History_ Assign

Ex0-1

Instructions
After reviewing the digital repositories in the reading and resource section of this module, answer the questions below in 2-3 paragraphs each. To develop your responses, combine your experience deploying search terms to locate the three primary sources in this module with your own reflections on the questions posed. While reviewing these resources, think about how useful these repositories would be to you if you were a historian seeking to write a biography on the scientist Leo Szilard. As you explore each repository, try to locate the following primary sources that you might consult to write a chapter about Szilard’s campaign against dropping the atomic bomb. Each primary source is located in only one of the above repositories. Regardless of whether or not you were able to find all three sources, complete all question prompts before you submit your responses. It is especially helpful for your instructor to know what search terms you did use if you weren’t able to find the primary sources so that they can provide you with the feedback you need to develop effective search terms.
1. Describe your overall experience of locating these primary sources. Was it challenging or straightforward? Did you learn anything interesting along the way?
2. Were you able to locate an interview with Tom Evans, a close friend of President Truman’s, who interacted with scientists who were trying to reach Truman with their campaign against the use of the atomic bomb? Share your search terms and a link to the primary source.
3. Were you able to locate a petition against the use of the atomic bomb circulated by Szilard directed toward President Truman? Share your search terms and a link to the primary source.
4. Were you able to locate an interview with Lilli Hornig, a scientist who signed Szilard’s petition against the use of the atomic bomb? Share your search terms and a link to the primary source.
To complete this assignment, review those links:

https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library
https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/
https://www.atomicheritage.org/

Module Details:
Finding Primary Sources
Primary sources are key to historians’ research. Due to age, composition, and exceptionality, primary sources are sometimes quite valuable and often require special attention. Repositories at the national, state, and local levels, as well as at the public and the private levels, preserve primary sources.
National repositories such as the National Archives and the Library of Congress safeguard materials that are deemed to be of national importance. Universities also have archives that preserve primary sources related to the institution, to notable alumni or donors, or to the research interests of their faculty. Museums and libraries at all levels have archives attached to their missions, and historical societies often preserve primary sources that are of local or niche interest to researchers.
Traditionally, historians visit such repositories and, with the assistance of archivists and finding guides, explore files of material pertinent to their research. The arrival of the Digital Age, however, resulted in many repositories scanning, digitizing, and posting their collections online. Online finding guides and search tools make looking for specific primary sources easier than it once was.
In order to make the most of finding primary sources online, you will need to be able to develop strong search terms to deploy in your search for primary sources. Generally, you will need to supply the name of the person or historical event you are researching. Usually, it is also helpful to identify a particular type of primary source document that you have in mind. Examples include:
• Letter
• Speech
• Interview
• Diary
• Oral history
• Journal
• Photograph
A historian who is researching primary sources on President Franklin Roosevelt’s interactions with American military leaders during World War II, for example, might start off by searching the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum’s online repository with the following search term: letter. (Note: Since this is Roosevelt’s own library, the historian has chosen to omit Roosevelt’s name from the search.)
A search like this will produce a lot of results, though. The historian in this example might add in the name of someone who he or she already knows is a major figure in the American military to narrow the search, such as Chief of Staff of the Army General Douglas MacArthur, the commander; the search then becomes: letter Douglas MacArthur. This search produces a letter from Roosevelt to MacArthur that reveals some dynamics of their relationship.
While a wholly digital approach to research is not yet possible due to sheer volume and funding, the ability to both explore caches of digitized primary sources and to view online finding aids for non-digitized primary sources is a great boon to today’s historians.
Historical Sources
One of the most important early steps in a research project is the formulation of a question to answer. In the previous module, you thought about the ways in which historians choose topics. Once the historian chooses a topic, he or she has to decide what to say about it. One of the most effective ways to decide what to say is to ask a question about the topic that you would like to answer.
Creating a research question can be difficult, and you will probably revise your questions many times as you conduct research and write. Start big. What attracted you to the topic in the first place? What did you want to know about it? Now that you have thought about the topic a bit, what do you still want to know about it?
Once you have thought of these initial questions, you will need to refine your research questions. Not all research questions are useful. They may be too broad, too narrow, or unanswerable. A question that is too broad cannot be answered in a reasonable amount of time or space. For example, imagine that your topic is the American Civil War. If you try to write a paper on the Civil War, you will never finish. The topic is too big. To adequately cover the entire war, you would have to analyze the experiences of the more than 30 million Americans who lived through it. In order to trim the project to a manageable size, you must decide what part of the Civil War is important to you and ask questions that will guide your research. Perhaps you are interested in economics: How did the Civil War affect interstate commerce? The environment: How did the war and war-related industries affect the collection and distribution of natural resources? The military: What strategy did Union General Ulysses S. Grant pursue in the Overland Campaign in 1864? These questions are more practical for a term paper like the one you could complete in a history class.
A research question may also be too narrow. The question for a term paper must require more than a one-sentence or one-paragraph answer. “Where and when was the Magna Carta signed?” will not yield a very substantial answer, and the answer can be found in any encyclopedia. There is no research involved. A narrow question like this needs to be broadened. “What economic and political issues prompted the creation of the Magna Carta in 1215?” is a more substantial question that can be answered with historical sources. Another problem with narrow questions is the issue of significance. Your project should contribute something new to our collective understanding of history. A question that can be answered in one paragraph is probably offering nothing new.
Finally, the research question may be unanswerable. There may be no historical sources to help you answer the question, either because the sources were destroyed or because they never existed. The question may also be unanswerable by a historian, but a practitioner from another field could answer it. A historian could not answer a question about plate tectonics, because there are no human-made primary sources that support an argument about it. A geologist, on the other hand, could use rock formations and other natural phenomena to make an argument for or against plate tectonics. Similarly, a question like “Why does the universe exist?” is not answerable by a historian, but is better answered by a theologian or a philosopher. Questions that are too vague may also be unanswerable. “How does the mass media influence history?” is too vague. It is hard to figure out where to start researching that question. What is meant by “mass media”? Does it mean television, radio, stone tablets, the internet? What does “influence history” mean? Does that mean mass media’s influence on the study of history or its influence on decision making at the time? As written, the question is not answerable.
In this module, you will read some documents that discuss research questions, and the revision thereof, in greater detail. You will also gain experience in formulating and evaluating research questions on your own.
Historical Questions
Some historical questions can never be answered because of a lack of primary sources. Some historical questions, on the other hand, enjoy a wealth of relevant primary sources. In many instances, especially for beginning researchers, the amount of primary sources can be overwhelming. These sources may include letters, diaries, government reports, memoranda, brochures, physical objects, pay stubs, and sticky notes.
The successful researcher must prioritize sources in order to find a starting point. Archives and libraries often provide an index (often called a “finding aid”) of their holdings. Sometimes these finding aids are very short and include nothing more than the name of a box of documents. Other finding aids are extensive and provide detailed descriptions of each document. Later in this course, you will search for finding aids relevant to a research topic of your choice. Here you will access a pre-selected finding aid and create a plan for tackling the extensive list of sources.
If you have a detailed list of sources, it should be fairly easy to prioritize sources. Newspaper articles and government reports usually provide fairly comprehensive discussions of a topic and will usually serve as good places to start. An individual person will have a fairly limited understanding of a large, contemporaneous topic, and primary sources written from one person’s perspective will reflect that. Once you understand the big picture and the basic narrative of a topic, you can begin to look at primary sources that present a much smaller view of the topic, like letters or diaries. Many finding aids only provide authors, recipients, and dates for personal writing; they often omit any description of content. There is no alternative but to read through all of those documents individually.