These skills include using both print and electronic finding aids, assembling evidence, footnoting, editing, interviewing and writing. The course also provides instruction in other basic skills necessary to succeed both in graduate school and in the historical profession. These include taking oral exams, interviewing for jobs, and publishing your work. Finally, the course explores a variety of career alternatives, such as working as an archivist or an editor, that are open to historians. The course meets for one session each week.
Attendance is required.
At each meeting, you will be expected to have read the relevant material for the week. You will also be expected to turn in the writing assignment for a given week on Friday of that week, so that I can read and return the papers at the next Monday meeting. Then, using these printed finding aids, make up a 1-page bibliography of the most appropriate primary sources for this topic. You may use the same topic as you used last week. Go through a box of archival material provided at the CHS and itemize the kinds of documents and other sources you find.