Chap 6 Organizing
the Research Process
 

Mark Hellstern
Gregory M. Scott
Stephen M. Garrison

6.1 Gaining Control of the Research Process
Most of the writing we do as historians involves research. When we write about the history of a person, event, trend, or phenomenon, we must base our analyses and assertions on something more substantial than pet theories. An opinion is worthless unless it is an informed opinion. Researchers in all fields work to make themselves knowledgeable enough to be able to give informed opinions. This is what you are setting out to do in your research paper: You are working to earn the right to give informed opinions to your readers.

The research paper is where all your skills as an interpreter of details, an organizer of facts and theories, and a writer of clear prose come together. Building logical arguments on the basis of fact is the way things are done in history, and the most successful historians are those who master the art of research as well as writing. Would you rather enroll in a British history course being taught by a part-time instructor, moonlighting to pay a few bills, or by a professor who has researched and written in the area of British history? The part4imer may be a better, more entertaining public speaker, but the professor will offer more reliable information. (The ideal situation, of course, would provide a person who is both an expert and a joy to hear!)

Students new to the job of writing research papers sometimes find themselves intimidated by the job ahead of them. After all, the research paper adds what seems to be an extra set of complications and complexities to the writing process. As any other expository or persuasive paper does, a research paper must offer an original thesis using a carefully organized and logical argument. But a research paper also investigates a topic that is generally outside the writer's own experience. This means that writers must locate and evaluate information that is new to them, in effect educating themselves as they explore their topics. A beginning researcher sometimes feels overwhelmed by the basic requirements of the assignment or by the authority of the source material being investigated.

As you begin a research project, it may be difficult to establish a sense of control over the different tasks you are undertaking. You may have little notion of where to search for a thesis or even for the most helpful information. If you do not carefully monitor "our own work habits, you may find yourself unwitting~ ly abdicating responsibility for the paper's argument by borrowing it wholesale from one or more of your sources.

Who is in control of your paper? The answer, of course, must be you-not the instructor who assigned the paper, and certainly not the published writers whom you consult as sources. If your paper does no more than to paste together the writings of others, it is of little or no use. It is up to you to locate and investigate as much relevant source information as possible and then to synthesize an original idea from audicious evaluation of your material. At the beginning of the research phase of your paper, you may not have a thesis. You will probably discover also that as soon as you begin to form one it may be challenged or changed through further research. Even before your thesis or argument takes shape, however, you can establish a measure of control over the process you will go through to complete the paper. And if you work regularly and systematically, keeping yourself open to new ideas as they present themselves, your sense of control will grow. Here are a few suggestions to help you establish and maintain control of your paper.

1. Understand your assignment. It is possible for a research assignment to go badly simply because the student did not read the assignment carefully. Professors can tell you sad stories about students from the past who invested hours upon hours in research and writing, only to learn to their horror that they had failed to apprehend the true intent, direction, or details of their assignment. Considering how much time and effort you are about to spend on your project, it is a very good idea to make sure you have a clear understanding of what your instructor wants you to do. Be sure to ask your instructor about any aspect of the assignment that is unclear to you, but only after you have read it carefully. Recopying the assignment in your own handwriting is a good way to start, even though your instructor may have already given it to you in writing. Make sure, before you dive into the project, that you have considered the questions listed below.

2. VVhat is your lopic? The assignment itself may give you a great deal of specific information about your topic, or you may be allowed considerable freedom in establishing one for yourself. In a class on the histury ofAmerican foreign policy, chances are that you will not get to write a paper on the Crusades, no matter how interested in them you may he. In such a class, your professor might want you to examine American military adventures in Latin America in the nineteenth century, or you may be permitted to focus on any' aspect of American foreign policy that interests you. Yo~ need to understand the terms, set up in the assignment, by which you will design your project.

3. What is your purpose? Whatever the degree of latitude you are given in the matter of your topic, pay close attention to the way in which your instructor has phrased the assignment. Is your pnmaryjob to describe a certain historical situation or to take a stand on it? Are you to compare two people, events, or trends? Are you to ~ per~oade, survey~ analyze? Look for such descriptive terms in the assignment to determine the purpose of your project.

4. Who is your audience? Your own orientation to the paper is profoundly affected by your conception of the audience for whom you are writing. Granted, your main reader is your instructor, but who else would be interested in your paper? The other members of your graduate seminar? The editors of a local historical journal?

