Researching in History
Research in history involves developing an understanding of the past through the examination and interpretation of evidence. Evidence may exist in the form of texts, physical remains of historic sites, recorded data, pictures, maps, artifacts, and so on. The historian's job is to find evidence, analyze its content and biases, corroborate it with other evidence, and use the evidence to develop an interpretation of past events that has some importance for the present. Historians use libraries to:
Doing historical research is a little like excavating an archeological site. It requires patience, insight, and imagination as well as diligence and the right tools. As you find and examine primary sources, you need to imagine them in their original context and understand how your present-day point of view may distort your interpretation of them. You need to recognize not only your own biases but the biases that shaped primary materials in their own period. You need to brush away the layers of interpretation that time has imposed on them and imaginatively re-create the complexities of the environment in which they were created. Students doing historical research should be prepared to:
Many bibliographies can help you identify primary and secondary sources related to a particular topic or historical period. Be sure to examine bibliographies and footnotes in secondary sources as you find them, since they will often lead you to primary sources. Finally, innumerable encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, and chronologies can provide you with information to round out your interpretations and ground them in fact. Consult a librarian to find out what the reference shelves offer for your topic and whether the library has any special collections of microfilm, archives, manuscripts, or other primary sources especially suited to historical research.
Source: http://www.macmillanlearning.com/catalog/static/bsm/hacker/resdoc/history/overview.htm