The Information-Literate Historian: A Guide to Research for History Students (review)

Many of us can probably remember when we first decided to become library historians. Perhaps we had majored in history in college and then, seeing the grim employment future in store for us, promptly migrated to librarianship (that was the situation in my case), where we could ply our trade in a new venue. Or perhaps we got our library degree and then began to dabble in historical studies because it fascinated us, and we wound up spending much of our professional careers immersed in the history of libraries and book culture. For whatever reason, we all ended up as library historians without the benefit of consulting Jenny Presnell’s well-crafted and exceedingly useful new guide. And that is too bad, because future generations of library historians will be all the richer for having access to this informative and well-organized survey, which covers the basics of how all contemporary historians should go about their work in this age of online databases and the proliferation of electronic resources now available to historians.

In less than 250 pages Presnell takes us on a guided tour of historical methodology and touches on most of the obvious aspects of any historical quest. She surveys the basic reference sources (and provides a nice list), then covers the various indexes at our disposal to locate books, journals, newspapers, and other basic sources, both secondary and primary, that serve as the core of historical writing. And, of course, any contemporary guide must explicate the complexities of the Internet and all its offerings. Here Presnell brings a practiced eye to using the various search engines, especially our good friend Google.

Beyond the usual advice, Presnell adds value to her work with an informative investigation of how historians can find and use maps and GIS in their research. In addition, Presnell explains how historians can take advantage of all manner of nonprint sources, including motion pictures and other types of media often ignored by these types of guides. She then concludes with a highly useful chapter describing how historians can best present their research, including advice on how to make an oral presentation with the assistance of the omnipresent PowerPoint. All in all, quite an impressive book for less than $15!

Presnell’s book holds up quite well in comparison to other standard guides such as Michael Galgano et al.’s Doing History: Research and Writing in the Digital Age (2008) and Jules Benjamin’s venerable A Student’s Guide to History, 10th ed. (2007). Both of these works reflect authors who are teaching historians, while Presnell comes at her subject from the standpoint of a practicing librarian—she is information services librarian and history, American studies, military science, and women’s studies bibliographer at the Miami University of Ohio—who blends her knowledge of how students usually approach historical research with a concomitant understanding of how historical sources should be pursued and described.

This is a good book and heartily recommended for all historians—either rank beginners or those in need of a quick refresher course.