I've just started working my way through Saylor.org's HIST104: Historical Methodology - The Art and Craft of the Historian, and I'm now on Unit 2: Basic Historical Research Skills.
In lieu of me actually being in a class where things are discussed, I'll just write my thoughts about the materials here.
I'm skipping around a bit, so I'm starting with 2.2
2.2 Locating Historical Sources
2.2.1 Secondary Sources
Reading: Dr. Steven Kreis’s The History Guide: A Student’s Guide to the Study of History:
“Section 4.4: The Research Essay—Off to the Library”
Section 4.4 talks about how to go to the library and find books about your subject.
First recommendation is to find one, copy down its bibliography, hunt down those books!
Next is to buy 100 index cards & carry them with you, and every time you find a relevant book or a mention of one you want/need to find later, copy the bibliographic information exactly and in full on a new note card. Eventually you will split the cards into two stacks- one for sources you'll use in your research, and the other for those you will not.
The author also reminds us to "have keywords in mind." In his example of researching William Godwin, he says that we should search not only his name, but also terms like "History, England, 18th Century or History, France, 18th Century, French Revolution, Radicalism."“Section 4.6: The Research Essay—How to Choose the Right Books”
In Section 4.6 the author talks about how to choose which books to use in our research.
During the initial source-collection phase, he tells us to write down any and all possible sources we come across that 'seem remotely useful' in a notebook. He reminds us also consult reference books.
As for choosing which books to read in-depth, he recommends that if there are (for example) two books on a subject, written many years apart, for undergraduate work he recommends choosing the most recent one, as that author will likely be familiar with the arguments made in the first, but obviously the reverse would not be true. But he says that both texts need to be consulted for graduate level research.
There are two methods of approaching a large collection of possible sources, one is to "over-read" and "over-research," which the author himself does because ' the more you read about one topic, the more you become familiar with common names, events, people, places, ideas and so on. I bombarded myself with information and after a while, things just begin to sink in.'
The other method would to be to strategically select just a few sources, but read and "study" them in depth.
Because many topics have far more material than any individual would ever have time to spend on them, he presents these guidelines for choosing what to read:
- Find books that match your topic as exactly as possible
- Once you have those books, check the table of Contents and indexes to see what parts of the book relate to the topic (a chapter? a reference? a footnote?)
- Go through the books' bibliographies and look for more relevant sources
- Pay attention to the when and where the book is published, and how may that shape the perspective the authors have on the topic?
- Read the preface, or the introduction (if it's not too long)
- If the book is cited frequently by other books on your topic, you should read it, too.
He concludes with saying that how much you need to read depends on the topic. If there is "little secondary literature', then you'll probably have to read it all, but if there is large amount of literature, you will have to refine your topic considerably. You must learn how to avoid the texts that just repeat material that has already been covered in other sources, which is why he suggests that the more recent the work, the better, as 'the author has already done some of the research for you.'
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