Historiography: Sources for Research at Salem State

Here's a definition according to the Oxford English Dictionary (a classic reference resource):

mon·o·graph

/ˈmänəˌɡraf/ noun

1. a detailed written study of a single specialized subject or an aspect of it. For example: "a series of monographs on music in late medieval and Renaissance cities."

A monograph is original scholarship that presents critical analysis based on extensive research of primary sources. ​

NOTE: Scholars frequently use the word "book" and "monograph" interchangeably, but technically, a book can also be a collection of collected essays, or a textbook, or a novel. The word "monograph" is generally used when speaking about a scholarly work on a single subject.  

Look for several things to determine if a book is a scholarly monograph:

• Author: What are the author's credentials? Typically written by a scholar/researcher with academic credentials listed. 
• Content: Scholarly books always have information cited in the text, in footnotes, and have a bibliography or references. Scholarly books are based on original research and also often contain a combination of primary and secondary sources.
• Style: Language is formal and technical; usually contains discipline-specific jargon. The audience for the book is primarily students, faculty, other scholars. 
• Publisher: Who is the publisher? If it is from a University press publisher (e.g. Stanford University Press, University of Pittsburgh Press, University of Washington press) it's usually a scholarly, academic book. Non-University publishers can produce scholarly books too, so make sure the other conditions for a scholarly work above are present too.

{Adapted from: California State University Northridge Libraries, Research Strategies}

Scholarly articles are written by scholar, researchers, or experts in a field in order to share the results of their original primary research or analysis with other scholars, researchers and students. They are shorter than books, but are generally 8-20 pages in length, but sometimes longer.

Academic journals are published on a regular basis (2 or 4 times a year, usually) and each issue includes many different articles by different authors, like a magazine, but for scholars!

Here are some qualities that set scholarly articles found in journals apart from "popular" articles such as are found in newspapers, magazines, etc.

• Purpose: is to communicate research and scholarly ideas.
• Author(s): are researchers, scholars, and/or faculty, and they will typically have an institutional affiliation listed.
• Citations: should have a works cited/references/bibliography with full citations.
• Length: typically range between 8 and 20+ pages. 
• Audience: is other researchers, scholars, and/or faculty.
• Coverage: tends to be focused and narrow. 
• Publisher: are usually university presses, professional associations, academic institutions, and commercial publishers.
• Peer-reviewed: the article is reviewed by a group of experts in the field. 

{adapted from: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Identifying Scholarly Articles}

An edited book is a collection of essays/articles (or chapters) by various authors that are selected by one or more editors and collected into a single published book. 

Edited books are different than scholarly monographs in that every chapter in a monograph is by the same author.

• The book has one or more editor, not an author. An editor chooses all the essays/articles to include and usually is the author of the introduction at the beginning of the book.
• Different chapters have different authors.
• The table of contents includes titles of the chapters with the author names after each chapter. (A table of contents in a non-edited book would have only chapter titles listed because all the chapters are written by the same author  – the author of the entire book.)
• Each chapter has its own title. 
• If there are citations, they are (usually) at the ends of the chapters, not at the end of the book.

Encyclopedias, almanacs, handbooks, guides, and style manuals are all examples of reference sources.

Reference sources are valuable in the beginning phases of the research process.  They can help you find quick, reliable facts and background information. They can provide a broad overview of a topic, supply keywords and concepts that are useful in searching for books and articles, and may list important scholarly works in the field to consult.   

Primary Sources are immediate, first-hand accounts of a topic, from people who had a direct connection with it. Primary sources can include:

• Texts of laws and other original documents.
• Newspaper reports, by reporters who witnessed an event or who quote people who did.
• Speeches, diaries, letters and interviews - what the people involved said or wrote.
• Original research.
• Datasets, survey data, such as census or economic statistics.
• Photographs, video, or audio that capture an event.