Selection Guidelines
Image courtesy of University of California, San Diego and ARTstor
Baths of Caracalla floor mosaic detail: athletic coach or umpire, early 4th C. A.D
Sharpening Your Analytical Skills
Historian and Harvard alumnus Carl F. Kaestle warns of four problems to watch for when analyzing historical data:
- Mistaking correlation for causation
- Misapprehending the historical meaning of key terms
- Confusing societal ideals and mandates with actual behaviors of groups and individuals
- Hindsight bias: Believing that individuals could always foresee the consequences of their actions, or that outcomes necessarily indicate analogous intentions
There are, likewise, recommendations of what to do when selecting and critically evaluating historical sources:
- Understand the social and historical context in which the source was created: what was happening, patrons and sponsors of the source, audience
- Learn about the authors of sources: their background, possible motivations, expertise
- Review scholarship about the source
- Become familiar with the best editions, presses, and series and include those names in your HOLLIS searches
Library research can help you avoid some of the pitfalls that Kaestle cites and follow the above recommendations.
For example, consulting the Oxford English DictionaryThe OED is an historical dictionary of English, covering the language from the earliest times to the present day. It aims to show not only the current meanings of words, but also to trace their development through time. Entries contain detailed etymological analysis and are illustrated by quotations from a wide range of English language sources from around the world, making the OED a unique historical record. (link to the OED) will help you understand the meaning of a word relative to the time it was used in a particular English translation of your source, and examining Reference SourcesAn indication or direction in a text or other source of information to all or part of one or more other text, etc., where further, related information may be found. Reference materials have in the past depended mainly on surfaces that serve as receptacles of pictures and language symbols, from paintings on cliff faces, in caves, and on walls, through clay tablets and manuscripts of various kinds, to printed books and other products. Especially in the 20c, however, they have been extended to include audio- and video-recordings and electronically stored information on tape and disk. Distinct genres of reference book, such as the atlas for maps, the dictionary for words, the directory for a variety of general or specific information (such as names, addresses, and telephone numbers), the encyclopedia for facts and opinions, the gazetteer for geographical information, have emerged over many centuries, gaining their present-day forms especially in the expansion of book publishing in the 18–20c (Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language). in the field of classical studies (link to Reference Sources) will empower you to critically examine a text with the benefit of understanding something about its context, authorship, and impact.