Documenting Sources

Sources are very important for the construction of history. Documentation will allow the readers to verify the sources consulted for the study. Indeed, to write history is always to write about sources. Documentation allows the researcher to display his sources and it also helps to avoid plagiarism. This requires that the researcher pay particular attention to a number of details and make certain that they are presented carefully and consistently in the citations.

Authorship

The first principle to consider is authorship. Who created the work? Is there just one author, or are there several? Whether an editor or translator? Very few sources may have several individuals who contributed to the fundamental creation and presentation of the work. Most often these are editors and/or translators.

Titles

The second basic element for each citation is the title. What is the source called? In the case of articles in a journal or newspaper, there will be more than a single title. The complete title of a book should be in italics. Similarly, the title of a periodical—a scholarly journal, magazine, or newspaper—should be in italics. But use quotation marks for short poems or speeches that have titles, or in a collection of essays in book form.  A few types of sources—such as interviews, letters, and manuscripts—are merely described in regular type without quotation marks.

Location

Since a major purpose for the citation is that readers may find the same work, the third important element in the citation should be the location where you found the information. For books, this means place of publication and the publisher. For scholarly journals, this means the volume and sometimes the issue number and publisher. For websites, it means the URL and retrieved date. For manuscripts or documents in archives, you will need to indicate the name of the archives and the document number.

Date

The final element to consider is the date of the source. In the case of books, it is the year of publication; for journals, it is the year (and perhaps the month) of publication in addition to the volume number. Newspaper and magazine citations usually include only the date, not the volume and issue numbers. For Web sites, the date the particular source was created should be included.

Methods of Documentation in a Historical Work

There are three important methods to document a source in historical work. They are:

1.        Footnotes
2.        Bibliography
3.       Appendix

Apart from these, sometimes, the preface can also be used as a place to document the sources, consulted for the study.

Footnotes

The method of using footnotes gives the researcher an opportunity to display his sources and supporting documents. A historian should acknowledge not only the sources of his facts but also the sources of any new idea or opinion or conclusion borrowed from others. In the text, he should clearly distinguish between his own ideas or conclusions and those of others borrowed by him. Ideas and opinions are like the property of somebody, and whenever they are borrowed by the historian, the ethics of historical scholarship demands that such borrowings be acknowledged. Footnotes give the historian an immediate space to document his source.

Bibliography

A bibliography is the last part of a research paper. It gives the details about the sources – both primary and secondary – consulted for the present study. A bibliography helps to validate historical work by examining the types of sources consulted for the study. It also gives an idea of the extent of the research.

Appendix

The appendix helps the researcher to display the relevant original source materials used for the study. This full-text documentation of sources allows the researcher to give supplementary material that is not an essential part of the main body of the text. It includes the material which cannot be logically included in the main body of the text. The appendix usually includes supporting evidence, preferably a copy of primary documents like orders, letters, technical figures, maps, questionnaires, photographs, etc.