History and its Literature
LIS413 Simmons College
Brendan Rapple
17 July, 2007
Types of History

History in terms of nations very common

Sometimes regional history is studied, e.g.
 Latin America; Eastern Europe; Middle East; South East Asia

A Civilization:
 Romans; Moslem Civilization of North Africa; Native American
Civilization of South America.

Sometimes it’s Periods:
 Renaissance
 Reformation
 30 Years War
 The Enlightenment
 The Dark Ages
More Specific Topics

Columbus discovering or rediscovering America; The Vietnam
Conflict; Watergate; Salem Witch Trials; Battle of Leningrad
Topics are often Categorized
 Intellectual history; Cultural history; Social history; Economic
history; Religious history; Educational history
Many of these can be Subdivided:
 The HISTORY OF WOMEN as a category of cultural or social
history

Historical analysis may be directed toward an individual, an
idea, a movement, or an institution.
Sometimes Questions can be very Broad

What caused societal revolutions in China, France, Russia?

How have major social institutions, like medicine, developed and
changed over two centuries?

How have basic social relationships, like feelings about the value of
children, changed over the centuries?

Is race declining in significance compared to social class as a major
division in the U.S.?

Why did South Africa develop a system of greater racial separation as
the U.S. moved toward greater racial integration?

What caused fall of Roman Empire?
Interpretation

Historians rely on records of events that were made by others, e.g.
 journalist
 court reporter
 diarist
 photographer

These recordings involve interpretive acts.

They involve certain biases, values, and interests of those who
recorded them, i.e. they attended to some details and omitted
others.

Thus, interpretation exists even before historian enters the picture.
Essential to Test and Evaluate Evidence

Free from bias?

Was source capable intellectually to provide a sound interpretation?

Is evidence (and the source’s interpretation) supported by evidence
from other sources?
Historian adds still another layer of
interpretation

She stresses or ignores certain data.

She organizes data into categories/patterns.
History is a Representation of the Past
But representations may be hindered by

lack of ability of historian

lack of evidence

historian’s biases

historian’s interpretation

sheer desire to present a false picture
Very Different Treatments

Teaching of History in




Palestinian Schools
Israeli Jewish Schools
Zulu Schools
Afrikaner Boer Schools
History often very Specialized

Today historians often have a methodological specialization:

Historians who study the Depression of the 1930s need to have quite
a sophisticated knowledge of economics.

Historians who study social mobility in the U.S. should be trained in
aspects of social science.

Historians who study farming in Central America must have a strong
knowledge of agricultural techniques.

Cultural historians must have strong backgrounds in such subjects
as literary theory, anthropology, art history, or musicology.
Recent Developments in Historical Writing

Change from political to social history, from the public life of the
nation to the private life of citizens

Many studies of
 lives of women and children
 slaves
 ethnic groups
 factory workers
 the family, etc.

Thus, race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality have supplanted traditional
political, diplomatic and intellectual history.

There are now no more “people without a history” (Wolf, 1982).

“In reality, for the most part, these earlier historians were concerned
overwhelmingly with a decided minority of the population in terms of
class, ethnicity, region, and gender, and tended to confuse the
history of one group with the history of the nation”
(Lawrence W. Levine, Amer. Hist. Rev. June, 1989)
Change to More “Democratic” History was Resisted

“Today we must face the discouraging prospect that we all, teachers and
pupils alike, have lost much of what this earlier generation possessed, the
priceless asset of a shared culture. Today imaginations have become
starved or stunted . . . Furthermore, many of the younger practitioners of our
craft, and those who are still apprentices, are products of lower middle-class
or foreign origins, and their emotions not infrequently get in the way of
historical reconstructions. They find themselves in a very real sense
outsiders on our past and feel themselves shut out. This is certainly not their
fault, but it is true. They have no experience to assist them, and the chasm
between them and the Remote Past widens every hour . . . What I fear is
that the changes observant in the background and training of the present
generation will make it impossible for them to communicate and to
reconstruct the past for future generations.” (Carl Bridenbaugh, Amer. Hist.
Rev. Jan., 1963 – Bridenbaugh was President of the Amer. Hist. Soc.)
Among Some New Approaches
Cultural History:
 Many dimensions.
Quantitative History:
 Statistical methods

