Your bizarre use of the space button aside, you still said that every internet source is wrong and can't be used which is an inherently absurd position. It also leaves the implication that an accredited professional with published works is wrong the second they put up an article on the internet, which happens all the time, this is the 21st Century after all.
How Do You Do Research?
- Thread starter History_Pintobean
- Start date
Good public and university libraries have been a treasure drove for me, since they have extensive collections in this socialist Finnish dystopia of ours. Online sources have their uses as well, Google Books being the primary example. The only time I use Wikipedia is to check the names of the original source books in the occasional well-researched articles.
My university library is huge, and has plenty of books on my chosen subject for a TL I'm working on.
IMHO Wikipedia and/or the internet is fine as a reference preferably to find various trustworthy sources both online and offline, but one should use the internet with caution (as we all know, anyone can write something on the internet and call it "accurate" or a "fact").
Leo Caesius
Banned
There are numerous starting places:
Google Books. There are plenty of books in the public domain (more are available at Internet Archive and other such services), and with Google Books you have the advantage of previews and snippet views. Even if you can't access the whole thing, you will at least know where to look when you approach your local library or file an interlibrary loan (ILL) search.
Google Scholar. This service gives you an inventory of online articles and citations, as well as their venues (giving you an idea of whether the article has been published through a peer-reviewed journal, and how it has been received by the scholarly public). This will allow you to track most things down in your local library or through ILL. Very often the article itself is available online, hosted on some academic site, behind a link. This brings me to...
Academia.edu. Something like Facebook for academics, it takes advantage of a loophole found in most publishing contracts allowing authors to share electronic offprints of their publications with colleagues freely and post them on their "personal" web sites. You can search by name or area of interest, and there's an option to pose open questions for responses. I post almost everything that I have published here.
JSTOR. When all else fails, there is JSTOR. If you register with JSTOR, it will allow you to search the world's largest database of academic e-publications, including quite a lot of back material that has been digitized (going back to the 16th century in some cases). You can view the first page of any article, and retrieve citations for later reference. If you find something that is really useful, you can place up to three references on your "shelf," where you can consult them as long as you'd like, but you cannot remove any of them to make room for more references until it has been shelved for 14 days. If you have access to JSTOR through your employer or school, you can view a huge amount of information and even download PDFs of articles.
Wikipedia. Often the first (and sometimes even the last) stop for amateur research, it should only be used in conjunction with the above. Wikipedia makes for fascinating reading and is very useful for trivia buffs, but I wouldn't use it for research, even as a starting point, considering how many other wonderful resources are freely available.
I hope this helps.Google Scholar. This service gives you an inventory of online articles and citations, as well as their venues (giving you an idea of whether the article has been published through a peer-reviewed journal, and how it has been received by the scholarly public). This will allow you to track most things down in your local library or through ILL. Very often the article itself is available online, hosted on some academic site, behind a link. This brings me to...
Academia.edu. Something like Facebook for academics, it takes advantage of a loophole found in most publishing contracts allowing authors to share electronic offprints of their publications with colleagues freely and post them on their "personal" web sites. You can search by name or area of interest, and there's an option to pose open questions for responses. I post almost everything that I have published here.
JSTOR. When all else fails, there is JSTOR. If you register with JSTOR, it will allow you to search the world's largest database of academic e-publications, including quite a lot of back material that has been digitized (going back to the 16th century in some cases). You can view the first page of any article, and retrieve citations for later reference. If you find something that is really useful, you can place up to three references on your "shelf," where you can consult them as long as you'd like, but you cannot remove any of them to make room for more references until it has been shelved for 14 days. If you have access to JSTOR through your employer or school, you can view a huge amount of information and even download PDFs of articles.
Wikipedia. Often the first (and sometimes even the last) stop for amateur research, it should only be used in conjunction with the above. Wikipedia makes for fascinating reading and is very useful for trivia buffs, but I wouldn't use it for research, even as a starting point, considering how many other wonderful resources are freely available.
Leo Caesius
Banned
Conspiracy theories aside, I've published two books through academic presses in Europe, as well as maybe half a dozen book chapters through the same, and probably a dozen or so other articles through European journals, and my experience is completely different.
At times, I've had to cite internet sources, if only because the information I need isn't available in print, and as long as the material has been properly cited there is no need to exclude internet sources.
