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Lesson 1: How to start your research with good questions

  • Asking questions
  • Categorizing questions
  • Generating questions
  • Dos and don’ts of research

What are your questions?

Good history always begins with good questions. Local history helps us to understand the communities we live in, the people who live their, and the many relationships that shape our lives.

Concept: How do we understand the social history of urban space?

  • The whole place matters—not just distinctive buildings. Parks, sewers, streets, busses, phone lines, railroad tracks and all the component parts of a city are just as important as a grand landmark.
  • Each and every element of the built environment is tied to a web of social relations that has evolved over time. Architectural historian Eric Sandweiss explained how even the history of a city street “means little if it’s not tied to the story of the farmer who sold the land, the developer who bought it from him, the families who campaigned to have it paved, the men who laid the asphalt, or the children who rode their bikes on it.”

Concept: Cultural Landscapes

Concept of nearby history - local history is limited by place, family history is limited by relationships

What questions do local historians ask?

Historians David E. Kyvig and Myron A. Marty in Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You, break down the most common topics for local historians into five categories:

  • Families
  • Residences
  • Neighborhoods
  • Organizations
  • Communities

Families

Buildings/Residences

Neighborhoods

Organizations

Communities

How do you come up with questions?

  • Looking
  • Talking
  • Moving
  • Mapping

What questions do historians ask?

You do not need to be an academic historian to write about local history. It is important, however, to consider what it means to think historically. Historians Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke asked this question for their January 2007 essay, What Does It Mean to Think Historically?, that translated the “habits of mind” common to historians into an approach they call the “five C’s of historical thinking.”

  • Change over time
  • Context
  • Causality
  • Contingency
  • Complexity

Note: It would be good to have examples for each of the 5 C’s pulled from Explore Baltimore Heritage stories. The examples in that article are good but not specific enough for this.

This is really good: http://magazine.oah.org/issues/222/TLHQuestionChart.pdf

How do these questions apply to physical places?

  • Corridors
  • Proximity
  • Travel time
  • Districts/Regions

Dos and Don’ts of Research

  • Do share your questions with friends, neighbors or colleagues. Ask questions about things you don’t understand, things you want to discuss, or new ideas.
  • Do remember your question can change over time; research is an iterative process.
  • Do talk to a librarian at your local branch, your college or University. Reference librarians at the Maryland Room of the Enoch Pratt Library and the Maryland Historical Society specialize in local history and genealogical research. Librarians are skilled at assisting people with research, and they may be able to point you to new sources you would not find on your own.
  • Do make time just to think. Put it on your calendar! Sometimes just taking a few minutes to sit and think about your research can help tremendously.

Source: Learning Historical Research: How to Frame a Researchable Question

Note: Are there some common issues with research questions that should be included in the Dos and Don’ts.

Note:  Should this section include something about how history relates to other kinds of approaches? e.g. folklore, anthropology, archaeology?

Exercise 1: Come up with four research questions

Difficulty: Easy Time: 15-30 minutes

  1. Spend five minutes thinking up a research question. Your question should be connected to one or more of the common topics for nearby history.
  2. Write down what makes your question interesting for you. Write down why you think others might be interested in this question. We suggest using Google Docs - look here for an example.
  3. Share the question with three friends and ask them to share an additional question inspired by your own. Write down additional questions for each friend until you have four. You can have these conversations in person, by email, through social media, a neighborhood Facebook or NextDoor group, or share it on the Bmore Historic or Baltimore City Historical Society Facebook group to solicit feedback from other local historians. Discussing questions with friends helps challenge you to answer the “so what?” question.
  4. Spend five minutes thinking about the questions. Do they seem clear and well-defined? If not, try to revise your questions.
  5. Share your list of four questions with a librarian and find one secondary source related to your topic. You can visit the librarian in person or call the reference desk. Your secondary source can be a book, magazine article, website or something else. Of course, you can find many secondary sources with a quick search but avoid the temptation to skip this step! Learning how to ask for help is
  6. You are done!You now know how to come up with research questions, revise those research questions and get help in finding sources.
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