Voting records

Population analyses

Literacy counts, etc.
Feminist History:
 Feminist historians frequently question male-dominated
assumptions and data on women in other cultures.
Biological & Environmental History:
 Studies in nutrition, disease, such elements of the environment as
plants, animals, land, and the atmosphere
Primary Sources

Manuscripts/Documents:
Charters, Laws, Archives of official minutes or records, Letters, Memoirs,
Official publications, Wills, Newspapers and magazines, Maps, Catalogues,
Inscriptions, Graduation records, Bills, lists, deeds, contracts, etc., etc.

Objects:
Relics, Coins, Stamps, Skeleton, Fossils, Weapons, Tools, Utensils,
Pictures, Furniture, Clothing, Coins, Food, Books, Scrolls

Also Art Objects:
Sculptures, Paintings, Pottery
Also Films, Photographs, Buildings

Oral Testimony also important as primary sources

Thus, “evidence” or “sources” includes many categories beyond
written texts.
External Criticism

Check if the evidence is authentic/genuine.

Researcher must discover frauds, forgeries, hoaxes, inventions.

Chemical analysis of paint, ink, paper, parchment, cloth.

Carbon dating of artifacts.

Ask such questions as



Was the knowledge the source aims to transmit available at the
time?
Is it consistent with what is already known about author/period?
What about beautiful Greek coin just discovered and bearing the
date 499 B.C.?
Internal Criticism

Evidence is genuine, but can we trust what it tells us?

Does document present a faithful/true report?

Was document's author a competent observer?

Was she too sympathetic or too adversely critical?

Was she pressured to twist or exclude facts?

Was documentary record made long after events
described?

Does her story agree with that of other witnesses?
Scholarly Societies

American Antiquarian Society
http://www.americanantiquarian.org/

American Historical Association
http://www.historians.org/

History of Science Society
http://www.hssonline.org/

For a comprehensive list of Societies/Associations see
http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/history_soc.html

WorldCat
(subscription database)
This online union catalog has well over 60 million bibliographic records.
In the Advanced Search mode one may limit one's search to archival
materials.
Library of Congress

The LOC http://catalog.loc.gov/ is extremely useful to
historians. Much material is available online.
Bibliographies and Guides
Harvard Guide to American History (Belknap
Press; Revised edition (July, 1974)
An excellent place to start for books and articles on a particular
topic or period. 1348 pages in length, it is selective, and limited to
books and articles published before 1972. Volume One has
information on doing research and includes books and articles
arranged by topic, and Volume Two has books and articles
arranged by chronological period and a name and subject index.
Bibliographies and Guides
Handbook for Research in American History: A Guide to
Bibliographies and Other Reference Works. 2nd. ed., rev.
(University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
An excellent guide to more specialized bibliographies and reference
materials in many different areas of United States history organized
by type of reference.
Bibliographies and Guides
Reader's Guide to American History (Fitzroy Dearborn
Publishers, 1997)
(880 pages)
Essays and substantial bibliographies on some 600 topics "to offer
some help to those who wish to explore the riches of American
historical writing in all its diversity."
Biographies
American National Biography
(print and Online)
http://proxy.bc.edu/login?url=http://www.anb.org/articles/index.html
Very extensive. Short biographical articles, many with pictures, on
deceased notable Americans. Online version includes more recent
articles, in quarterly updates, than the print version.
Newspapers
Most newspapers have print indexes of their past issues
-- some of these indexes are now online.
However, most online indexes are not free and print
indexes may not be readily available
Newspapers

