A Music Historian's Dilemma

Today I had an interesting chat with someone about popular music history research. One of the things we discussed was the problem of inaccurate information spreading when the first people to publish books on particular topics are careless in their research and everyone else copies them. Another problem we talked about is the danger of having other people use you by having you provide them with information and then publishing it without giving you credit. Both of these problems are things I've given a fair amount of thought to, though there is no simple solution to either.

If you are forced to rely on available information and that information is limited, you always run the danger of copying someone else's error. Ideally, of course, you would find some way to double check the information you obtain, but this is not always possible. For instance, while I try to check the release dates of songs and records against the original records and/or contemporary newspaper or magazine articles, sometimes this is not possible, so I'm forced to rely on something someone else has written. If you have reason to question the reliability of your source, all you can do is make clear that you are repeating what someone else has written, i.e., that any inaccuracies can be traced to them.

Conversely, when you yourself are the first to publish a definitive account of something, you have a particular responsibility to get your facts straight, as others are likely to rely on you for information. This is one reason I always feel I need to do more work before I can feel reasonably certain that what I'm writing is accurate.

As for the danger of being used, the obvious solution is to avoid giving your information to anyone else. But since sooner or later you may want information from others, you have to be willing to provide some in return. Also, ultimately the point of collecting all this information is to share it with others, so it's not like you can horde it like a miser forever. So I am usually willing to share a little information with others (but not all of my information at once), and ideally I will eventually make all of it available, though in a way that will ensure that I get credit for gathering it in the first place (and at least a little profit, if there is any to be made). But to do the latter, the first problem still has to be solved -- i.e., I want to make sure my information is as accurate as possible. This then creates a danger that others may use bits of information that I have given them or made public before I have a chance to formally publish them myself. So it seems that what I really need to do is finish my research and publish something as soon as possible.... We'll see if I can manage that.