THE HISTORY OF MASS COMMUNICATION RESEARCH: THE ESSENTIAL ONLINE RESOURCE

Some of you know that I am currently putting together a volume concerning the history of mass communication research. In this arena, I think I do pretty well. However, nobody has anything on (my co-editor for this forthcoming volume) Jeff Pooley. Pooley's a sharp guy, and he has done the field of communication a huge favor by creating an online resource dedicated to the history of mass communication research.

This resource, called historyofcommunicationresearch.org, is exactly what anyone looking into these histories would dare to hope for. It's a database, with an extensive bibliography of research on the history of the field. It's searchable. It's not ridiculously big, so you don't get the mere illusion of a helpful website. You get the complete (compleat?) list of the research on the history of the field.

I suppose the first question on my mind is the question that always occurs to engineers when they are presented with some new bit of physics or math: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS?

The first thing I've done with Jeff's invaluable resource is to see what I've missed by such luminaries in the field of the history of mass comm, including David Morrison, Bill Buxton, and J. Michael Sproule. In the future, this will serve as a guide to understand what parts of the history of communication studies have not been covered yet. It will also be an important tool for anyone hoping to assemble a lit review on any part of this field. Look no further for a starting place, young (and old) historians of the field.

Jeff has helpfully made the site RSS-enabled, so you can subscribe to it, and find out when he enters still more citations into this wealth of bibliographical work.

Thanks, Jeff. Keep up the good work.

Excelsior!