African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century (1827-1862)
This database provides the complete word-for-word texts of major 19th century
African-American newspapers. Newspapers in this database are made available in
chronological orders, with the addition of a minimum of ten million new words each
year. Currently the file contains Parts 1, 2, and 3 and covers the following
newspapers: Freedom’s Journal 1827-1830 (New York, NY); Colored American 18371841 (New York, NY); The North Star 1847-1851 (Rochester, NY); Frederick
Douglass Paper 1851-1859, completed through December 1852 (Rochester, NY);
National Era 1847-1860, completed through December 1853 (Washington, D.C.);
Provincial Freeman 1854-1857 (Toronto, Canada); The Christian Recorder 18611902, completed through April 1862 (Philadelphia, PA).
Newspapers

Times Digital Archive 1785-1985
The full text of the Times of London, includes news articles, editorials,
obituaries, and advertising. It is is fully searchable and results are displayed
as facsimile images of the article or page. Every word and image of 200
years of the newspaper is included.
Newspapers

New York Times 1857-1999 - ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Full text access to historical content of the New York Times,
including advertisements. Searching can be done for words in the
entire text or in the citation and abstract (headline and first
paragraph). Search options include simple keyword searching,
natural language searching, or advanced searching (which includes
searching by article type, for example death notices or editorials).
Display is a pdf image of the citation article, including its extension
to other pages.
Newspapers
Boston Globe
Full text of the Boston Globe newspaper, from 1980 to yesterday's edition.
Boston Globe (Historical Newspapers) 1872-1922
Documents Databases
AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History.
http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/
Links to selected documents from the fifteenth century to
contemporary times.
Documents Databases
Avalon Project at Yale University
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm
Documents by century; also major collections, subjects, authors, and titles,
and, importantly, a search engine for the entire project or its parts (there are
a large number of documents).
Documents Databases
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S.
Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1873
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html
Part of the American Memory site at the Library of Congress
Documents Databases
National Security Archive
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
This site at George Washington University collects and publishes
declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA). Includes documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Iran
Contra controversy.
Documents Databases
Documenting the American South
http://docsouth.unc.edu/
Sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period
through the first decades of the twentieth century. Indexes first person
narratives, a library of Southern literature, slave narratives, the Civil War
home front 1861-1865, and the African American Church.
Archives and Manuscripts

ArchivesUSA (subscription database)
This is a database providing access to holdings and contact information of
more than 5,480 libraries. One may limit one's search to a particular
collection name or to a specific repository name (in the latter case one may
limit to a particular city).

Archive Grid (subscription database)
Thousands of libraries, museums and archives have contributed nearly a
million collection descriptions to Archive Grid. Types of material include oral
histories, letters, unpublished notes and manuscripts, records of corporate
and governmental operations, family histories, personal papers, and
historical records held in archives around the world.
Archives and Manuscripts
American Memory Project at the Library of Congress
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html
A wealth of documents, oral histories, photographs, maps, motion pictures,
recordings-- and all within efficient search engine which can search topics
across collections.
Archives and Manuscripts
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections
http://lcweb.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/nucmc.html
Known as "NUCMC," the printed source consists of annual volumes with
index volumes indexing names, places, subjects, and form and genre, and
containing a list of repositories. This is the place to look to see where
historical figures' papers and letters are located in the United States.
Archives and Manuscripts
National Archives and Records Administration
http://www.nara.gov/
The National Archives of the United States.
Archives and Manuscripts
Repositories of Primary Sources
http://www.uidaho.edu/specialcollections/Other.Repositories.html
A useful list of over 5,000 archival web sites with links by world region
and for the United States by state. Kept at the University of Idaho, this
is one of the most complete lists of archives.
Other Electronic Indexes
America History and Life 1964-
(subscription database)
U.S. and Canadian history in some 2,000 history periodicals
covering prehistory to the present. The best place to go for recent
academic history article citations.
Other Electronic Indexes