It is not conspiracy theories but what practise shows about information flown out of the internet especially Wiki....
many things are not in print in history;an example manuscripts in monasteries
in eastern and south Europe that are enormous in number and volume have to be inspected personally,most monasteries refuse to release them for public use,don't allow many people to inspect them and it is also the language barrier that plays its part...(many of the big monasteries have even monk-archaeologists to assist them and to catalog them now for example Vatopedion,the greatest monastery in Athos mt,in Greece is creating a computer data base that would incorporate its archives,but that
is going to take many years until it is completed and would constitute a rude surprise to Anglosaxon Byzantinologists who think that by knowing english they would be proficient in their subject...the archive is in many Balcan languages as well as Ucranian,Russian and Hazzar-jewish languages and that is to start with...
To be fair, I highly doubt that anyone would consider themselves to be truly proficient in a subject they have done little primary material research on. I myself, although considering myself to be comparatively knowledgeable on the late Ottoman Empire would never begin to consider myself to be proficient in the subject, as the only archival material on the Ottomans I have studied has been from the National Archives here in the UK.
You seem to be unfairly generalizing here though. Simply because one is an Anglo-Saxon teen (and I say this as an half-Arab half-Irish twenty-something year old) doesn't really mean that they are necessarily ignorant. Indeed, there are a number of teens from the US here who speak more than one language. And I don't think that a large amount of people here use Wikipedia as their main research source. I use plenty of academic books for my TLs (or at least, as many as I can reasonably get my hands upon). Many of the people I know on this website do the same. I think the only thing that is sloppy around here are your sweeping generalizations and constant moving of goalposts.
Leo Caesius
Banned
As someone who actually does quite a lot of original archival work with manuscripts, I'm already well familiar with this. The fact remains that there are conventions for such sources (as well as non-traditional sources such as electronic sources), and that no source is unacceptable provided that it is cited in a proper manner so that one's scholarly peers can consult it and evaluate it for themselves.
Let's say I lay claim to having sole access to a manuscript, which lies in private hands and cannot be freely consulted or reproduced (or, as in the case of the Mar Saba letter, has since conveniently disappeared). Let's also say that there's a YouTube video of a ritual being conducted in the same language in which the manuscript is composed. Which is the better source? Provided I cite both of them properly, both are acceptable, but anyone can go to YouTube and draw their own conclusions from the video, whereas I can make all kinds of claims on the basis of the manuscript and nobody will be in a position to evaluate them.
it is not unfair generalization;it is generalization where it is due.I have lived in two Anglo saxon countries,Rhodesia and England and I would like to know
the person who hasn't heard the typical answer to a foreigner:"No need to speak any other language,English is spoken everywhere..." which isn't true of course but is a mentality that has survived the colonial days...
It is going to take a long time until such things change and what I said is only the tip of the iceberg...
Leo Caesius
Banned
From non-academics? Sure, you hear this sort of thing all the time.
From scientists? Maybe even then, some scientists view having to learn a foreign language to be an unhelpful distraction.
But from academic historians? Show me the historian who doesn't use anything but English language sources, and I'll show you a charlatan.
Validation and authentication of sources is not such simple matter;the example with the YouTube is probably too straight forward to be true....
I will give you a more complicated example:it is called the Bible as YOU know it! the English hold to king James version as being the more credible one I think but the translation from Greek to Latin to English has caused a lot of paraphrasing,altering of meanings etc...some things are more difficult
in this life than what they seem.
Leo Caesius
Banned
Wrong. YouTube has become quite a common resource for language documentation, as language communities seek easy and inexpensive ways to give their languages a higher profile online. A "curated" example of this might be SemArch, the Semitisches Tonarchiv at Heidelberg, to which I've contributed some of my own recordings. Let's say I'm doing an oral history of the Middle East during WWI; I might very well want to cite some of those recordings. If I'm writing about an endangered Semitic language, I'll practically have to cite those recordings.
No, "the English" do no such thing.
