African History
Research & Instruction Librarian
Ginny Moran
she/her
Contact:
Library, Room 303
vmoran@macalester.edu
vmoran@macalester.edu
651-696-6398
Subjects: Art & Art History, Asian Languages and Cultures, Classical Mediterranean and Middle East, English, French and Francophone Studies, German Studies, History, Media and Cultural Studies, Music, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Russian Studies, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, Theater and Dance, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Approaching historical research
Historical research relies on a wide variety of sources, both primary & secondary, including unpublished material.
Primary Sources
First-hand testimonies from sources who witnessed or experienced an event firsthand.
- Examples include: a letter, newspaper article, a photograph, a diary, or other ephemera from the time period being studied.
- Found in public records & legal documents, minutes of meetings, corporate records, recordings, letters, diaries, journals, drawings.
- Located in university archives, historical societies, and within private institutions or museums.
Secondary or Scholarly Sources
These are the peer reviewed articles and scholarly books that historians write after they have worked with the primary sources and consulted other secondary articles or books.
- Can be oral or written
- Secondhand accounts of events
- Found in textbooks, encyclopedias, journal articles, newspapers, biographies and other media such as films or tape recordings.
Pro tip: as you find primary and secondary sources, see what language they use, and add new terms to your list to help you refine additional searches!
Strategic Searching
Before you start searching for resources, pause to think about what exactly you are searching for:
- Write down key words, phrases, names, and dates that might relate to you topic.
- Brainstorm synonyms or words with related meanings.
- Think about historical language as well as modern. How do you find historical terminology? Try searching the Oxford Historical Thesaurus, which is embedded in the Oxford English Dictionary tool.
Pro tip: as you find primary and secondary sources, see what language they use, and add new terms to your list to help you refine additional searches!
Useful books for writing about African History
The Oxford encyclopedia of African historiography : methods and sources by ISBN: 0190698713Publication Date: 2019The difficulties of exploring African history, especially for earlier periods, have spurred the development of a wide range of methodologies and approaches, such that Wyatt McGaffey once termed it 'the decathlon of the social sciences.' The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Historiography discusses these sources and methods, and examines how these developments have influenced the scholarship that historians produce.
The Information-Literate Historian by Call Number: Stacks - Level 4 D16.2 .P715 2019ISBN: 9780190851491Publication Date: 2018-05-31The Information-Literate Historian: A Guide to Research for History Students is the only book specifically designed to teach today's history students how to successfully select and use sources--primary, secondary, and electronic--to carry out and present their research.
The Historian's Toolbox by ISBN: 1138632171Publication Date: 2019-12-11The Historian's Toolbox introduces students to the theory, craft, and methods of history and equips them with a series of tools to research and understand the past.