Historical Abstracts
(1954-present)
(subscription database)
Covers articles, books and dissertations in the field of world history
from approximately 1450, including political, diplomatic, military,
economic, social, cultural, religious and intellectual history.
Other Electronic Indexes

ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) (formerly ACLS History E-Book
Project) (subscription database)
A project to publish high quality electronic books across a broad range of
fields in history, sponsored by the American Council of Learned
Societies. The project includes hundreds of previously published titles
and new publications which take advantage of electronic publishing
capabilities. New titles in both categories are added annually.
Other Electronic Indexes

Gutenberg-e
(subscription database)
This collection of electronic books, adapted from prize-winning
dissertations, covers a range of historical topics. The books are enhanced
by links to primary source documents, images, and maps. The project is a
collaboration of the American Historical Association and Columbia
University Press.
Other Electronic Indexes


Early American imprints. Series I, Evans, 1639-1800
Early American Imprints, Series II - Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819
(subscription databases)
Vast full-text resource of information about every aspect of life in 17th
- and 18th-century America as well as the first couple of decades of
the 19th. Subjects covered range from agriculture and auctions
through foreign affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the
Revolutionary War, slavery, temperance, witchcraft and just about
any other topic imaginable.
Other Electronic Indexes

Early American Newspapers, 1690-1876
(subscription
database)
Early American Newspapers features cover-to-cover reproductions of
historic newspapers, providing pages as fully text-searchable facsimile
images. The current release includes 141 titles from 23 states and the
District of Columbia. The collection is based largely on Clarence Brigham's
History and Bibliography of American Newspapers,1690-1820.
Other Electronic Indexes

Early English Books Online (subscription database)
EEBO brings nearly every English language book published from the
invention of printing in 1475 to 1700 to the Internet. Works by Shakespeare,
Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, Galileo; musical exercises
by Henry Purcell and novels by Aphra Behn; prayer books, pamphlets, and
proclamations; almanacs, calendars, and other primary resources are all in
full facsimile. This interdisciplinary database includes well over 100,000
early printed titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue
(1475- 1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and the Thomason
Tracts
Other Electronic Indexes

Eighteenth Century Collections Online
(subscription
database)
When complete, this database will deliver every significant English-language
and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain between 1701 and 1800,
along with thousands of important works from the Americas. It will comprise
nearly 150,000 titles and editions and will allow full-text searching of more than
33 million pages of material. Titles included in ECCO are based on the English
Short Title Catalogue bibliography and are sourced from the holdings of the
British Library, as well as other national, university, research, and public and
private libraries. The database includes a variety of materials - from books and
directories, Bibles, sheet music and sermons to advertisements - and works by
many well-known and lesser-known authors, all providing a diverse collection of
material for the researcher of the eighteenth century. Variant editions of each
individual work are frequently offered to enable scholars to make textual
comparisons of the works. The database is divided into seven subject areas:
History and Geography; Fine Arts and Social Sciences; Medicine, Science and
Technology; Literature and Language; Religion and Philosophy; Law; General
Other Electronic Indexes
US Congressional Serial Set - Digital Edition
(subscription database)
A full text searchable collection of sources on all aspects of U.S. history
compiled by Congress in numbered sequence (hence its name the Serial
Set), including government reports, journals, hearings, messages, petitions,
resolutions, monographs, treaties, presidential communications, maps and
so forth from 1817 to 1980. Also includes the full text of the American State
Papers (1789-1838).
Other Electronic Indexes

Gerritsen Women's History
(subscription database)
This database covers the study of international women's history,
feminism and the feminist movement. It consists of periodicals,
books, and pamphlets in 15 languages.
Other Electronic Indexes

North American Women's Letters and Diaries
(subscription database)
A collection of women's diaries and correspondence covering
colonial times to 1950. This database is being released in stages
until completion.
Other Electronic Indexes

