Some of you are having sound issues but I've checked on a laptop and a phone, both working fine, so I'm powerless to help, sorry! All settings are as usual. Thanks for assuming it's my fault, though, some of ye. Charming...
_sigh_ other people's children. Thank you so much for the research tips. It's one of my favourite things. - Cathy (&, accidently, Steve), Ottawa/Bytown/Pimisi
I missed my time at uni because of the access to the university library. For years now, I was pining for it. And then you come and tell me I can just go and get a library card. I looked at their website at once and, lo and behold, I can get a library card as a non-student. Just like that. :) (And in a stroke of luck, I just moved closer to my old university town.) :)
Heh, this. I was actually aware you could do that while I was there as a student, and then in the busy-ness of life I forgot. There's this great book where I learned a good deal of what I needed to know about my ancestral folk costume, forgot to take notes because it was just a side reading next to my school projects, and then found out the book was sold out everywhere... I could go back and borrow it and do it properly this time! :-)
Librarian in the States at an academic library who affirms librarians, archivist, and curators ENJOY helping patrons with research questions. Particularly if it's something the library folks are specialized in, or are nerds about. Love it even more if the patron has done some footwork in advance! If we don't know, we can ask our colleagues in the building, or in the profession, who might have the answers. We like sharing what we know.
Regarding primary sources--if you don't have at least a bachelor's level of expertise in the subject you are studying, be cautious of trying to interpret primary sources on your own. Use secondary sources *with* primary sources. Find expert interpretations of the primary sources, or look up primary sources to see if the expert interpretations seem legit. Non-experts can make some really off-the-wall interpretations of primary sources because they lack context for what they are seeing.
True. At the same time, though... Janet Stephens the historical hairdresser is a good example of how sometimes practical knowledge of a subject makes for better interpretation of a subject than scholarly knowledge of an era. :-) So I'd say the rule of thumb is mainly "take everything with a grain of salt and be open to correction".
Chiming in to be contrary- I’d say this almost proves the first point. Janet may not have advanced degrees in history, but she was an expert in hair to start with before she started studying historical styles. Whereas many historians who previously wrote about hair, knew nothing about that subject, and may have gotten things wrong in their research. It think the first point is more about starting completely from scratch.
@@grannyweatherwax8005 Thanks for bringing that up and making it clearer - I wasn't exactly negating the first point, more like qualifying it further, which sadly seems to be my Achilles heel in internet discussions.
@@grannyweatherwax8005 I think your point goes to the idea that we have to think about what people's expertise is actually in. People can't be experts at everything, so even if they are an expert in a culture, they might not have enough expertise in hair styling or textile production etc. to correctly interpret what they find. Question everything :)
@@amywhitson9479 And also this is where Living History is really fun because it's basically this conversation between the scholars and the people with practical experience (sometimes in one person :D ) out of which new understanding of a subject often emerges.
There's also the wonderful thing where you can get inter-library loans. Definitely worth talking to your local library. You reminded me of an old (pre-meme) saying: when I get paid, I buy books. If I have any money left over, I buy food. (Also known as full-time tertiary students - less picky about what they will eat than a pigeon.)
Just came to comments to say the same thing. Your local library will help you find ANYTHING ! For a FREE service, they can NOT be beat ! P.s. I am in the U.S.A., so my experiences are based on that. East Coast resident.
I would add beware of rabbit holes -- I was looking at Ostrich eggs and ended up chasing that bird around the world. Who would have thought "zoo" were a thing in Early Middle Ages.
One of my weirdest rabbit holes was getting sucked into the story of Czech Tramp movement WW2 resistance and the people involved, on which there is very little as a complex subject and mostly just tantalising mentions here and there... it isn't my era at all, though it is my country. I can't even remember where it started, but it was something innocuous like the origins of a song or 1930s hiking gear... and then I think I spent most of 2019 sucked into that research black hole and developing _feels_ for the people involved as I put together all the little mentions here and there and built up a more concrete picture... I dragged myself to an exhibition about Tramps and the museum in which it was held at the beginning of March 2020 because of that, and boooy was I glad I had, soon afterwards! :D
A librarian chiming in to add that you can use citation management software, like Zotero or Endnote, to organize your research notes and citations. Great tips and thank you for the lovely content. Cheers!
