The Digital Past

Finding Secondary Sources

Before Class:

• Read: Roy Rosenzweig, “Can History Be Open Source: Wikipedia and the Future of the Past”
• Caleb McDaniel, “How to Read for History.” (2008)
• Caleb McDaniel, “How to Discuss a Book for History.” (2013)
• Read: Sarah Deutsch, “Learning to Talk More Like a Man: Boston Women’s Class-Bridging Organizations, 1870-1940”, American Historical Review, April 1992. You will need to login with your Mason account to read this article. We’ll discuss it heavily in class.

During Class:

• Quiz
• Jon Udell, “Heavy Metal Umlaut”
• How should we use wikipedia?
• How are secondary sources used to help make sense of primary sources?

After Class:

• Blog #3: Find some secondary source material that is related to the history of Boston. It can be a secondary source related to the primary source evaluations you did last time, or you can pick something new.
  • You should find both a secondary source (either a scholarly journal article from the GMU library’s databases or a book) AND a related Wikipedia article.
  • Closely read and analyze both sources and write a blog post that analyzes and evaluates the sources. Do not just describe or summarize them. You should use the Historical Thinking Chart or Caleb McDaniel’s blog posts about reading for history.
  • Some things you could discuss are: What is the author’s argument? How compelling is it? What does this source tell you about your topic? How does it relate to the primary sources from last week? Do they support or contradict one another? Please cite all your sources in full according to the Chicago manual of style.
  • Your blog posts should be at least 350-500 words and should be written in a semi-formal scholarly style (complete thoughts, correct spelling, grammar and syntax.) Please use the Chicago style guide to cite any sources. See the blog post criteria page for more details.