Oral History Online
(subscription database)
Oral History Online is an index to English-language interviews that are either publicly
available on the Web or held by repositories and archives around the world. The
database contains no full-text sources, but instead includes more than 100,000 index
entries, with links to full text when transcripts are available online. Interviews with full
text can be searched in great detail, including 20 fields of metadata. The database is
updated quarterly and is intended eventually to include all important oral histories
available worldwide.
Other Electronic Indexes
Hispanic American Periodicals Index
1970- (subscription
database)
Indexes articles on U.S. Hispanic and Latin American topics inEnglish, French,
German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish from more than 400 scholarly
journals worldwide. Produced by the Latin American Center at UCLA.
Other Electronic Indexes

PAIS International (Public Affairs Information Service) 1972

PAIS Archive (1937-1976)
(subscription databases)
Public affairs in a variety of journals (including news magazines) and monographs;
includes such areas as environment and health.
Other Electronic Indexes

Nineteenth Century Masterfile
(1800 --)
(subscription database)
"The Digital Index of the Nineteenth Century" includes an electronic version of
Poole's Index to Periodical Literature and a number of other indexes. A valuable index
to nineteenth and early twentieth century magazines and newspapers.
Other Electronic Indexes

International Medieval Bibliography
(1967-present)
(subscription database)
Comprehensive and current bibliography of the European Middle Ages
(c.450-1500) including articles in journals and miscellaneous volumes
of conference proceedings, essay collections and Festschriften.
Other Electronic Indexes

Iter Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance
(subscription database)
Iter contains a Journals and a Books database. The Journals database is an
electronic bibliography of interdisciplinary journal literature pertaining to the Middle
Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Citations for articles; bibliographies; catalogues;
editions; abstracts; and discographies are included. To date, the full runs of more than
400 scholarly journal titles, published since 1859, have been indexed. A complete list
of titles is available for review. The Books database (under construction) is a
bibliography of approximately 46,000 records encompassing monographs, material
published in monographs, and collected essays pertaining to the Middle Ages and
Renaissance (400-1700).
Other Electronic Indexes

American Civil War Letters and Diaries
(1855-1875)
(subscription database)
Indexes full texts of first person accounts of events in the U.S. Civil War
from hundreds of sources of diaries, letters and memoirs of people both
famous and obscure.
Other Electronic Indexes

Declassified Documents Reference System
(1945-
1970's) (subscription database)
Selected US government documents declassified under the Freedom of
Information Act and which were originally organized under the
Declassified Documents Reference System (DDRS). The online
documents selected deal with post World War II documents in
international relations and domestic documents involving the military
and White House which span the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson
and Nixon.
Other Electronic Indexes

Early Encounters in North America
(subscription database)
Early Encounters in North America, subtitled "Peoples, Cultures and the
Environment," will include, when completed, more than 100,000 pages of
letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters. It includes
descriptions of North America, either in its natural features or interactions
among various cultural groups in the years between 1534 and 1860. Special
indexing leads to the who, what, when and where of the encounters.
Other Electronic Indexes

Bibliography of Asian Studies
(1971-present) (Subscription
Database)
Contains more than 410,000 records on all subjects (especially humanities
and social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia
published worldwide from 1971 to the present.
Atlases
Historical Maps of the United States (Perry Castaneda Library Map
Collection, UT Austin)
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/histus.html
A wealth of online maps dealing with Early Inhabitants, Exploration and
Settlement, U.S. Territorial Growth, and a section on Later Historical Maps
(including 146 maps of U.S. cities) with links to U.S. historical maps at other
web sites.
Atlases
Rare Map Collection at the Hargrett Library The University of
Georgia Libraries
http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/maps.html
Includes rare maps of the New World, Colonial America, Revolutionary
America, Revolutionary Georgia, Union and Expansion, Civil War, Frontier
to New South, Savannah and the Coast, and Transportation.