5. What kind of research will you be doing? Your project will require one if not both of the following kinds of research:

Primary research, which requires you to locate and sift through first-hand accounts of a particular event or idea. In primary research, you are collecting and examining raw data which have often not been interpreted by researchers. This raw data may be the opinions of experts or people on the street, historical documents, the published letters of famous politicians, or material collected from other researchers. It is important to set up carefully the methods by which you collect your data. Your aim is to gather the most accurate information possible, from which sound observations may be made later; either by you or by other writers using the material you have uncovered.

Secondary research, which uses published interpretations by other scholars who have investigated similar topics. While primary research collects, analyzes, and makes available raw data, secondary research focuses on other researchers' interpretations of raw data. Most of your college history papers will be based on your use of secondary sources.

SECONDARY SOURCES                                     PRIMARY SOURCES

Don Fehrenbocher's The Era of Expansion                     the Journal of Lewis and Clark

David Mccullo:h's Mornings on Horseback                     the letters of Theodore Roosevelt

Danney Goble's iragressive Oklahoma                            a box of 1920s Ku Klux Klan materials found in a Tulsa attic

Phillip Davidson's Vietnam at War                                     Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam
 

6. Keep your perspective. Whichever type of research you perform, you must keep your results in perspective. There is no way in which you, as a primary researcher, can be completely objective in your findings. If you are conducting secondary research, you must remember that the articles and books you are reading are shaped by the aims of their writers, who are interpreting primary materials for their own ends. The farther you are removed from a primary source, the greater the possibility for distortion. Yourjob as a researcher is to be as accurate as possible, which means keeping in view the limitations of your methods and their ends.

6.2 Effective and Efficient Research Methods
In any research project there will be moments of confusion, but you can prevent this confusion from overwhelming you by establishing an effective research procedure. You need to design a schedule that is as systematic as possible yet flexible enough so that you do not feel trapped by it. A schedule will keep you from running into dead ends by always showing you what to do next. It will also help to keep you from forgetting important or time-sensitive steps. At the same time, the schedule helps you retain the focus necessary to spot new ideas and strategies as you work.

6.2.1 Give Yourself Plenty of Time
You may feel like delaying your research for many reasons: unfamiliarity with a big, imposing library; the procrastination we all face when confronted with a huge task; anxiety over the sea of information to be consulted; the press of other assignments and responsibilities; or (everyone's favorite) a deadline that seems comfortably far away. But you cannot allow such factors to deter you. Those of us who are do-it-your-selfers are all too aware that the best-planned schedules for accomplishing a particular goal usually prove to be insufficient. Weekend projects often require twice the time (and money) than we had allowed when we began. Library work tends to speed up the clock. That hour you had planned to devote to locating a particular source will subtly grow to two hours and entire afternoon. You must allow yourself the time needed not only, to find material but also to read it, assimilate it, and set it in the context of your own thoughts.

If you delay starting your research, you may well find yourself distracted by the deadline, having to keep an eye on the clock while trying to make sense of a writer's complicated arguments. In the end, it is a sure bet that you will not produce a quality project. No matter how confident you may be in your talent for glossing over problems, your paper will look like what it is: a rush job.

The following schedule lists the steps of a research project in the order in which they are generally accomplished. Remember that each step is dependent upon the others, and it is quite possible to revise earlier decisions in the light of later discoveries. After some early background reading, for example, your notion of the paper's purpose may change, a fact that may in turn alter other steps. One of the strengths of any good schedule is flexibility. Note that the schedule lists tasks for both primary and secondary research; you should use only those steps that are relevant to your project.

RESEARCH SCHEDULE

TASK                                                                                         DATE OF COMPLETION

Determine topic, purpose, and audience
Do background reading in reference books
Narrow your topic; establish a tentative hypothesis
Develop a working bibliography
Write for any needed information
Read and evaluate secondary sources, taking notes
Locate relevant primary sources
Consult and evaluate primary sources
Envision an outline and organize notes accordingly
Develop a thesis
Write a first draft
Obtain feedback, Show' draft to instructor, if possible)
Do more research, if necessary
Revise the draft, using corrected bibliographical format
Proofread
Deadline for final draft
Do background reading

Suppose you have enrolled in a course that is only of marginal interest to you. Suppose further that the instructor has offered the class a fairly broad range of topics for a research paper, yet none of the topics on her list are familiar to you. Now the task of choosing a topic has become truly daunting. The library which your instructor talks about navigating with such ease is a foreboding chasm to you, and you begin to wonder when the drop/add period for til is class closes! Before you sprint to the Registrar's office to change classes, give it a chance. Often some quick, basic reading will supply a sufficient reservoir of knowledge to allow you to face your task knowledgeably.

