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Research Your Topic
You already know to start with secondary sources. These are sources such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, and books and articles that interpret or review research works. These are sources usually written by historians who have studied primary sources and compiled their findings and reported them to the world. Once you have gotten a broad background on your topic, you will now need to locate primary sources.
According to Reference and User Association, primary sources are "original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress or the Office of the President, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research."
"But wait," you say. "I am no historian!" Sorry Charlie; if you are doing History Day, you are a historian. Luckily, primary sources can be found at local libraries, colleges and universities, and on the internet. The New York State Archives, and The National Archives have a great deal of online sources that you can use for your project. We also put together a list of places to research specifically with primary sources in mind.
Now that you have your sources, what do you do with them? |
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Taking Notes
You need to decide on a way to arrange and record your information, because you must keep track of all of your sources. Getting organized is very important and will make your project much easier.
Your caring New York State History Day staff have developed two research organizers that will allow you to take notes and record all your sources. As you use them to collect source information and take notes, you will want to keep them organized in a three-ring binder.
Use this Source Organizer to keep track of your sources! Use this Notes Organizer to take your notes!
The Right Questions
So you have a focused topic, but now what? Now it is time to ask questions. For example: If you decide that you want to research Johnathon Myrick Daniels, an episcopal seminary student who was murdered in August 3, 1965, in Hanyeville, Alabama while working for voting rights, you need to generate some questions. Use the 5 Ws and an H to start things off.
Who was Daniels? Easy enough right?
Where was he born?
Why did he enter the priesthood? Why was he working for voting rights?
Who assasinated him?
How did he die?
What did he accomplish before his death?
Why should we remeber him?
Start your research organizer with these questions, or break the sheet into cells and have one question for each section of the paper. Find a way to quickly an easily organize your information so it is easy to get back to.
Annotated Bibliography
An annotated bibliograhy is like any other bibliography. You list all the sources you used in a specific format, either MLA or Turabian. However, and annotated bibliography contains one more thing: a brief sentence or two for each source that tells the reader how and why they were useful. If you use the Research Organizers we've provided above, you will have all of that information in one place! All you have to do is type away! |
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