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History topics can be the difficult to find information on simply because there is an overabundance of historical journals, books, and other information sources. It can be frustrating to find relevant and unbiased pieces in the sea of editorials, sensationalism, and articles. There are several approaches to history research that are highly effective at filtering the massive quantities of available information.
The first rule of researching history is to take into account both types of historical information. There are primary sources, which are documents or information sources produced contemporary to the events being researched. For example, the Gettysburg Address is a primary source on the Civil War or Abraham Lincoln. Primary sources also include articles and analyses that were considered to be current events sources at the time of their publication. A New York Times article about the bombing of Pearl Harbor published on December 8, 1941 would be a primary source. On the other hand, secondary sources are items that were produced long after the historical events using primary documents as the sources for ideas and information. It is crucial for any well-balanced history analysis to include both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources allow a direct analysis of the events and people of a historical time, and are invaluable for comprehending the historical context of events. Secondary sources allow a researcher to gain the knowledge of other researchers who have already drawn conclusions from a wide variety of primary sources. By learning about what other historians have already concluded, a researcher can avoid reinventing the wheel or making errors in analysis that others have already diagnosed. Secondary sources should be used as an aid to guide a researcher with the experiences of other researchers.
Finding primary sources is one of the most challenging tasks of a history researcher. The best place to start is in the contemporary news sources of the period under examination. For example, the Los Angeles Times would be an excellent starting point for a research paper on the effects of the Great Depression on southern California. After a basic sense of the attitudes, motivations, and historical context is discerned from basic primary sources, a researcher should move on to the information sources of these basic sources. Newspapers and magazines have to get their information from somewhere and usually there are some indications in the articles as to the origin of the fundamental facts used to write the polished article. In modern times, these sources are usually one of the international news agencies. Most of these agencies to not provide anything more than a cursory analysis, instead sending news briefs and summaries onto the wire as soon as a correspondent on site can type a few paragraphs into the server. The best place to search the releases from news agencies is Lexus-Nexus, an Internet service available at most libraries and colleges in the United States. Government documents are another excellent source for raw information since such documents are kept indefinitely and are eventually made available to the public. For periods before the internationalization of news, there remains a surprising number of government documents still available. Translators and prominent researchers make many of these documents available to researchers in source books. Finally, the most basic type of primary sources is personal documents. These documents can be very difficult to find although many historical publishers do produce limited quantities of collections of such documents.
Secondary sources are much easier to find and analyze since they are synthesized and written for more modern audiences. They also provide an excellent guide to finding primary sources since most secondary sources include extensive bibliographies and appendices. Books usually offer the broadest analysis although they can certainly delve very deeply into their subject areas. Scholarly journals in general offer the highest level of history analysis, but it can be difficult to find good articles in the thousands of available publications. Most colleges and some public libraries provide access to Internet search engines specifically designed to find articles in scholarly journals. However, these still tend to be unreliable and do not include many of the best available journals.
History research can be a time consuming effort but it is possible to find valuable information for all kinds of research projects. Always remember that a well-balanced approach is the key to effective history research. Both primary and secondary sources contain bias that can be identified if enough sources are employed. A methodical examination of all sources will provide the best analysis of a historical event and that will yield the most impressive final product.
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