Historical reasoning in authentic research tasks: Mapping cognitive and document spaces

Abstract

To support historians in their work, we need to understand their work-related needs and propose what is required to support those needs. Although the quantity of digitized historical documents available is increasing, historians' ways of working with the digital documents have not been widely studied, particularly in authentic work settings. To better support the historians' reasoning processes, we investigate history researchers' work tasks as the context of information interaction and examine their cognitive access points into information. The analysis is based on a longitudinal observational research and interviews in a task-based research setting. Based on these findings in the historians' cognitive space, we build bridges into the document space. By studying the information interactions in real task contexts, we facilitate the provision of task-specific handles into documents that can be used in designing digital research tools for historians.