This site will help you complete your course work for HIST 2950. Throughout the term you will find helpful information on this page and directions for any of your library projects. Please know that this site will update throughout the semester so that your library visit days have a corresponding page.
This course is a service-learning, research-oriented class in which some of your work will take place with experts at the SLCC Library. Some of the course work will be accessing primary source material online and at various archives as your project requires. The purpose of this internship is to help you gain valuable experiences, begin networking with professionals, and begin learning the research and writing process in creating a meaningful and original scholarly work that will contribute to the knowledge base associated with your research topic.
Many people assume that historical and archaeological research is a solitary effort. This is not the case. These professions rely on feedback and discussion to work through both research and source- interpretation challenges. We will meet each week to discuss various aspects of the research process and work together to help each other succeed. Some of the topics we will cover include: how to choose a topic, how to begin doing research, how to asses documents, etc. These classes will be collaborative efforts with each of you offering ideas, sharing your own experiences and challenges so that we can all learn and benefit from our individual experiences, thus, you are expected to attend class and be prepared to participate and contribute. We will also collaborate with other libraries and archives’ professionals from the SLCC libraries.
Library class meetings will take place in LIB 218 (upstairs classroom on the left).
By the end of the semester students will learn research skills including where to find legitimate primary and secondary sources, how to conceptualize a research project and begin to find the information, how to narrow the research topic in such a way that is manageable yet still meaningful, how to assess the validity of different types of sources, how to collaborate with others in the research and writing process, how to present ones findings to a broader audience, how to contextualize historical information as it relates to the topic and time period, and how to create a thesis and critically examine its merits based on the evidence/data.
