Quirk Shame

Abstract

Although music historians have begun to consider some of the broad implications of large-scale digitization, the shift from traditional library- or archive-based methods of research to speculative Internet text searching remains largely invisible within an unchanged scholarly apparatus of footnotes and bibliographies. As a result, quirky details become easier to find, yet that ease is itself concealed, perhaps, this article argues, because to admit it might occasion a variety of academic shame.