Skills Exploration: How to Study and Do Research in History

How to Study History

There is not one, correct, version of history. History is something historians create through interpretation of sources and it is often as much a story as it is a list of facts. That does not mean that history is fiction or that historians lie. It also doesn’t meant that the old saying “history is written by the victor” is true necessarily. Instead, historians craft their interpretations through the use of evidence provided by primary sources. Primary sources include many different items, not all of which are written documents. Often primary sources are eyewitness accounts or contemporary (at the time) documents that report events, but the authors of primary sources are human too. They sometimes lack perspective and historians (including you!) often learn as much by what is omitted as they do by what is included in a source. Historians have the advantage of hindsight, and they have access to a plethora of primary sources to fill in the gaps that those who lived in the period did not.

Because primary sources are rarely objective, a good historian must analyze the purpose of the source author(s), the tone, the audience, and biases held by the author(s), weigh this against other evidence, and interpret what happened, creating their own narrative. All of these choices are shaped by the experience, preferences, and biases of the historian as well. Historians always try to improve on histories that were written by those before them, by finding additional sources, or new interpretations of the evidence available. Thus different historians might have different points of view about the exact same event and it’s important to understand that none of the historians are “wrong.” The different works of historians are called historiography, and you will be comparing and contrasting this historiography as well as conducting an exercise in historiography yourself later in the course.

Historians, though they rely on primary sources for their evidence, write secondary sources. A secondary source is a source that is created long after the event being examined. Secondary sources lack the immediacy of primary sources, but if they are well-evidenced, they provide a balanced interpretation incorporating many different perspectives. This exploration is an example of a secondary source. Your research paper will also be a secondary source.

The last type of source available are called tertiary sources. Tertiary sources are sources that compile other sources, particularly reference materials. These sources are helpful for summarizing or repackaging information from other sources, but do not include their own interpretations of history. Usually tertiary sources do not credit a particular author. Good examples of tertiary sources include dictionaries, most encyclopedias, database indexes, and Wikipedia.

In this class, you will become historians, drawing from both primary and secondary sources to create narratives, or interpretations, about history. Like a historian, you will evaluate your sources, think critically about the author(s), his/her agenda, his/her purpose, etc.. It is good practice to provide at least one quotation or other evidence from at least one source in every paragraph you write in a discussion or essay. It’s also good practice to provide more than one source as evidence for each point of your argument (though be careful of replacing your own voice with someone else’s words, particularly in discussion). Otherwise, you are not providing a balanced argument and you are reflecting only one perspective. Only introductions and conclusions do not need evidence, as this is where you present and summarize your own argument.

As a historian, you should always know who your author is – not just his or her name, but his or her occupation, level of education, alma mater, and intended audience. Imagine that you are a young adult away from home for the first time. In a communication (letter, email, phone call) home to your mother, you are unlikely to tell her about your experiments with illegal substances, or other misadventures. You would probably, instead, provide a positive description of your classes, or what you have seen, where you have visited that is educational, etc. By contrast, if you were to write a note to your boss, you would have a more professional tone, and try to impress him or her with your skills and insights. Thus, some historian 100 years hence, when you are famous, will want to review your letters carefully, because each of these sources alone do not tell the whole story. Such a historian, eager to write a secondary source about you that is balanced and accurate, will want to look at the kind of person you were when you wrote the letter, and the audience for your communication. He or she will also want to review other sources, perhaps, for example, your memoirs, written when you were older and wiser, perhaps your grades transcript and text messages to friends, or your bank account records. He or she will also want to find secondary sources about you, if there are any, about the period you grew up in, about the world you knew, to support the biography being prepared about you. All historians must try to find a similar balance, to use a variety of both secondary and primary sources to reveal a more complex picture of historical events and people.

Examples of Different Kinds of Sources: 

Primary sources: Newspaper articles (if written contemporary to the event); diaries; letter; memoirs; government records; speeches; photographs and other images from the time or of artifacts from the time; interviews (of people who either were witness or are close to the event who remember them later); public opinion polls; artifacts; literature/art/music created contemporary to the event.

Secondary sources: Newspaper articles (if written long after the events occur); books or articles that interpret histories; biographies; basically anything written by a historian.

Tertiary sources: dictionaries; encyclopedias; textbooks; indices

Citing Sources

You have probably learned to cite evidence in an essay with either MLA or APA Style. Historians use a more old-fashioned form of citation, Chicago Style (for Humanities). Chicago Style is not very much different from MLA or APA: you must give the name of the author(s), the title of the article or chapter, the title of the book or journal, the date of publication. The biggest difference is that the date of publication goes at the end of a citation, not after the author’s name.

Our class will be presented in Chicago Style throughout, and you will be provided with various sources about Chicago Style including examples, to familiarize you with it. Check your class syllabus and/or with your instructor to verify the citation style that is required or preferred for your course.

