Hist 208
Research
MethodsThese
are the files you should be keeping as we go along during the semester.
Remember that this is just a guide. Many aspects of these documents should
be customized to correspond to your style and needs.
-
Proposal
- Research
Plan/ToDo
- Chapter
Outline
- Research
Log (not the same as plan, here you keep track of steps within any one category
of place, type of material, chapter or subject or whatever)
-
One section for each kind of
search
- web
-
library visit
-
specific database
-
sepecific reference guides...
-
A section for "results" that
allows you to keep track of records that you will then want to lookup, borrow,
photocopy, read, etc.
- Research
notes (your actual notes on individual items kept on the PC or 3x5 cards or 3-hole
punch sheets or some other flexible system). Soon we'll be able to use Nota
Bene for this.
- What
do you write on your research notes?
- Author(s)
-
Title
- Publication
data
- Date
-
Page
- quotes
from the document
- your
own response to the document, interpretation, notes to yourself about what to
do with it
- keyword
entries (if using an PC database model)
- Location,
source origin (both where you read and where the original is located, if relevant)
-
Make sure you devise a system
that allows you to list many bibliographic items that you have not yet located
and have not yet taken notes on
- Chronology
-
Discussion of how your project
might use quantitative data with tables, spreadsheets, examples, hypothetical
discussion, etc.
- Organized,
annotated Bibliography of useful items
- Questions
file organized by chapter, theme, etc. (your loose ends file)...allows you to
write out-loud...keep track of minute things that don't yet make sense.
-
Paper itself with all component
parts (described later)
- Abstract