Template for taking Notes on Historical Scholarship

If you are in a Ph.D. program, you are training to be a professional historian. As part of that training you will build a base of knowledge and familiarity with key works of historical scholarship in your field. Its a good idea to develop a system early in your career for taking notes and keeping track of everything you’ve read. You never know when you’ll need to come back to a book.

What follows is one example of a template for taking notes called THOMAS. THOMAS is a Mnemonic device for topic, historiography, organization, methodology, argument, and So What? or the stakes/significance.¹

Use this outline to take notes as you read and then conclude your work on the book or piece of scholarship by writing a short summary or precis that summarizes the book. It should include a snopsis, the argument, key findings, and evidence.

Template

Basic Information

• Title:
• Author:
• Year Published:
  
• Category: (ie. cultural, political etc)
• Time period:
• Place:

Summary/Synopsis (do this last)

Overview:

(1-2 paragraph synopsis. include book’s argument, key findings, and evidence with thesis.)

About the Author

• Who is the author? What else have they written? Was this their dissertation? Where did they get their Ph.D.? Who did they work with?

THOMAS

• Topic: The basic questions: When? Where? What is this book about?
• Historiography - What debates is this book intervening in? What does it add to/challenge in these conversations?
• Organization - Is it thematic chronological, innovative in any way? What can we learn by closely studying the table of contents about the hierarchy of the book’s argument, or by looking at the chapters’ internal structure?
• Methodology - What methods does this book use? Which archives? What approach does it take to analyzing its sources?
• Argument - What is this author’s original thesis? What new thing does it explain?
• So What? Or Stakes/Significance - For readers who have no interest in the specifics of the topic of even the argument, why would this book be useful?

Last updated: January 2024.