Archaeological investigations often begin with remote sensing techniques from aircraft or even satellites far above the surface of the earth. From this beginning, the scope of the work becomes more and more focused and restricted. The tools become increasingly smaller, from tractors and backhoes to shovels and spades to hand trowels and small brushes. ~en we conduct historical research, we also are "excavating" down through layers of the material that has been written on the subject. Do not be afraid, therefore, to begin your examination of a topic with what you may think is very superficial source material, then dig into deeper layers with each step of the research process.

Before you start pulling card catalog drawers or typing key search words on your school's library computer system, try looking for a basic article in a print encyclopedia, such as the world Book, Colliers, or Britannica, or a CD-ROM encyclopedia, such as Encarta. You will find that even a quick:~examination of the essentials of the topic will make you conversant enough about it to establish necessary parameters in your mind. By the time you finish reading the article, you may have begun to identify certain aspects of the topic that interest you more than others, thus beginning the narrowing process. Look for "Related Articles," and read the ones that interest you most. This will broaden your knowledge base and offer additional vantage points from which to view your original topic. Perhaps one of these could provide just the "angle" you have been seeking to open the topic for you.

6.2.2 Narrow Your Topic and Establish a Working Thesis
You will find that most encyclopedia articles contain not only ideas for related articles to read but also a brief bibliography or suggestions for further reading. These works are usually the most widely recognized books on that subject. You may notice that some of these center on narrow aspects of the topic that have piqued your interest. Make note of these works, and find them in the library and examine them briefly. By the time you have examined the relevant portions of these books, you will be armed with even more information, and you will probably have refined your topic and your ideas even further. These reference works will also provide useful bibliographies that you can use to probe into the next, deeper phase of your research. You will find that each step you take in the process will reveal several additional steps you may take in several different directions. You may find that as your research begins to deepen, your topic may actually narrow itself. Consider the following example.

GENERAL TOPIC: Feudalism
FIRST SOURCE: Feudalism," Microsoft Encarta
SECOND LAYER: Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, 1966. David Herlihy, ed. The History of Feudalism, 1979
ThIRD LAYER: Georges Duby, The Three Orde"s: Feudal Society Imagined, 1980.
Sidney Painter; French Chivalry: Chivalric Ideas and Practices in Medieval France, 1957. Margaret Wade Lafarge, A Small Sound of tile Tru in pe t: Women in Medieval Lzfr, 1986.

Notice the trend in these articles and books. The encyclopedia provided some basic information about life in the Middle Ages. The next stage of the investigation began to eliminate military and political affairs and to center on social aspects of medieval life. By the time the search reached the third layer; the focus narrowed toward a study of gender roles in Medieval France. What began with a very general perusal of an encyclopedia article became more specific, by subject and geography, and already much more manageable and much less intimidating!

6.2.3 Develop a Working Bibliography
As you delve deeper into your research, keep track of the sources you have consulted. Whether you derive this list from your school's library catalog or from bibliographies in other works, it will serve your interests in the long haul if you can begin to organize your sources now. In your paper's final draft, you will need to present these sources in a prescribed order in the paper's own bibliography. This order is detailed for you in Chapter 5. For now, however, you may wish to organize your sources according to the role they play in unfolding the paper's story, regardless of whether they are books, articles, newspaper accounts, or government documents.

It is from your working bibliography that you will select the items you will actually use to help build and support the ideas in your paper. Early in your research you will not know which of the sources will help you and which will t.~t, but it is important to keep an accurate description of each entry in your working bibliography so you will be able to tell clearly which items you have investigated and which you will need to consult again. Establishing the working bibliography also allows you to practice using the bibliographical format you are required to follow in your final draft. As you make your list of potential sources, be sure to include all the information about each one in the proper bibliographical format, using the proper punctuation. (See Chapter 5 for ways to handle these decisions.)

