Fellows Online: The User Experience

Several scholars give their perspective on the virtual fellowships they received from the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering, and Technology. Initially, Technology and Culture's public history editors wanted to host a roundtable with these scholars and publish the resulting conversation, but that proved difficult in pandemic-stressed times. Instead, Allison Marsh conducted individual interviews with recent fellows, collating the transcripts in an edited Q&A format. The result is not exactly a conversation, more an anthology of perspectives on the nature of historical research during the pandemic. The fellows unanimously praise the Linda Hall Library staff and the technical support they provided, but they have divergent opinions on the access and usefulness of digitized materials. Their responses show how technology and technical infrastructure fundamentally shape the research process.