In English alone you have your American Standard Version, American King James Version, Amplified Bible, An American Translation, ArtScroll Tanakh (Old Testament), An American Translation, Berkeley Version, Bible in English, The Bible in Living English, Bishops' Bible, Catholic Public Domain Version, Children's King James Version, Christian Community Bible, English version, Clear Word Bible, Complete Jewish Bible, Contemporary English Version, Concordant Literal Version, A Conservative Version, Coverdale Bible, Dabhar Translation, Darby Bible, Douay–Rheims Bible, Douay-Rheims Bible (Challoner Revision), EasyEnglish Bible, Easy-to-Read Version, Emphasized Bible, English Jubilee 2000 Bible, English Standard Version, Ferrar Fenton Bible, Geneva Bible, God's Word, Good News Bible, Great Bible, HalleluYah Scriptures, Holman Christian Standard Bible, The Inclusive Bible, International Standard Version, Jerusalem Bible, Jesus' Disciples Bible, Jewish Publication Society of America Version Tanakh (Old Testament), Judaica Press Tanakh (Old Testament), Julia E. Smith Parker Translation, King James 2000 Version, King James Easy Reading Version, King James Version, King James II Version, Knox's Translation of the Vulgate, Lamsa Bible, A Literal Translation of the Bible, Leeser Bible, Tanakh (Old Testament), The Living Bible, The Living Torah and The Living Nach. Tanakh (Old Testament), Matthew's Bible, The Message, Modern King James Version, Modern Language Bible, Moffatt's New Translation, Murdock Translation of the Western Peshitto, New American Bible, New American Standard Bible, New Century Version, New English Bible, New English Translation (NET Bible), New International Reader's Version, New International Version Inclusive Language Edition, New International Version, New Jerusalem Bible, New Jewish Publication Society of America Version. Tanakh (Old Testament), New King James Version, New Life Version, New Living Translation, New Revised Standard Version, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, The Orthodox Study Bible, Quaker Bible, Recovery Version of the Bible, Revised Version, Revised Standard Version, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, Revised English Bible, The Scriptures, Simplified English Bible, The Story Bible, Taverner's Bible, Thomson's Translation, Today's New International Version, Third Millennium Bible, Tyndale Bible, Updated King James Version, A Voice In The Wilderness Holy Scriptures, Webster's Revision, Westminster Bible, The Work of God's Children Illustrated Bible, and Young's Literal Translation. Most of these have been officially sanctioned and approved for use by different denominations. The "King James Only" movement exists at the fringes of modern Anglophone Christianity.
[*] Full disclosure: I used Wikipedia to compile this list.
Derek Pullem
Donor
Your attitude to non-written / electronic sources is bizarre. There is no magic wand that makes written sources any more reliable than verbal or electronic.
Books can be revised, miscopied, be blatant lies and propaganda just as much as verbal and electronic sources.
Fundamentally any source is only as good as the author and reader believes it is.
To discount electronic sources is condemning history to the fate of Latin - an obscure discipline only practised by those cut off from the modern world.
It really depends on the topic:
First I use Wiki which accuracy and details vary but can sometimes be really helpful, especially for important trivia, in my timeline a mention of an attack on Leon Blum. After the first orientation I use jstor and similar services (thanks university access!!), specialised blogs/sites (troop organisations for example) and distinct google searches. If I'm lucky I can find free dissertations, for my latest timeline one on the anti-parlamentarism in the French army. In some cases I buy books if they're interesting enough. The last and most important source is free to access source material, namely archive.org and for france their National Library's database for documents gallica!
First I use Wiki which accuracy and details vary but can sometimes be really helpful, especially for important trivia, in my timeline a mention of an attack on Leon Blum. After the first orientation I use jstor and similar services (thanks university access!!), specialised blogs/sites (troop organisations for example) and distinct google searches. If I'm lucky I can find free dissertations, for my latest timeline one on the anti-parlamentarism in the French army. In some cases I buy books if they're interesting enough. The last and most important source is free to access source material, namely archive.org and for france their National Library's database for documents gallica!
I've been spending more time on a Pre-1900 timeline at the moment, and so that may change my attitude somewhat (but not that much).
If I am starting totally over with a new topics, I like to check Wikipedia. Its a good place to start and, as in the case of any encyclopedia, you should be sure to check the sources and follow up with them.
Then, once I have a base line of knowing what I'm doing, I go down to my local academic library (or, if that's not possible, I go down to my local public library and ask to request things ILL). Hopefully, your searches on Wikpedia, or Worldbook, or the Encyclopedia Britannica have given you enough of a basis that you know what you are looking for.
Remember; this is research. Maybe I'm just a huge history nerd, but this is one of the FUN parts! Reads the works, and don't worry about note taking; just absorb the main argument and information from each work. You're looking to get a strong foundation in a topic, not trying to remember a cluster of facts. Maybe if something catches your eyes, write it down, but, otherwise, don't worry about it yet.
