Research Quality, Depth, and Credit

Research Quality, Depth, and Credit Quality The Newbery-winning  Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison   The librarians at Patterson Library in Westfield, New York, took my ten-year-old quest seriously and gave me access to the closed-off balcony with its stacks of dusty archived books. I spent weeks filling hundreds of three While I dropped the project, I had unconsciously absorbed the difference in primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. Those accounts written When using a written source, the primary is the original document. If you find something quoted in a resource, that resource should be saying where it came from – follow that back to the original document. If there’s no attribution, I’ve found the quickest way to find an original source is to search the person or quote + searchable manuscripts. There are usually multiple hits. Look for websites from governments, libraries, universities, or other solid sources. Some examples:   Ã‚     Gutenberg Project  over 58,000 free eBooks, including Victor Hugo’s memoirs.   Ã‚     The Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ digital images or searchable text.   Ã‚     The British Library’s digitized collections.   Ã‚     Cambridge Digital Library   Ã‚     This page at Harvard Library  also tells you how to do more detailed research with them. Depth At Amazon’s  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Look Inside† for Lenski’s book, you can read the foreword, in which she describes how she researched the story and adapted it for fiction. She researched Jemison’s entire life and the Iroquois (of whom the Seneca are a part) in depth. She talks about the fact it was a transitional time for the Iroquois and how she tried to address that. Her illustrations are modeled after traditional Seneca artwork. It is clear she knew as much as possible about Mary Jemison and the world in which she lived. However, while Lenski’s writing was undoubtedly informed Credit Lenski mentions various specific resources throughout the foreword and ends with two paragraphs of thanks. As you do your research, keep track of key source information you’ll need for citations and bibliographies. The online writing lab at Purdue can help you give credit professionally if you’re writing nonfiction. If you’re writing fiction, share your sources with the reader and say thank you.