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History: For History Faculty

guide to history research for affiliates of The College of New Jersey (TCNJ)

Historians' Research

"Ithaka S+R has released Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians, the first in a series of studies that reveal the needs of today's scholars and offer guidance for how research support providers can better serve them."

"This study, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a snapshot of a field in transition, and professionals supporting the work of historians will come away from it with a new or more nuanced understanding of historians' needs. The report also includes a list of actionable recommendations for how to make the work of historians easier or more effective."

Scholarly Credentials Toolkit

I developed the Scholarly Credentials Toolkit for Humanities Faculty to assist Art, Classics, English, History, Philosophy, and Religion professors at TCNJ evaluate their academic productivity. The toolkit looks at:

  • article impact
  • journal impact
  • book impact

Junior faculty especially can use the toolkit to demonstrate the impact of their work in the disciplines. I am available for individual meetings or group presentations to facilitate the use of the databases and other tools described in the toolkit.

Why Information Literacy?

Information Literacy (IL), a concept centered on outcomes-based learning, has become a pillar of undergraduate education on campuses across the country. The Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education offers the library profession's most up-to-date thinking on IL in the academy. Links below lead to information that will help any TCNJ instructor easily fold information literacy into the curriculum. Please contact me for assistance, if desired. 

Art
English
History
Philosophy
Religion

Defining Information Literacy

In this interview, conducted March 31, 2009 at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City, Luis Figueroa and I discuss the significance of information literacy in undergraduate education.

Digital History

Introduction to the Digital Humanities (an OER): "Through a series of videos featuring a variety of voices and perspectives and discussing a range of methodologies and theoretical approaches, this course aims to explore the history, practice, and people involved in the... Digital Humanities."

The American Historical Association recently introduced a new series in Perspectives, its online newsmagazine, by John Rosinbum (search #DigHist). In each post, Rosinbum reviews an existing digital project that historians and other humanists can use for classroom instruction. Each offers a brief project overview that situates the project within the field. Rosinbum explores how each project can be "integrated into the classroom" and provides two ready-made assignments.

Also see Historians and the Technologies of Research, a brief article analyzing historians' use of digital technologies in their research, by Robert B. Townsend (October 2017, AHA).

And finally, Romein et al. published (2020) an excellent overview of developments in digital scholarship titled State of the Field: Digital History in History (v. 105, no. 365).

Keep Current

There are many ways to keep up-to-date with the journal literature in your discipline.

  • RSS Feeds (use an RSS reader to subscribe to tables of contents of your favorite library-licensed journals)
  • Database Alerts (ProQuest, Ebsco, and other TCNJ Library database allow researchers to create alerts across entire databases of content)
  • peer.us (feed reader for journal articles; also follow authors or topics)
  • Google Alerts ("monitor the web for interesting new content")