History Skills Podcast for History Students
I am going to be discussing about the historical evaluation skill of usefulness. If you are an avid listener of History Detective, you may have noticed, that every now and then, I mention how a newspaper article may or may not be useful to my historical investigation, or the reflection questions in the show notes ask about the usefulness of a source.
Develop a Clear Research Focus
So, when you are researching for history or even geography for that matter, you will come across a mountain of information on the Internet or in books or archives, wherever you are looking, and one of the most important skills you need to develop is to be a little judgemental about the sources you come across. But you can’t really do that unless you have a focus.
Usually when you are researching, you will have developed a clear inquiry question that you are trying to find the answer to. If you don’t have a clear focus, you will get lost down the vortex of rabbit holes on the Internet.
So, a clear focus is first step. The next step is to find sources, both primary (from the time) and secondary (produced after the time), but like I said, once you start looking, you will probably find yourself drowning an infinite sea of resources, so you need to be a little discerning about what information you select. This is where the afore mentioned evaluation skill of usefulness comes in. Remember that the same source may be useful to answer your question about a topic, but completely useless to someone else who has a different question about the topic.
For example, in Case 4 of History Detective which was about the nuclear testing in Australia during the 1950s, I mentioned a newspaper article that described the nuclear explosion as “a ‘cabbage’ shape… before rearing upwards into the more familiar ‘mushroom’ shape.” I also remarked that it was not particularly useful for a historian exploring the effects of the nuclear testing. But what it might be useful for is someone who is studying the casual attitudes of the general public about nuclear testing, or even as an example of selective journalism or censorship during the experiments.
Another example is in Case 5 which was about Bicycle Face. A Sydney doctor had warned that because of the fear of collision with the many obstacles that the city presents women cyclists such as, trams and pedestrians, “it does not take long for her to develop bicycle face.” This is extremely useful when understanding patriarchal attitudes toward women in the 1890s. The doctor specifically refers only to “women cyclists”. The comment implies that women are physically incapable of mastering skills such as balance and spatial awareness, with reflexes so slow that they could not even navigate around a pedestrian without causing strain on their delicate constitution. The gendered vocabulary has an implication of female physical ineptitude so it made it a very useful source for my investigation.
According to my favourite dictionary, “Collin”, a judgement is an opinion that you have after carefully thinking about something. Therefore, you can’t just make a judgement about the usefulness of a source without backing yourself up with a well thought through evaluation. You need to be able to justify why a source is useful to your inquiry.
Yes, I know it is technically Collins Dictionary, but we hang out often enough to be on a nickname basis. I hope that today’s bonus episode lived up to be its promise of being more useful than a chocolate teapot.
This is Kelly Chase, On the Case