There are two important reasons why you will want all relevant bibliographic information available at all times. First, it is frustrating when you know that you have seen a very important piece of information but cannot remember where it was-what chapter, what book, or even what library. Second, it is perhaps even more frustrating to type quotes from a particular source into the final draft of your paper, begin to prepare the corresponding citation, then realize that a critical piece of the citation-a volume number, a publication date, or a page number-is still on some library's shelf. You must make a decision at this point. Do you make yet another trip to the library to find the missing information, or do you leave it out of the reference, hoping that the instructor will not notice? Rather than face this dilemma, do yourself a great favor early in the research phase of the paper's production and jot down all parts of the citation you may need later.

6.2.4 Write for Needed Information
In the course of your research you may need to consult a source that is not immediately available to you. Not every researcher is blessed with easy access to the Vatican Archives, the British Museum, or the Library of Congress. If your research takes you beyond the borders of your hometown, you can plan to drive or fly somewhere to find what you need. Or you could take advantage of the United States Postal Service or the interlibrary loan system. Many large corporations and most government agencies have persons or entire departments whose job is to furnish information to the public. Do not hesitate to contact such persons. Likewise, the person in charge of acquiring materials through interlibrary loan at your university library is very knowledgeable about how to acquire distant materials and will be delighted to lend you a hand in doing so.

If you ask for materials through the mail, make sure that your request is as specific as possible, so that the person who receives your inquiry will be able to give you the most satisfying assistance. It is a good idea to outline your project in a few sentences to help the respondent determine the types of information that will be useful to you.

In this age of electronic marvels, it is easier than ever to track and obtain materials from distant places. Still, these methods take time, not because of lagging technology, but often because of the humans who must operate it. Give them (and yourself) a cushion of time. If you need to write a letter to obtain something, do so in January when you first realize you need it, not in April, three weeks before your paper is due. Do not make your job harder than it needs to be by being timid or by procrastinating.

6.2.5 Evaluate Written Sources
Fewer research experiences are more frustrating than trying to recall information found in a source you can no longer identify. You must establish an efficient method of examining and evaluating the sources in your working bibliography. Here are some suggestions for compiling an accurate record of your written notices.

6.2.6 Determine Quickly the Potential Uses of a Source
In order to determine whether a book might be of help to your project, you should read the front material (the introduction, foreword, and preface), looking for the thesis and an overview of the book's argument; you can also examine chapter headings, dust jackets, and indexes. A journal article should announce its intention in its introduction, which in most cases will be a page or less in length. This sort of preliminary examination should tell you whether a more intensive examination is worthwhile. 'Whatever you decide about the source, photocopy its title page, making sure that all important publication information (including title, date, author, volume number, and page numbers) is present. If any of these items are missing, make sure you take time to write in everything necessary for future reference. Without such a record, later in your research you may forget that you have consulted a text, in which case you may find yourself repeating your work.

'When you have determined that a potential source is worth closer inspection, explore it carefully. If it is a book, determine whether you should invest the time needed to read it in its entirety. 'Whatever the source, make sure you tinder-stand not only its overall thesis, hut also each part of the argument that the writer sets up to illustrate or prove the thesis.

As you read, try also to get ,~a feel for the larger argument in which the source takes its place. Its references to the works of other writers will show you where to look for additional material and indicate the general shape of scholarly opinion concerning your subject. If you can see the source you are reading as only one element of an ongoing dialogue instead of the last word on the subject, then you can place its argument in perspective.

6.2.7 Use Photocopies
Periodicals and most reference works cannot be checked out of the library. Before the widespread availability of photocopy machines, students could use these materials only in the library, jotting down information on note cards. 'While there are advantages to using the note card system (see the next section), photocopying saves you time in the library and allows you to take the original information home, where you can decide how to use it at your own convenience.

If you decide to copy source material, you should observe the following:
 

• Be sure to follow all copyright laws.

 
• Before your visit to the library, obtain enough correct change (a roll, perhaps, of nickels or dimes) so that you do not have to rely on battle-scarred and cantankerous change machines.

 
• Record all necessary bibliographical information on the photocopy! If you forget to do this, you may find yourself with a stack of unmarked photocopies, whose information you would dearly love to employ in your paper, but whose missing details will make it impossible without an extra trip back to the library just to track down a missing publication date or page number.

