engineering literature, and suggested several historic index publications specific to mining engineering that could be used to augment your search by looking for information the old-fashioned way. Mining engineering information also appeared in historic indexes that covered engineering as a whole. Third-party indexes that cover engineering topics generally include at least some of the more popular mining engineering journals in their coverage.

Many excellent historical books on mining and mining engineering are now available from archive.org and Google Books. In some cases, these repositories also have partial (or, rarely, complete) runs of historical technical journals of interest to mining historians. Full-text search of these digitized books is a godsend, but sometimes it doesn’t work right. Maybe you are looking for a topic instead of a keyword, or the conversion to text mangled the word you want, or the website doesn’t allow you to look inside several volumes at once (ahem, archive.

Census microdata, such as that produced by the NAPP project, can help illuminate interesting issues surrounding work and labor. Investigating the history of work using microdata must begin with the questions asked by the census enumerators about employment. These varied depending on the country and year, but were generally quite simple. For example, the U.S. 1880 census form had two questions pertaining to work, and a third that hinted toward labor as well.

It’s finally here! Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and Mining Engineering in America, published by the University of Nevada Press, is available in hardcover and kindle editions. I examine how maps and models created a visual culture of mining engineering, helping American mining engineers fashion a professional identity and occupational opportunities for themselves. I’m grateful for all the support and assistance I’ve received as I’ve chased this fascinating history. Here’s the description from the press:

In an earlier post I discussed some of the limitations of full-text searching in digitized copies of historic mining engineering literature, and suggested several historic index publications specific to mining engineering that could be used to augment your search by looking for information the old-fashioned way. Mining engineering information also appeared in historic indexes that covered engineering as a whole. Third-party indexes that cover engineering topics generally include at least some of the more popular mining engineering journals in their coverage.

Sometimes one just wants to query some data, right? I recently found myself again wanting to query the excellent work of the Supreme Court Database (SCDB for short), which is an important resource for legal historians and political scientists of all stripes. Several years ago, I pulled together a quick SQLite database and have used it since then. It’s now time to generate a fresh database with updated SCDB data, so I figured I would document how I do it, in case it might be useful to others.

I’ve created a system to help index digitized court records from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. These documents, which include legal briefs and trial transcripts, can be a fascinating source for western history. They were saved by the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, then digitized by the Internet Archive, and span the period from 1891 to the late 1960s. Head over to 9CHRIS, the 9th Circuit Historical Records Index System and have a look!

Census microdata, such as that produced by the NAPP project, can help illuminate interesting issues surrounding work and labor. Investigating the history of work using microdata must begin with the questions asked by the census enumerators about employment. These varied depending on the country and year, but were generally quite simple. For example, the U.S. 1880 census form had two questions pertaining to work, and a third that hinted toward labor as well.

Historians often try not to fall in love with our sources, but sometimes I just can’t help it. For me, aside from the chatty personal journal (what historian can resist?) and the underground mine maps I’ve studied for years, my greatest fondness may be for big compilations of small bits of data, called microdata. What’s microdata? It’s small bits of information that, by themselves, might be virtually useless, but when aggregated and analyzed can show bigger trends.

This post is an explanation of the napptools scripts, including how they transform NAPP download files into a SQLite database. The tools napptools consists of three script programs: napp2csv.sh: A Bash script that uses traditional unix tools cut, sed, and tr to chop a NAPP data file into its respective columns, guided by a SAS-format command file. This also creates secondary tables in .CSV format from the variable descriptions in the SAS file.

It’s finally here! Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and Mining Engineering in America, published by the University of Nevada Press, is available in hardcover and kindle editions. I examine how maps and models created a visual culture of mining engineering, helping American mining engineers fashion a professional identity and occupational opportunities for themselves. I’m grateful for all the support and assistance I’ve received as I’ve chased this fascinating history. Here’s the description from the press:

My colleague Dr. Brian Leech, a history professor at Augustana College, and I are seeking the opinions of mining historians about the best books in mining history. The survey is anonymous. The results of the survey will be publicized at a future conference of the Mining History Association (and perhaps other academic conferences), and a journal article exploring the results in greater detail will be prepared for consideration by an academic journal in the field.

In June 2021, the Mining History Association held its annual meeting in a virtual format for the first time, due to COVID-19. As incoming President of the organization, after ceremoniously “accepting” the official mining pick of office, I delivered the traditional presidential address via Zoom. The talk, titled “Big and Small, They Mined Them All: Thinking About Scale in Mining History,” was really my chance to talk about the modern Nevada gold mining boom and specifically the Carlin Trend.

Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Spring 2022 issue of the Mining History News. After reading the last newsletter, MHA member Hans Muessig wrote me with a suggestion for this column. “Historic photographs are a critical and I think underutilized resource in studying the past,” he argued, and I couldn’t agree more! Historians are generally trained to pay closest attention to words and texts as sources, a preference that dates to the earliest years of the field’s professionalization in the 19th century.

Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Winter 2021/22 issue of the Mining History News. I have a confession: I’m a historian, and yet I haven’t set foot in an archive since 2019 due to COVID-19. I’m getting antsy– I’ll look for digitized photos in online repositories, browse electronic versions of the Engineering and Mining Journal and Mining and Scientific Press, check out high-resolution historic newspapers at the Chronicling America site, and even peek at census images, but it’s not the same.

Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Fall 2021 issue of the Mining History News. Between a book project I’ve been working on and our excellent MHA meeting in Elko last June, there’s been a question I’ve been wrestling with a lot: how do we save and interpret mining history? What “stuff” should be saved so future generations of historians and the interested public can learn? These are remarkably difficult questions.

Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Summer 2021 issue of the Mining History News. Now that our Elko “virtual conference” is in the rear view mirror, I think I can safely say this: it went better than just about anyone expected, and that’s no small victory for a volunteer group trying to adapt on the fly to a global pandemic. The Mining History Association’s culture and traditions ended up being an asset in pivoting to a virtual environment, and the hard work of our resilient conference planners created an excellent learning experience.

My colleague Dr. Brian Leech, a history professor at Augustana College, and I are seeking the opinions of mining historians about the best books in mining history. The survey is anonymous. The results of the survey will be publicized at a future conference of the Mining History Association (and perhaps other academic conferences), and a journal article exploring the results in greater detail will be prepared for consideration by an academic journal in the field.

It’s finally here! Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and Mining Engineering in America, published by the University of Nevada Press, is available in hardcover and kindle editions. I examine how maps and models created a visual culture of mining engineering, helping American mining engineers fashion a professional identity and occupational opportunities for themselves. I’m grateful for all the support and assistance I’ve received as I’ve chased this fascinating history. Here’s the description from the press:

In an earlier post I discussed some of the limitations of full-text searching in digitized copies of historic mining engineering literature, and suggested several historic index publications specific to mining engineering that could be used to augment your search by looking for information the old-fashioned way. Mining engineering information also appeared in historic indexes that covered engineering as a whole. Third-party indexes that cover engineering topics generally include at least some of the more popular mining engineering journals in their coverage.

Many excellent historical books on mining and mining engineering are now available from archive.org and Google Books. In some cases, these repositories also have partial (or, rarely, complete) runs of historical technical journals of interest to mining historians. Full-text search of these digitized books is a godsend, but sometimes it doesn’t work right. Maybe you are looking for a topic instead of a keyword, or the conversion to text mangled the word you want, or the website doesn’t allow you to look inside several volumes at once (ahem, archive.

In June 2021, the Mining History Association held its annual meeting in a virtual format for the first time, due to COVID-19. As incoming President of the organization, after ceremoniously “accepting” the official mining pick of office, I delivered the traditional presidential address via Zoom. The talk, titled “Big and Small, They Mined Them All: Thinking About Scale in Mining History,” was really my chance to talk about the modern Nevada gold mining boom and specifically the Carlin Trend.

Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Spring 2022 issue of the Mining History News. After reading the last newsletter, MHA member Hans Muessig wrote me with a suggestion for this column. “Historic photographs are a critical and I think underutilized resource in studying the past,” he argued, and I couldn’t agree more! Historians are generally trained to pay closest attention to words and texts as sources, a preference that dates to the earliest years of the field’s professionalization in the 19th century.

Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Winter 2021/22 issue of the Mining History News. I have a confession: I’m a historian, and yet I haven’t set foot in an archive since 2019 due to COVID-19. I’m getting antsy– I’ll look for digitized photos in online repositories, browse electronic versions of the Engineering and Mining Journal and Mining and Scientific Press, check out high-resolution historic newspapers at the Chronicling America site, and even peek at census images, but it’s not the same.

Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Fall 2021 issue of the Mining History News. Between a book project I’ve been working on and our excellent MHA meeting in Elko last June, there’s been a question I’ve been wrestling with a lot: how do we save and interpret mining history? What “stuff” should be saved so future generations of historians and the interested public can learn? These are remarkably difficult questions.

Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Summer 2021 issue of the Mining History News. Now that our Elko “virtual conference” is in the rear view mirror, I think I can safely say this: it went better than just about anyone expected, and that’s no small victory for a volunteer group trying to adapt on the fly to a global pandemic. The Mining History Association’s culture and traditions ended up being an asset in pivoting to a virtual environment, and the hard work of our resilient conference planners created an excellent learning experience.

It’s finally here! Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and Mining Engineering in America, published by the University of Nevada Press, is available in hardcover and kindle editions. I examine how maps and models created a visual culture of mining engineering, helping American mining engineers fashion a professional identity and occupational opportunities for themselves. I’m grateful for all the support and assistance I’ve received as I’ve chased this fascinating history. Here’s the description from the press:

Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Fall 2021 issue of the Mining History News. Between a book project I’ve been working on and our excellent MHA meeting in Elko last June, there’s been a question I’ve been wrestling with a lot: how do we save and interpret mining history? What “stuff” should be saved so future generations of historians and the interested public can learn? These are remarkably difficult questions.

Census microdata, such as that produced by the NAPP project, can help illuminate interesting issues surrounding work and labor. Investigating the history of work using microdata must begin with the questions asked by the census enumerators about employment. These varied depending on the country and year, but were generally quite simple. For example, the U.S. 1880 census form had two questions pertaining to work, and a third that hinted toward labor as well.

Historians often try not to fall in love with our sources, but sometimes I just can’t help it. For me, aside from the chatty personal journal (what historian can resist?) and the underground mine maps I’ve studied for years, my greatest fondness may be for big compilations of small bits of data, called microdata. What’s microdata? It’s small bits of information that, by themselves, might be virtually useless, but when aggregated and analyzed can show bigger trends.

This post is an explanation of the napptools scripts, including how they transform NAPP download files into a SQLite database. The tools napptools consists of three script programs: napp2csv.sh: A Bash script that uses traditional unix tools cut, sed, and tr to chop a NAPP data file into its respective columns, guided by a SAS-format command file. This also creates secondary tables in .CSV format from the variable descriptions in the SAS file.

In June 2021, the Mining History Association held its annual meeting in a virtual format for the first time, due to COVID-19. As incoming President of the organization, after ceremoniously “accepting” the official mining pick of office, I delivered the traditional presidential address via Zoom. The talk, titled “Big and Small, They Mined Them All: Thinking About Scale in Mining History,” was really my chance to talk about the modern Nevada gold mining boom and specifically the Carlin Trend.

Sometimes one just wants to query some data, right? I recently found myself again wanting to query the excellent work of the Supreme Court Database (SCDB for short), which is an important resource for legal historians and political scientists of all stripes. Several years ago, I pulled together a quick SQLite database and have used it since then. It’s now time to generate a fresh database with updated SCDB data, so I figured I would document how I do it, in case it might be useful to others.

This post is an explanation of the napptools scripts, including how they transform NAPP download files into a SQLite database. The tools napptools consists of three script programs: napp2csv.sh: A Bash script that uses traditional unix tools cut, sed, and tr to chop a NAPP data file into its respective columns, guided by a SAS-format command file. This also creates secondary tables in .CSV format from the variable descriptions in the SAS file.

Last semester, several of my students ran afoul of a perennial problem with PowerPoint. They had created their slide decks on a large screen, but when they connected to the room’s projector, it forced a lower screen resolution. Blammo! – ugly slides. Text too big, images cut off, broken layouts everywhere. The wreckage was so horrifying, two design students in the audience were forced to avert their eyes. There are several ways to solve this problem, but here’s the trick I use all the time: Instead of showing your slides in PowerPoint, make your presentation deck into a PDF, and show that.

In June 2021, the Mining History Association held its annual meeting in a virtual format for the first time, due to COVID-19. As incoming President of the organization, after ceremoniously “accepting” the official mining pick of office, I delivered the traditional presidential address via Zoom. The talk, titled “Big and Small, They Mined Them All: Thinking About Scale in Mining History,” was really my chance to talk about the modern Nevada gold mining boom and specifically the Carlin Trend.

Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Fall 2021 issue of the Mining History News. Between a book project I’ve been working on and our excellent MHA meeting in Elko last June, there’s been a question I’ve been wrestling with a lot: how do we save and interpret mining history? What “stuff” should be saved so future generations of historians and the interested public can learn? These are remarkably difficult questions.

In working with manuscript census materials, modern data derived from them, and published documents from the Census Bureau, I found myself coming back to particular resources time and again. In a hope this might be of use to someone else, I’ve put together this list of those I use most frequently. If you have suggestions or corrections, please contact me or leave a note in the comments, below. Manuscript materials Main page for manuscript population schedules, 1790–1930, digitized from NARA microfilm, hosted on the Internet Archive: https://archive.

Last semester, several of my students ran afoul of a perennial problem with PowerPoint. They had created their slide decks on a large screen, but when they connected to the room’s projector, it forced a lower screen resolution. Blammo! – ugly slides. Text too big, images cut off, broken layouts everywhere. The wreckage was so horrifying, two design students in the audience were forced to avert their eyes. There are several ways to solve this problem, but here’s the trick I use all the time: Instead of showing your slides in PowerPoint, make your presentation deck into a PDF, and show that.

In an earlier post I discussed some of the limitations of full-text searching in digitized copies of historic mining engineering literature, and suggested several historic index publications specific to mining engineering that could be used to augment your search by looking for information the old-fashioned way. Mining engineering information also appeared in historic indexes that covered engineering as a whole. Third-party indexes that cover engineering topics generally include at least some of the more popular mining engineering journals in their coverage.

Many excellent historical books on mining and mining engineering are now available from archive.org and Google Books. In some cases, these repositories also have partial (or, rarely, complete) runs of historical technical journals of interest to mining historians. Full-text search of these digitized books is a godsend, but sometimes it doesn’t work right. Maybe you are looking for a topic instead of a keyword, or the conversion to text mangled the word you want, or the website doesn’t allow you to look inside several volumes at once (ahem, archive.

Sometimes one just wants to query some data, right? I recently found myself again wanting to query the excellent work of the Supreme Court Database (SCDB for short), which is an important resource for legal historians and political scientists of all stripes. Several years ago, I pulled together a quick SQLite database and have used it since then. It’s now time to generate a fresh database with updated SCDB data, so I figured I would document how I do it, in case it might be useful to others.

Census microdata, such as that produced by the NAPP project, can help illuminate interesting issues surrounding work and labor. Investigating the history of work using microdata must begin with the questions asked by the census enumerators about employment. These varied depending on the country and year, but were generally quite simple. For example, the U.S. 1880 census form had two questions pertaining to work, and a third that hinted toward labor as well.

This post is an explanation of the napptools scripts, including how they transform NAPP download files into a SQLite database. The tools napptools consists of three script programs: napp2csv.sh: A Bash script that uses traditional unix tools cut, sed, and tr to chop a NAPP data file into its respective columns, guided by a SAS-format command file. This also creates secondary tables in .CSV format from the variable descriptions in the SAS file.

This is a short post about teaching. In a lower-level general education history course I am teaching this semester at ASU, I encourage students to make a small handwritten study sheet (a.k.a. “crib sheet” or “cheat sheet”) to use in class while taking each exam, to jog their memories, help them better marshal specific evidence to use in their answers, and reduce exam anxiety.1 I also hoped the process of preparing the handwritten sheet would be a valuable study exercise, encouraging them to comprehensively scan the material as they looked for facts to include, and reinforcing key concepts by writing them on the sheet.

For more than four years, I’ve been working on a digital legal history project called 9CHRIS – the 9th Circuit Historical Records Index System. The potential for historical analysis that comes from having some 40,000 briefs and transcripts available is what keeps me perpetually interested in continuing to improve this project. Each time I open one of the documents, I think of the potential that such rich detail can offer to historians and others studying the West, especially the relationship between western places, western residents, and the law.

As I’ve noted before, manuscript records collected by the census can be fascinating and informative windows to the past. They can be used to learn more about groups of people that appear only occasionally in the historical record, and since they are generally well-structured, they can be used (with care) to ask data-driven historical questions. When most historians think of using historical census sources, it’s the forms from the decennial census of population that come immediately to mind.

I’ve created a system to help index digitized court records from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. These documents, which include legal briefs and trial transcripts, can be a fascinating source for western history. They were saved by the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, then digitized by the Internet Archive, and span the period from 1891 to the late 1960s. Head over to 9CHRIS, the 9th Circuit Historical Records Index System and have a look!