The Hobby Historian’s Guide — Research, Chapter 0
So, you want to learn more about history!
The Sorceress c. 1911-1915, by John William Waterhouse. Public Domain.
Maybe you’re writing historical fiction. Maybe you’re considering pursuing a history degree, or maybe you’re just interested in a topic and want to know more about it.
So how do you go about it?
This series is by no means a fully comprehensive guide, but rather a few tips and tricks to help you study history (and think critically while you’re at it).
Note: I do have a degree in history, so everything I discuss was either taught to me in my program, or learned in my independent research endeavours.
Photograph of 4 children, circa 1890—1910. From my personal archive.
Firstly, I want to give you two definitions (which will be repeated in each relevant post as well).
Primary Sources: First-hand accounts of a subject, created by people who were directly involved in/with it. For example: a primary source regarding the Civil War would be a Civil War soldier’s diary, or a primary source regarding Dan Leno’s life would be his personal correspondence letters.
Secondary Sources: Second-hand accounts/interpretations of primary sources. Example: an academic paper, a journal article, a reference book.
Both are valuable sources of information, but both have their time and place.
The author of a manuscript at his writing desk, 14th century. Image is available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
I will be breaking this series down into chapters, for organization’s sake.
Our first chapter will be on Primary Sources, where we will discuss the following:
Google Books Advanced Search
Reprints
Photographs
Our second chapter will be on Secondary Sources, where we will discuss the following:
Nonfiction/reference books
Wikipedia (please let go of your pearls)
Academic Databases (JSTOR, Ebsco, Proquest)*
*I could go into great detail about a variety of databases I have used, and these only scrape the surface. If there is enough demand, I will gladly make additional posts about the pros and cons of other databases and how to use them. Please note that I am not affiliated with any of these databases. (Unless JSTOR is reading this and wants to collab…?)
See you in a week!
— A.N