The Note Card: A Thing of the Past?
In many ways, the note cards we were taught to use in high school are now an old-fashioned method of recording source material, and for unpracticed researchers, they may seem unwieldy and unnecessary, since the information jotted on them-one fact fact per card-will eventually have to be transferred again into the research paper. It seems to be a much more efficient use of time to drop some coins into a machine, place the resulting stack of photocopied pages into your briefcase, and be on you way back home. Before you decide, however, to abolish the note card system once and for all, consider these advantages.
 

1. Using note cards is a way of forcing yourself to think productively as you read. In translating the language of the source into the language of your notes, you are assimilating the material more completely than you would merely by reading it.
2. Note cards give you a handy way to arrange and rearrange your facts, looking for the best possible organization for your paper. Not even a computer gives you the flexibility of a pack of cards as you try to order your paper.
3. .A~y single photocopied page will probably contain more than one bit of information that you will want to employ in your paper, and the order in which you will use the pieces of information may not correspond to the order in which they appear in the photocopy. Moving backward and forward through a stack of photocopies could become confusing and cumbersome. You can order individual note cards any way you like.

Using primary sources, on the other hand, requires some special considerations, such as the following:
 

• Not every primary source must be read in manuscript form. Many such sources have been edited and published and are widely available. These include the personal papers of most famous public figures, US. presidents and other government leaders, explorers such as Lewis and Clark, and so forth. One need not hold the actual pages themselves to discover what Napoleon had to say when he wrote to josephine. Do not abandon the hope, therefore, of using such source. They may not be as far away as you might think; they could be on the shelves of your school's library.
• If a source is not on a library shelf near you, it may be available in a micro-form version. Your library may have a set of these. Others may be obtained through interlibrary loan. Again, do not think that you must budget hundreds of dollars for travel to an exotic repository in order to examine a primary source. Nor should you abandon the use of a document just because it is not close at hand.
• When you do plan to visit a library to examine a rare source, remember that some public and private libraries have certain restrictions governing the use of special collections. In some cases these documents are reserved for use only by graduate students and professional historians. Often you must arrange an appointment to use materials. Some places might require a fee. Most libraries restrict access to rare manuscripts and will absolutely forbid photocopying fragile, light-sensitive pages. It is always best to write or to call ahead to determine availability, accessibility, and procedures before you invest time and money in a trip to see the special collections of a distant or special library.

6.2.9 Draft a Thesis and Outline
No matter how thoroughly you may hunt for secondary' and primary sources or how fast you read, you will not be able to find and assimilate every piece of written material pertaining to your subject, and you should not prolong your research unduly. At some point, the research phase of your project must come to an end-though you always have the option of resuming it if the need arises-and you must begin to shape both the material you have gathered and you r thoughts about it into a paper. During the research phase, you have been thinking about your working thesis, testing it against the material you discovered and considering ways to improve or alter it. Now you must formulate a thesis that sets out an interesting and useful task that can be satisfactorily managed within the limits of your assignment and that effectively employs much, if not all, of the material you have gathered.

Once you have developed your thesis, it is a very good idea to make an outline of the paper. Your writing needs structure; otherwise, your well-crafted prose will not be sufficient by itself to make your paper interesting and worth reading. It may seem like a waste of time to construct an outline, but taking the time now to organize your material into a logical exposition will, in the long run, make your writing task easier and your finished product better.

In helping you to determine a structure for your writing, the outlines also testing your thesis. prompting you to discover the kinds of work your paper will have to do to complete the task set out by the main idea. Chapter 1 discusses the structural requirements of the formal and informal outline. (If you have used note cards, you may want to start outlining by organizing the cards according to the headings you have given them and looking for logical connections among the different groups of cards. Experimenting with various structures in this way may lead you to discoveries that will further improve your thesis.)

No thesis or outline is chiseled in stone. There is still time to improve the structure and purpose of your paper even after you have begun to write your first draft or, for that matter, your final draft. Some writers actually prefer to write a first draft before outlining, and then study the draft's structure to determine what revisions need to be made. Stay' flexible, always looking for a better connection, a sharper wording of your thesis. All the time you are writing, the testing of your ideas continues.