I was hoping for a modern book about history and information literacy. As an historian by training, I have been increasingly concerned that history methods and theories are being decentred and erased through the domination of the hard sciences in public discussions of knowledge, discovery and innovation. Therefore, I was hoping that this would be a revisionist monograph that would affirm the singularity and specificity of historical research.

I was disappointed. For a book published in 2013, it felt dated. It probably has value for North American students in a capstone course, or British students completing their third year dissertation. But that is the only level where this book has value.

Most disappointing is the attention to digitization. Considering the title, I thought this would be a post-web 2 discussion of historical sources. Instead, the discussion of primary sources went so far as the "archive of vintage radio broadcasts." Chapter Seven was titled - worryingly "History and the Internet." This chapter could have been written in the late 1990s, with no mention of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. All these applications have incredible value for historians, but require attendant information literacy skills.

Chapter nine moved "Beyond the written word," but not beyond high culture. So many of the biases from 19th and 20th century history and historiography remain that popular culture is still - to poach a cheeky phrase - the undiscovered country.

History is so important. Writing it well - with rigour, clarity and punch - is crucial, particularly in conservative times. Yet with so many sources available to re-write the dominant version of history, we find in this book conventional strategies to evaluate conventional evidence. The quality of information literacy theories - particularly when working with digital sources - remains invisible in this monograph.

This was a required book in my Historical Research Methods course, and I have to say that I enjoyed this little guide! It gives tons of links and books to check out, and it's not written in a preachy tone like so many other books on how to write essays.

Where was this book during my undergraduate degree?! It would have been so helpful in finding additional resources for my paper. Theis book is chalk full of indexes and websites I have never heard of that I will be using from now on. I highly recommend this to anyone who is studying history, particularly at the undergraduate level as this resources will take your research skills to the next level!

I thought it was an excellently written and researched text, accessible to students from all disciplines. I actually enjoyed reading this for my class.

A very useful introduction to historical research.

This was a fantastic book. It provides great resources for anyone writing a history paper. It was very accessible too (even if it was a bit dry).

Read for school, I really appreciated the mechanics of history, it feels like a perfect guide for novices

|Read for Historiography and the Historical Profession|

Recommend highly for both history students and history faculty -- excellent blending of using traditional and electronic sources, good chapter on statistics/data for historians, good discussion of various ways of presenting research beyond the traditional research paper. Also liked the inclusion of a real research paper, annotated to show its strengths.

An effective, straightforward guide to historical research, with excellent organization and numerous resources. The information on searching techniques for library catalogues and indexes was especially helpful. Much material will be familiar to most readers, but this does not eclipse the convenience of having all in one place.

Trying to teach myself history for impending liaison duties. I read the 2007 edition (because it was currently available at my library and also I'd heard that faculty recommend it as not-so-different from the updated version). It was wildly outdated in a lot of ways - especially the bits on how to do web research or present your findings online. However, the parts that are about how to think about research held up and I learned a lot about historical research as well as possible teaching ideas. Interested to take a look at the updated version to see how they fix it up.

This book is good for undergraduate students and teachers of such. However, when it is assigned to help write a thesis, which two of my professors have done, something more in depth is needed. This does not fill the requirements of those who have written research papers and must now take the next step. This seems to repeat to much the advice and council of others before them, such as Turabian. It fails to build upon what has come before and go beyond them.