Bibliographies, libraries, and bookstores … oh, my

A read­er here asks: “I would love to hear more about your tips for stu­dents on how to start the research process and lessons you have learned on how to sift through the vast amount of infor­ma­tion on the internet.”

Research is a puz­zle for many peo­ple, I think, because they approach a sub­ject with­out pre­vi­ous knowl­edge. As a result, the mas­sive amount of infor­ma­tion on a giv­en sub­ject is indeed overwhelming.

If you look at my his­tor­i­cal nov­els you will see that they, by and large, con­cern the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom, with some about Europe. I read his­to­ry for the plea­sure of it, focus­ing on these areas. When you have a gen­er­al knowl­edge of say, the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, it’s much eas­i­er to write about some­thing in par­tic­u­lar that hap­pened, such as I did in Sophia’s War.

As to how to get infor­ma­tion, and detail, if you will, about a par­tic­u­lar moment, here are my suggestions.

Let us say you are inter­est­ed in an inci­dent dur­ing the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg, dur­ing our Civ­il War. The lit­er­a­ture is vast. Here’s what you do.

Get a good, recent, gen­er­al his­to­ry of the Civ­il War. Read it so you have a gen­er­al sense of big events. Learn why, for instance, the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg is con­sid­ered important.

That gen­er­al his­to­ry, if it’s any good, will have a bib­li­og­ra­phy at the back of the book. See which books are cit­ed for that bat­tle. Choose one or two of them, and read them.

Those books will also have bib­li­ogra­phies. And those bib­li­ogra­phies will lead you to more books—and articles—which are more pre­cise­ly con­cerned with your subject.

And so forth … you keep nar­row­ing down to specifics—via bibliographies—to find out what you want to know.

How do you get your hands on these books, and arti­cles? Your pub­lic library is a great place to begin. If they don’t have the title you want, many have inter­li­brary loan sys­tems which will get what you need. Then—yes, on the internet—Google Schol­ar can help. Then, yes, again on the inter­net, seek out used-book deal­ers, and you can buy—often very cheaply—hard-to-find titles.

All dur­ing this process you should be read­ing, learn­ing gen­er­al and par­tic­u­lar things. Final­ly, it is up to you to decide which par­tic­u­lar details are inter­est­ing, reveal­ing, and yes, enter­tain­ing to use. Just how to do that sug­gests anoth­er post­ing here.

In gen­er­al I sug­gest that the more you know about the big pic­ture, so to speak, the more you see the details.