Estimated time to complete this section: 45 minutes
1.2 Readings
- Do History, “Stages of a Historical Research Project,” (Estimated Read Time = 5 minutes)
- Po-Yi Hung and Abigail Popp, “Learning to Do Historical Research: A Primer: How to Frame a Researchable Question,” Learning Historical Research, March 23, 2009, (Estimated Read Time = 10 minutes)
Historical research is a process. The reading from DoHistory offers a broad picture of that process, and the reading by Hung and Popp focuses on the first steps, using environmental history as an example:
- Defining a topic
- Developing a historical question that provides a focus for your research and explores one dimension of a topic.
Historical questions focus on past events, people, communities and locations, with particular attention to understanding how and why things change over time, or why they didn’t. Historical questions can be framed in different contexts and time periods.
For instance, Robertson provides an example of the process of developing a question in the reading in section 1.1. So, if the topic of your research was the arrival of a new group in the community, there are a variety of contexts in which the topic could be explored. Some examples are provided in the table below.
| Topic: the arrival of a new group in the population | ||
| Contexts | Questions | Time Frames |
| Residences & Neighborhoods | Where did the new group live & why? |
|
| Work & Business | Where did they work, and why?
What businesses did they establish, and why? |
|
| Education | Where did their children go to school, and why? | |
| Community Organizations | What religious groups, organizations and events did they join and establish, and why? | |
| Family | Who did they marry and how many children did they have, and why? | |
Activity 1.2 Choose a topic, and frame a question about your topic
- Begin by referring to the list of possible topics you created in the previous activity and the table in the reading by Robertson
- Choose one topic; in making that choice consider:
- What topics and events play a prominent role in your community’s past?
- What historical topics have received limited attention?
- What historical topics are of interest to your patrons and community?
- What historical topics are of particular interest to you?
- What historical topics have sufficient sources in your collection or those of other local organizations?
- Narrow your topic to focus on a single specific dimension
- Choose a context in which to explore that topic (eg if your topic was Chinese immigrants in Harlem, you could focus on Chinese businesses)
- Choose a time period in which to explore that topic (eg if your topic was Chinese businesses in Harlem, you could focus on the 1920s and 1930s)
- Frame a question about how and why change occurred in your topic (eg if your topic was Chinese businesses in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, your question could be what businesses did the Chinese establish in this period and why?)
This topic and question will be the basis of the project that you develop in subsequent modules.