Once you feel confident in your topic, the time has come to start crafting your timeline. Begin from, well, the start, with the POD and outline how you think things should go. NOW is the time for note taking; go back to your sources and double check a few things. Do they make sense? Does your plan still hold together? If not, why? Feel free to change things based on the information at hang.
Now comes the time to start writing. Get your first chapter or two out there and set up the story you are going to tell. The nice thing about this community is, if anyone sees any problems, they will be quick to tell you. Feel free to defend yourself (writing a long response can actually be one of the best ways to solidify your own thoughts and iron out any weak points), but do NOT get rude. I hate rudeness with a passion.
Should you come to any points where you are unsure of (right now, in my Amalingian Empire timeline, I'm finding myself vexed by needing to know the population of Gaul in the 6th Century as well as the general effects of depopulation on a culture), feel free to ask your readers! They may know a great source you never even thought of. Read it, synthesize the information, thank the poster for the source/info, and then write the next chapter.
They say no man is an island, and I find this especially true for Alternate History. No good author can survive without the imput of others (see: how many actual historians try to write alternate history and get it totally totally wrong!)
Most importantly, remember; have FUN! This is a hobby and you should be enjoying it
If I am starting totally over with a new topics, I like to check Wikipedia. Its a good place to start and, as in the case of any encyclopedia, you should be sure to check the sources and follow up with them.
Then, once I have a base line of knowing what I'm doing, I go down to my local academic library (or, if that's not possible, I go down to my local public library and ask to request things ILL). Hopefully, your searches on Wikpedia, or Worldbook, or the Encyclopedia Britannica have given you enough of a basis that you know what you are looking for.
Remember; this is research. Maybe I'm just a huge history nerd, but this is one of the FUN parts! Reads the works, and don't worry about note taking; just absorb the main argument and information from each work. You're looking to get a strong foundation in a topic, not trying to remember a cluster of facts. Maybe if something catches your eyes, write it down, but, otherwise, don't worry about it yet.
Once you feel confident in your topic, the time has come to start crafting your timeline. Begin from, well, the start, with the POD and outline how you think things should go. NOW is the time for note taking; go back to your sources and double check a few things. Do they make sense? Does your plan still hold together? If not, why? Feel free to change things based on the information at hang.
Now comes the time to start writing. Get your first chapter or two out there and set up the story you are going to tell. The nice thing about this community is, if anyone sees any problems, they will be quick to tell you. Feel free to defend yourself (writing a long response can actually be one of the best ways to solidify your own thoughts and iron out any weak points), but do NOT get rude. I hate rudeness with a passion.
Should you come to any points where you are unsure of (right now, in my Amalingian Empire timeline, I'm finding myself vexed by needing to know the population of Gaul in the 6th Century as well as the general effects of depopulation on a culture), feel free to ask your readers! They may know a great source you never even thought of. Read it, synthesize the information, thank the poster for the source/info, and then write the next chapter.
They say no man is an island, and I find this especially true for Alternate History. No good author can survive without the imput of others (see: how many actual historians try to write alternate history and get it totally totally wrong!)
Most importantly, remember; have FUN! This is a hobby and you should be enjoying it
I would say mine is somewhat systematic, so I draft a TL that is predicated on several assertions. I then conduct research to substantiate or disprove my assertions underpinning the segment or episode of the TL.
If you conduct your research in this manner be prepared to amend / revise your assertions and the direction of your TL. This does however make it rather interesting to write.
As other authors have mentioned if you have the chance to travel to the area involving your TL do so. I found my recent trip to SE Asia very helpful for my TL and evaluating if my thoughts made sense.
Hope that helps.
If you conduct your research in this manner be prepared to amend / revise your assertions and the direction of your TL. This does however make it rather interesting to write.
As other authors have mentioned if you have the chance to travel to the area involving your TL do so. I found my recent trip to SE Asia very helpful for my TL and evaluating if my thoughts made sense.
Hope that helps.
To you probably and to American learning culture;books can be prologued,cross-examined and,fortunately,libraries are full of books;by and large checked,there are book critics and all sort of checks and balances.Internet doesn't have and cannot have these methods!it is completely uncontrolled.Books are revised and add knew information through new additions...anyway what is bizzare is your attitude towards books;you are in favour of the least effort,if possible,information and knowledge on a plate!
A,I see,so we suppose(to be...socially correct?) to abolish classics(Greek,Latin etc) because...progress demands it,great! that C.Rice who considered anything older than ten years...ancient history...yes there are such...bizzare individuals in this world,we can't help them much...