Page 61 - DLIS401_METHODOLOGY_OF_RESEARCH_AND_STATISTICAL_TECHNIQUES

Methodology of Research and Statistical Techniques

Notes 1. The recognition of a historical problem or the identification of a need for certain historical
knowledge.
2. The gathering of as much relevant information about the problem or topic as possible.
3. If appropriate, the forming of hypothesis that tentatively explain relationships between
historical factors.
4. The rigorous collection and organization of evidence, and the verification of the authenticity
and veracity of information and its sources.
5. The selection, organization, and analysis of the most pertinent collected evidence, and
the drawing of conclusions; and
6. The recording of conclusions in a meaningful narrative.

In the field of library and information science, there are a vast array of topics that may be
considered for conducting historical research. For example, a researcher may chose to answer
questions about the development of school, academic or public libraries, the rise of technology
and the benefits/ problems it brings, the development of preservation methods, famous personalities
in the field, library statistics, or geographical demographics and how they effect library distribution.
Harter and Busha define library history as “the systematic recounting of past events pertaining
to the establishment, maintenance, and utilization of systematically arranged collections of recorded
information or knowledge….A biography of a person who has in some way affected the development
of libraries, library science, or librarianship is also considered to be library history.”
There are a variety of places to obtain historical information. Primary Sources are the most
sought after in historical research. Primary resources are first hand accounts of information.
“Finding and assessing primary historical data is an exercise in detective work. It involves
logic, intuition, persistence, and common sense…(Tuchman, Gaye in Strategies of Qualitative
Inquiry, 252). Some examples of primary documents are: personal diaries, eyewitness accounts
of events, and oral histories. “Secondary sources of information are records or accounts prepared
by someone other than the person, or persons, who participated in or observed an event.”
Secondary resources can be very useful in giving a researcher a grasp on a subject and may
provided extensive bibliographic information for delving further into a research topic.
In any type of historical research, there are issues to consider. Harter and Busha list three
principles to consider when conducting historical research:

1. Consider the slant or biases of the information you are working with and the ones
possessed by the historians themselves.
(a) This is particularly true of qualitative research. Consider an example provided by
Gaye Tuchman:
Let us assume that women’s letters and diaries are pertinent to ones research question and
that one can locate pertinent examples. One cannot simply read them….one must read enough
examples to infer the norms of what could be written and how it could be expressed. For
instance, in the early nineteenth century, some (primarily female) schoolteachers instructed
girls in journal writing and read their journals to do so. How would such instruction have
influenced the journals kept by these girls as adults?…it is useful to view the nineteenth-
century journal writer as an informant. Just as one tries to understand how a contemporary
informant speaks from specific social location, so too one would want to establish the social
location of the historical figure. One might ask of these and other diaries: What is the characteristic
of middle-class female diary writers? What is the characteristic of this informant? How should
one view what this informant writes?

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