Regardless of style used, remember the purpose of a citation is to give credit to other’s intellectual property, to document your own research, and to provide a service to your reader. One of the reasons for providing a full and complete citation of all of your sources is to help your reader judge the validity of your sources and your research. These bibliographies will also, in the future, help your audiences with their own research. Thus a correct bibliography is important.

Equally important to a list of your sources (Works Cited in MLA, Reference in APA, and Bibliography in Chicago Style), are in-text citations or notes indicating where within a source your evidence came from. This may seem repetitious, but in a 100 page article, it’s really important that your reader be able to find what you are referencing quickly.

Here is a quick comparison of the three approved styles in our class for the same source:

Citations

MLA Style: “The central building of Charlemagne’s palace complex was the chapel,” (Kishlansky 216).

APA Style: “The central building of Charlemagne’s palace complex was the chapel,” (Kishlansky, 2008, p. 216).

Chicago Style (for Humanities): “The central building of Charlemagne’s palace complex was the chapel.”[1] (the citation/note appears at the bottom of the text or page)

[1] Mark Kishlansky, Civilization in the West, Seventh ed. (New York: Pearson Education, 2008), 216.

Source List

Whenever you use in-text citations (which you must do on all your work), you must also include a Works Cited (MLA) or Reference list (APA). For Chicago Style, you would include a Bibliography. This would appear at the bottom of your work, should be labeled appropriately and would include the bibliographic format for your source(s). Using our example above it would look like this in each format.

MLA Style:

Works Cited
Kishlansky, Mark, Patrick Geary, and Patricia O’Brien. Civilization in the West. Seventh. New York: Pearson Education, 2008.

APA Style:

References
Kishlansky, M. P. (2008). Civilization in the West (Seventh ed.). New York: Pearson Education.

Chicago Style for Humanities:

Bibliography
Kishlansky, Mark, Patrick Geary, and Patricia O’Brien. Civilization in the West. Seventh. New York: Pearson Education, 2008.

In addition to the above, you can find very helpful resources at the CCCOnline Library in the APA Toolkit, or the MLA Toolkit. You can find help with all of the approved styles, including Chicago Style (for Humanities) at OWL Purdue.

A word about plagiarism: Don’t. Make sure you cite the works that contributed to your ideas and place all words not your own in quotes. Everyone knows plagiarism is wrong, and all assignments submitted in this course will be reviewed by an originality checker against works on the Internet and other papers submitted by students. Still, sometimes it is tough to know what constitutes plagiarism. This short tutorial from the University of Mississippi might help: “Plagiarism Tutorial,” University of Mississippi Plagiarism tutorial.

Here are a few other resources to help:

Historical Research

The start of any research project can be daunting, particularly historical research. Luckily there are a number of good resources available to assist you including the CCCOnline Library’s How to Do Research From A Distance tutorial.

In our course, each module builds upon the skills and content learned in the one before. You won’t actually tackle the topic of your term project until you begin working on your draft in Module 4. Until then, you will build skills to identify different types of sources, determine those sources credibility, identify primary and secondary sources, compare and analyze selected primary and secondary sources, and understand the importance of context on chronological events.

Choosing a Topic

You will be provided with a list of topics from which you may select for your larger History Detective – an argumentative history paper – in Module 4. If you would like to look at these and try to narrow down your topic now, feel free to do so. Each of these topics has been carefully selected. They are controversial topics of which historians do not have a concrete answer. Additionally, there is much evidence for many different interpretations available.

Starting Your Research

The seven steps outline a simple and effective strategy for moving from the beginning of a research project to the finished product. Depending on your topic and your familiarity with library and Internet resources, you may need to rearrange or recycle these steps.

1. Start with a Plan
2. Identify and Develop Topic
3. Develop Research Strategy
4. Find Background Information
5. Find High Quality Resources
6. Evaluate What You Find
7. Cite Your Sources¹

Writing as a Process

Writing is a process, one we must practice continuously to improve. As you begin the assignments in this course, keep the following tips in mind:

1. Writing takes time;
2. Use the rhetorical elements from the assignment as a guide;
3. Keep in mind the purpose of the assignment; and
4. Just start writing – use pre-writing strategies!²

How to Do Research in History

Most people today start “research” by Googling a subject and collecting a bunch of websites. This can be valuable when you are simply looking for a list of what people have written or said about a topic, but for this project you need to be a bit more systematic because you need to collect only the most credible, best sources.

A bibliography is a list of books, articles, and other sources you will use for your research. Depending on the style you use, bibliographies attached to a final draft may be called a Works Cited (MLA) or References (APA). Chicago Style uses the term Bibliography. Bibliographies are not just for when you have finished your work. For Module 1, you will be creating a Webliography of web based sources (primary and secondary) related to a specific topic.

Internet Sources

As noted above, everyone’s favorite search engine these days is Google. There are some tricks to internet searches though:

• Search for your subject plus “primary sources” or “bibliography” (for example: Jamestown primary sources). Doing this will locate some sources that might be available in libraries or in collections that you can’t easily find otherwise.
• Start from a bibliography you already have. If you search for titles or authors you already know have written on the subject, you can often find more.
• Look through Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com). This will usually not result in full-text sources, but you might be able to request copies of the articles via the library.
• The Library of Congress (http://loc.gov) has a tremendous collection of primary sources of every description.

