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How do you do research?
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hugoestr View Drop Down
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Posts: 3987 		  Quote hugoestr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: How do you do research?
    Posted: 08-Jun-2007 at 15:30
Share your own peculiar way of doing historical research.

I personally get a bunch of books on a topic and I begin reading :)
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Posts: 482 		  Quote kilroy Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jun-2007 at 15:44
Thats basically what i do Tongue.  Great minds think alike.  
Kilroy was here.
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Posts: 658 		  Quote Frederick Roger Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jun-2007 at 15:55

1. Imagine. Pose a question. Make up a theory.

2. Find a good bibliography on the subject(s). Complement with sources. Crossreference everything.
 
3. Build an information base that fits right with your theory.
 
4. Try and do complementary research to destroy your theory to see how solid it is. More bibliography, more sources, more crossreference.
 
5. Humbly refuse compliments or praise of your brilliance and originality. There is always something more that could have been done.
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Posts: 3987 		  Quote hugoestr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jun-2007 at 16:51
Hey, that idea of building an information base sounds good. What exactly is that? Is it a database? Just a collection of notes?
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Posts: 1457 		  Quote elenos Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jun-2007 at 20:55
Beside reading I try to visualize the event, as if I were there. I try to collect a mass of pictures and put them together in clear plastic folders to remind me of how the event may have looked. I also use the trick of saying "What would I have done in the same circumstances?" That means of course to put yourself in the shoes of a saint or mass murderer and take into account what they really did against what they could have done.
elenos
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Posts: 4489 		  Quote Spartakus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jun-2007 at 17:34
I am not studying history, but there are history lessons in my studies, which i love them the most. What i do in essays is, because our Uni's library does not have much historical books, try to find as many as i can, compare them and see their common parts.I write them down, and i start to compose the essay based on those common parts. Then, if a writer expands more, i add his work too. I am not talking about copy-paste. I just extract those passages, after i read the entire chapter, and use them as a resource in order to complete the product, as they say in economics.Wink
 
I know it's a very simplistic and scratchy work, but the truth is i do not have the nessecary time to actually search in the way i would like to. The reason is that i first write the essay on paper , after i translate it from English, and then i type it in my pc.


Edited by Spartakus - 24-Jun-2007 at 17:37
"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. "
--- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996)
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Posts: 1929 		  Quote Aster Thrax Eupator Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Aug-2007 at 17:28
1> Read as much as I can about the subject to give me an overall picture of the issue at hand
 
2> Move your reading onto the second level- concentrate on one period within your overall reading of that era/civ/nation
 
3>Move your reading onto the third level and find issue- find the issue that you want to discuss and from your previous two layers of reading, you should have enough background to find more ambiguities and interesting points from the sources than someone who has just picked up the two sources
 
4>compare
 
5>write!
 
...Please not that im' not a student at uni yet, so if this method is a little shabby, please excuse me any perhaps recommend a better method.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Aug-2007 at 02:29
1. Read any applicable Wikipedia articles t get a basic grasp of the situation.
 
2. Take a list of the sources used in said Wikipedia articles, check out the internet sites and try to verify their reliability, if not possible throw them out.
 
3. Check my personal library, my parents' personal libraries.
 
4. Use Ebsco and related internet sources to pull up any available articles.
 
5. Visit my high school's library (very extensive for a secondary school).
 
6. Visit local (Chicago) university libraries I have access to (Loyola University, Chicago and University of Illinois at Chicago).
 
7. Take notes and compile bibliography.
 
8. Write paper.
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Posts: 2 		  Quote Jubelu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Aug-2007 at 02:36
1/ Building up at the outset a firm vocabulary of related topic
2/ Jot down the body of the paper, what should be included
3/ Predicting biases to adjust my view
4/ Based (1), find keywords in a general textbook first
5/ Find and read more extensive books, try to exploit as many views as I can to avoid injudicious judgement
6/ Form my own bias and beliefs
7/ Decide to filter information
8/ Sketching the papers and divide into sections with healights if neccessary
9/ Start writting my papers
10/ List Sources 
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Posts: 1929 		  Quote Aster Thrax Eupator Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Aug-2007 at 05:44
1. Read any applicable Wikipedia articles t get a basic grasp of the situation.
 
2. Take a list of the sources used in said Wikipedia articles, check out the internet sites and try to verify their reliability, if not possible throw them out.
 
...STOP...now - change that - don't rely on wikipedia as your primary method for research. It's unreliable, you don't know who wrote it and frankly, there's better stuff out there to research from. In many of the articles, the conclusions are immature and hastily done - use wikipedia for cementing your final draft and just getting some dates and names in - but even then cross-reference them with more reliable sources of information.
 
