Top Ten Tips from History Graduates

Top Ten Tips from History Graduates

1. Sense of Perspective

• Make sure your project is manageable: you’ve only got a few years!

• Play to your strengths: what do you know, and what makes you excited?

• Organising your ideas: sources and concepts

2. Getting Around

• When and where will your research be conducted? Plan ahead (think about applying for research and travel grants!)

• Use the Long Vacation: there’s more time, and also more money for travel grants and expenses

3. Archival Awareness

• Make sure when planning a visit that you know their rules (pencils/laptops only, please!)

• Phone ahead, email (archivists have lives too).

• Use the archivists’ knowledge!

Stalls 12, 13,14, 15 & 17

4. Online resources• Archives come in many forms: online

databases can save your life • Use the British Library and the US

Library of Congress catalogues; they’re great for locating primary and secondary sources

• Use COPAC to check holdings in other UK libraries; use Oxford e-resources; keep on top of the journals

5. Bibliography

• Start this a.s.a.p

• Use software or SOLO but use Word too

• Psychologically, a long list of books read can be of immense value when you’re staring at a blank page

Stall 23Information Skills

6. Note-taking

• It really pays to be anal about this

• Don’t kill the trees

• Work out your system and abbreviations at the start

• If in doubt, attribute everything and keep the quotation marks; synthesise when you’re writing up

Stall 23Information Skills

7. Computing• Find out what OUCS can do for you.

They offer computer support, a wide range of courses and great facilities.

• Single-Sign-On (SSO) makes things far easier. But the internet can be temperamental, so keep your VPN.

BACK UP YOUR WORK!!!!!!!!!

8. When to write

Writing can help the thinking process Whatever works for you, but remember:

a thesis should demonstrate a clear and consistent argument

Write up at the end? Or write as you go along?

Your supervisor or tutor can be your Yoda.

9. Making contact with other humans

• http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/faculty/events.html Seminars and conferences

• Don’t be afraid to go outside the Faculty and outside Oxford; most people will talk to you. Schama’s a bit scary, mind.

10. Seminars

• Find out what seminars are going on both in Oxford (check faculty websites) and elsewhere (such as the IHR).

• Seminars can be a great way of making contact with other graduates and researchers.

• Listening to other people’s work can help you think about your own research in different ways.

Good luck!