Databases

If you live in a major metropolitan area, you may be able to access additional databases in your public library. Here are some you might look for:

• National Newspapers Core
• New York Times Historical Backfile on ProQuest

College and University Libraries

In Colorado, you can check out books at a university library with your driver’s license. Here are some resources to look for at a college or university library:

• ABC-CLIO World History: The Modern Era is aimed at high school students, but can provide a starting point for more advanced research. Don’t use the articles here as the basis for your arguments, but as a way to find more detailed information. This database does include 7,300 primary sources, which may prove extremely useful in researching your final projects.

Sources to Avoid

• Any book or article with the word “dummies” or “idiots” in the title. You are not a dummy – you may not use books intended for them.
• Any children’s book or website designed for kids. Look at the library catalog, or Amazon.com – if you see the words “young adult” in the description, it is a children’s book. If it has big fonts, and lots of pictures, the chances are it is a children’s book.
• Any tertiary source. This includes Wikipedia in any format. This also includes any encyclopedia entry for which there is no attributed author. Be careful, some databases at some colleges, have many encyclopedia articles. You may not use these. If you have a question about whether or not a source may be used, check with your instructor.
• Any textbook. Any book you are assigned for a class is likely a textbook. Textbooks, like encyclopedias, are wonderful for giving you the broad outline of a topic, but they are not appropriate sources for a research paper.
• Many commercial websites. The Internet is a wonderful place to find quick facts, but it is necessary to exercise caution. If the primary purpose of a website is to sell products, beware.

Creating an Annotated Bibliography (Webliography)

An annotated bibliography is a list of the sources you will use in your research. It is made up of two parts: the bibliographic citation and the annotation.

The bibliographic citation tells your reader or audience where you obtained your ideas, in case they want to read the original source material. It also provides a complete list of your sources whether you cite them as evidence or not.

The annotation evaluates each of your sources and provides a very brief overview of the contents of your source. Additionally, your annotation usually indicates how you envision using each source in your final work.

Annotated bibliographies help you understand how your sources will support the argument you want to make in your paper and how those sources will provide evidence for that argument. To write an effective annotation, you do not need to read your entire source. Conduct an exercise in Predatory Reading. Read these two descriptions of annotated bibliographies:

The format of an annotated bibliography usually has three parts:

1. The source bibliographic citation in one of the approved formats. In this class you may choose from MLA, APA or Chicago Style (for Humanities), just be consistent.
2. A summary of your source that includes the author, his or her profession or expertise, the main topic, and the argument of your source.
   • If your source is a primary source, you need to tell your audience who wrote the source as well as the background or profession of the author, the expected audience (i.e. a letter to his wife) and why the author wrote or created the source. The authors of primary sources can sometimes be found online, but not always. That’s okay. Speculate on who they might be, or what their background might be. You can determine many things by the subject, the quality of the writing, and the audience the author seemed to be directing his writing toward.
   • The main topic or argument of secondary sources are found in the introduction and conclusion or in the abstract for a scholarly journal. Sometimes you can find a review of the source online that tells you these things. You should do a search for the author online to find out any biographical information that might be helpful.
3. The last part of the annotation for an annotated bibliography is your own evaluation of the source. You need to include how you can use the source, and how it supports your argument or helps you make your points.

Note for your term project – the History Detective – You need start your bibliography from the very beginning of your project in Module 4. This is a working bibliography and it might change. That’s okay. Preparing a working bibliography helps you know what is available out there and helps you narrow your project to something workable. Think of it as the ingredients to a recipe. Your list of sources are your ingredients for your paper.

How to Determine Reliability/Credibility

With a wealth of sources available on the Internet, it is important to be able to distinguish between good sources and poor sources. This assignment asks you to do that and to go a step further by explaining why you chose particular sources. The question then is, how do you know when a source is good or not-so-good? To learn the answer, review UC Berkeley’s How to Evaluate Internet resources and the equally excellent Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria & Tools from the Olin and Uris Libraries at Cornell University before attempting this assignment.

You will find at these two valuable resources that you must consider several things when determining the credibility of a source such as authority of the author, purpose, publisher, relevance, accuracy, and the sources your source used for their own evidence. If you cannot answer these questions or identify these items regarding the source you have selected, you should STOP! It’s probably not credible and shouldn’t be used for historical research.

Bibliography

Notes

1. Mary Cash, “Doing Research From a Distance Tutorial: A Seven Step Process,” CCCOnline, accessed November 15, 2018, http://ccconline.libguides.com/ResearchDistance.
2. Purdue, “Invention: Starting the Writing Process,” Purdue Online Writing Lab, accessed November 15, 2018, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/invention_starting_the_writing_process.html.