...What I usually do is firstly, read all around the subject as much as I can- usually 2-4 opposing views by modern acedemics and 1-2 origional sources to draw my own conclusions from.
...Then I find a question that interests me from my research, think of the variables for that question
...Compile a basic theory of mine in a short paragraph
...Expand this theory and use sources/evidence to back it up
...Write the article
...Proof-read
 
I often use university libraries and reference libraries - if you've got a laptop, just take some paper and that and sit in there all afternoon - that's how I get so much done. It's slightly different to do "in the field" - when you are actually at archeological and historical sites - I just write down my impressions with a little history mashed in (read my Lycian journals in the Ancient med section!)
 
...I like your methodology, Jubelu - good way of doing it! Certainly more organised than me!
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Posts: 1551 		  Quote Dolphin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Aug-2007 at 05:58
Immerse myself in 10 times more of an information base than I need and choose the information that is most salient, or at least most fitting to the chosen angle of my research. Reduce, never reuse, and only recycle at the very end..
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Posts: 1409 		  Quote Parnell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Aug-2007 at 09:48

Those Horrible History books can be useful.
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Posts: 1409 		  Quote Parnell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Aug-2007 at 10:02
I meant this guy by the way:
 
http://www.terry-deary.com/
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Posts: 1929 		  Quote Aster Thrax Eupator Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Aug-2007 at 10:08
...Actually (And I know I'm being ridiculously pedantic) much of it is based on common conceptions that aren't true.
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Posts: 1409 		  Quote Parnell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Aug-2007 at 10:13
Wha? The Horrible Histories were great craic! I read them all when I was younger! (They are hardly great academic works, written for kids to get them an interest in history)
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Posts: 1929 		  Quote Aster Thrax Eupator Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Aug-2007 at 12:21
Yeah, they were great...for kids who want a fun overview of a period in history. Don't use them now for contempary research for AE because they contain cliches and general impressions that are frankly, wrong. Yes, they were fun, but frankly, not the kind of material that I would expect most people on AE to be reading.
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Posts: 102 		  Quote Caoimhe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-Aug-2007 at 14:02
1)read an overview book on the period. make not of any biases I may have.

2) Read more indepth specialized book, essays and articles as well as any primary sources available.

3)read up on the historiography of the period. make not of any conflicting theories, opinions etc. Find out what books articles essays were influential to the development of historical understanding of the period.

4) read those books that were influential(if not already done so)

5) write essay.

6)edit and type essay.

That was my methods for university 2,3,4 were interchangeable depending on the period I was studying. I find that research methods are very personalized things, what works for one might not work for another and that coming up with your own method is usually half the fun!
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
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Posts: 0 		  Quote South Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Sep-2007 at 13:10
I have a different method for my research.
 
If studying the history of eg pre WWII Greenland or Napolean's field marshalls or Bank IndoSuez,...
 
first I try to get a map of the area, if applicable.
 
Next, I try to get a different map of the area, if applicable
 
A tour guide to the area, if applicable, is valuable.  After the section on =restaurants= and =useful phrases= there's the tourist attractions. This allows for immediate focus.  I look for memorial monuments. A plaque on a monument is faster to read than a book- even if reading from a picture.
 
I augment all above by doing some initial cemetery research, if applicable.
 
After all the above, I get the books.
 
Before reading, I try to talk to people who know about the subject matter.
 
Next, I check if there's any applicable historical societies focused to the subject matter.
 
What I do not do is keep my material organized.  I have many accordian file folders loaded with material. To date, never got completely organized, eg do I keep my maps with the subject, eg Greenland or in a seperate map section of my study? I use a combination method, which is a lose, lose method. 
 
KEEP THE STUFF ORGANIZED and cross-referenced.
 
 
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Posts: 1929 		  Quote Aster Thrax Eupator Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Sep-2007 at 05:08
I think we all generally agree on how to research - I think the three main factors are raw intelliegence (How much you can make out of the sources), Good sources (Not reading rubbish to get your results) and fundamentally, dedication.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jan-2008 at 00:20
My undergrad history courses often gets us to write a summary of our topic and what we hope to achieve etc. Then compile an annotated bibliography of at least 10 sources including monographs, journal articles and primary sources. This bibliography obviously changes and grows during the research process, but it helps set up a plan and direction for your research.

Also, instead of researching and then writing, see it as an integrated process. As you write you will see areas that need further research and you'll find new connections so start writing as early as possible.
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