History Librarians Interest Group

Hi, incoming HLIG convener here, looking to assess interest in a future panel, presentation, or discussion about Substack newsletters and videos as

• a platform for popular history writing (see: History Substacks You Need To Subscribe To - thanks to Christopher Lemery at U Pittsburgh who alerted me to the AI slop content - my words - under the link I'd originally posted here and suggested this list instead )
• a platform used by some high-profile former journalists and scientists, the most famous historian being Heather Cox Richardson - but also extremists and conspiracy theorists
• a platform that's starting to get cited in scholarly publications (in the Scopus database, a search for substack in the References field finds 624 items from 2020 to present, half of which were published in 2025-6). )
• a platform that could be worth developing online archival collections from, as part of a "gray literature" ecosystem to which zines and perhaps blogs also belong
• a platform small/new/slow/finite enough that curated approaches to collection development may be possible

If any of this is at all intriguing to you, please comment. Do you subscribe to any Substacks for work or fun? How do you think about Substacks - what other platforms, genres, or formats are they like, and unlike? Should history librarians "collect" them and if so, what does that look like to you?

-Rachel Brekhus, U of Missouri

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Rachel Brekhus
Research and Instruction Librarian, University of Missouri
She/Her/Hers
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Hi, Rachel -

Your inquiry is well-timed! I arrived here this morning to post a Substack link to a newsletter I subscribe to:

https://michellekassorla.substack.com/p/is-your-ai-research-assistant-breaking

I subscribe to quite a few Substack writers. Most of my subscriptions are based in information science or education. Others are to support legitimate journalists who were laid off by large newspapers.

My subscriptions include:

• Card Catalog
• The Ontologist
• Intentional Arrangement
• Venn Factory: The Workshop

FWIW, this is the articIe I was about to post in another thread: Is Your Research Assistant Breaking the Law?

Substack has pluses and minuses. I consider it a source of long form writing - not just blog posts - from legitimate experts in the field. This is good  

The minus: You cannot support paid subscriptions to more than one or two people. It could become prohibitively expensive.

A plus that can become a minus: Substack is a rabbit warren of longer form article content! You can lose hours out there!

I think the legit Substack writers are worthy for collection by history librarians. Access to Substack articles is an ongoing concern to me. I do pay to support some of the experts (like the list above). I have far more free subscriptions that lock content behind a paywall. I'm woman. I can't pay everyone for their content - similar to not having access to journal article aggregators without a university library (or NYPL) account.

Please let me know if you have any questions about my Substack choices. I'm happy to discuss!

All the best,

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Jean Kaplansky
Wayne State University
Library & Information Science Program
She/Her/Hers
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Hi Rachel! 

The only substack I currently subscribe to is Mark Humphries' (Wilfrid Laurier) Generative History as I am really interested in the potential uses of GenAI in the history field, particularly in transcribing handwriting.

I think your points are really interesting, particularly the idea that some small libraries/archives could want to develop collections based on topics. I fear that although substacks are the hot thing now, like many past internet behemoths, they will eventually go away and the information will be lost. I would imagine this would be for particular curators, however, and not most history librarians.

I would definitely be interested in a future discussion or presentation about Substack newsletters!

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Kristen Howard
Liaison Librarian
McGill Libraries - Montreal, QC
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Hi Rachel,

re: Should we be collecting substacks? 

I often get questions from researchers looking for a tool that indexes public scholarship like substack essays or podcasts. I recently came across this new database and it seemed intriguing for this very purpose: https://publicscholarship.org/explore

According to their About page: "We are not aware of any other discovery search engine that covers public scholarship at our scale."

Searching functionality seems fairly limited and basic. But perhaps a resource you all can explore and possibly refer patrons to who have similar lines of questioning!

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Catherine Fonseca
Student Success & Instruction Librarian, Social Sciences Domain
West Virginia University Libraries
She/Her/Hers
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