National History Day Research Lessons Secondary Sources, Primary Sources, and the Annotated Bibliography

Part One: Finding and Citing Secondary Sources

Always start with the NHD website. www.nhd.org Click on “Entering the Contest” Click on “Conducting Research” The links at the bottom of the page lead you to reliable sources Display the nhd.org website on the screen and follow the links.

Read the page “Conducting Research” Every National History Day project must answer three questions: Why did my topic happen at this particular time and in this particular place? What were the events or the influences that came before my topic? How was my topic influenced by and how did it influence the economic, social, political, and cultural climate of the time period? Display the “Conducting Research” page and have the students read the entire page. Focus on the key questions.

Get the big picture on your topic first by searching for secondary sources. Secondary sources are created by professional historians and can give you important insights about how to organize your topic and discover how your topic had a significant impact on history. Once you can answer that question, the “how” question, you’re ready to write your thesis statement.

Our school library contains many databases and web resources to help your begin your search for secondary sources. Go to the library’s website. Click on “Resources.” Click on “Research.” Click on “FBISD Digital Resources.” Click on “Student Resources.” Click on “Digital Resources.” Display the library’s website on the screen and have the students follow the links to “Digital Resources.”

On the “Digital Resources” page, you will find links to Encyclopedia Britannica and World Book. It’s best to start with an encyclopedia entry because it gives you the big picture about your topic and provides you with good key words and phrases that you can use to search databases and web resources. You will also find links to databases, such as Gale and Ebsco. Using your username and password, you can search their databases for good secondary sources on your topic as well. Display the “Digital Resources” page, then open Encyclopedia Britannica and model for the students how to access the secondary sources in it. Do the same for World Book. Next, open Gale and then Ebsco and model for the students how to conduct a search in each database.

As you search for secondary sources, keep the scope of your topic wide As you search for secondary sources, keep the scope of your topic wide. Don’t search just the name of your topic. You also need to research the background of your topic. Look back at the page on the NHD website entitled “Conducting Research” and reread the three questions you need to answer about your topic. 1. Why did my topic happen at this particular time and in this particular place? 2. What were the events or the influences that came before my topic? 3. How was my topic influenced by and how did it influence the economic, social, political, and cultural climate of the time period? Your are researching not just your topic, but the events that came before your topic, the events that caused your topic to happen, and how your topic changed subsequent history.

Think of your NHD topic as though it were a three-act play: Act One: what was happening in history before your topic came along? Act Two: tell the story of your topic. Act Three: after your topic left the stage of history, so to speak, how was history forever changed by your topic? What’s different that wouldn’t have been different if your topic had never happened?

As you begin to find good secondary sources, begin building a draft bibliography of your sources. Notice that most of the sources you’re finding have their own citations already written, usually at the end of the source itself. On NHD’s “Conducting Research” page, there is a link to an “Annotated Bibliography Resource page.” Follow that link and use the instructions to begin building a draft bibliography.

If you are in doubt about how to cite a source, ask your teacher or the librarian. Our library website also contains lots of good links that will help you with your citation form. On the library website, click on “Citing Sources” to connect to these links.

Part Two: Finding and Citing Primary Sources

Always start with the NHD website. www.nhd.org Click on “Entering the Contest” Click on “Conducting Research” The links at the bottom of the page lead you to reliable sources Display the nhd.org website on the screen and follow the links.

Secondary sources give us the big picture for our topic Secondary sources give us the big picture for our topic. Primary sources give us the detail we need to make our topics more interesting. A primary source is a piece of information about a historical event or period in which the creator of the source was an actual participant in or a contemporary of a historical moment. The purpose of primary sources is to capture the words, the thoughts, and the intentions of the past. Primary sources help us to interpret what happened and why it happened. Examples of primary sources include documents, artifacts, photos, historic sites, songs, speeches, diaries, letters, or other written and tangible items created during the historical period being studied.

Our school library contains many databases and web resources to help your begin your search for primary sources. Go to the library’s website. Click on “Resources.” Click on “Research.” Click on “FBISD Digital Resources.” Click on “Student Resources.” Click on “Digital Resources.” Display the library’s website on the screen and have the students follow the links to “Digital Resources.”

On the “Digital Resources” page, you will find links to Encyclopedia Britannica and World Book. These encyclopedias also contain primary sources. You will also find links to databases, such as Gale and Ebsco. Using your username and password, you can search their databases for good primary sources on your topic as well. Display the “Digital Resources” page, then open Encyclopedia Britannica and model for the students how to access the secondary sources in it. Do the same for World Book. Next, open Gale and then Ebsco and model for the students how to conduct a search in each database.

As you search for primary sources, keep the scope of your topic wide As you search for primary sources, keep the scope of your topic wide. Don’t search just the name of your topic. You also need to research the background of your topic. Look back at the page on the NHD website entitled “Conducting Research” and reread the three questions you need to answer about your topic. 1. Why did my topic happen at this particular time and in this particular place? 2. What were the events or the influences that came before my topic? 3. How was my topic influenced by and how did it influence the economic, social, political, and cultural climate of the time period? Your are researching not just your topic, but the events that came before your topic, the events that caused your topic to happen, and how your topic changed subsequent history.