I went to college before citation software was a widely used thing. My mother started back to school a couple of years ago and they taught her how to use citation software for her references. I was aghast, and told her that was cheating and totally not fair. I had to learn APA and MLA citations. Lol
Another pro tip: It's not just museums that digitalise their collections these days, libraries do, too, so lots of books out of copyright can be read online now, and sometimes even downloaded. Great way to find those primary sources, especially for later eras.
Ah, researching... speaking right to my little dark heart. Libraries are temples, and librarians are the guardians of knowledge. Your used bookshop is lovely, I'd vanish in there for a long time! Thanks for giving a nod to us geeky book loving, museum going, researching weirdos out here. :)
I got SO excited to hear that museums are FREE in the U.K. ! If it weren't such a pain to move with pets, I'ld be flying that way already ! (U.S.A. where everything - EXCEPT LIBRARIES - costs money!)
@@m.maclellan7147 Right! Free museums, yay! They have a ton of museums, too. I am in the US as well, and I think the Smithsonian museums, in DC, are still free. But yeah, other museums are expensive. Like the Field in Chicago, costs $16-$26, plus extra for certain exhibits. Worth it, but yikes. Our local Detroit Institute of Arts is free to residents of metro Detroit. We fund it with tax dollars now, just to keep it open. Totally worthy investment. The ultra cool main library, across the street, is also free. It's such a cool library.
@@m.maclellan7147 As a Czech I got super-excited, too! :D Museums here have entrance fees, too - the one exception I know of are some of the permanent exhibitions in the Moravian Gallery. Libraries have enrollment fees, sometimes annual, though those are usually a pretty laughable amount so that's okay, I'm happy to support libraries. I think the most I ever paid for library enrollment was in the Prague Municipal Library, and that's one of the biggest ones in the country, with a number of branches all over Prague.
Twenty years ago when the internet was young and so was I, I decided that I wanted to learn about the Vikings, who they were and where they went and all of those kinds of innocent things. I quickly discovered that nearly every website I found that claimed to have educational material related to the Vikings, if not run directly by WP groups, was linked to websites that were. It was incredibly upsetting, and I ended up deciding that I just couldn't use the internet at all as a way to learn about Viking history, but I still didn't really know how to start. Thank you so much, Jimmy, for helping me get started learning about a topic I've wanted to learn about for literally twenty years.
I've experienced this recently too! Many of the Viking clothing/dress websites are old (10-20 years)... So the material might have been good in the early 2000s etc. when it was written, but we have new archaeological finds and new interpretations as well that are not included in the page. We think OH, INTERNET, must be new. But now that Im solidly in my 30s haha.. a lot has happened since middle school when the world at large gained access to yee olde web.
@@nerudh I kind of find the same thing going on in the Regency section of the historical costuming waters, too. People are still referring to websites I was referring to when I started researching the topic around 2007-2010, and some of those were old _then..._ There's this effect of the same old garments being recreated, et cetera - though thankfully with later eras with a lot more extants that effect gets mitigated by the ongoing museum digitalisation and Pinterest. But I think part of it is also the fact that the era of people diligently putting things into writing online is now kind of past, and that's why people still refer to the old writeups. And this is why we should revive the tradition of costuming blogs! ;-)
@@m.maclellan7147 It's why I didn't want them to change the name of the Ultima Thule dwarf planet. I was hoping they would all get on a rocket and go there.
So, um, books, you say? What a novel idea. Thank you, I'll just show myself out. Also, I LOVE how many Librarians this drove out of the woodwork! Like a rousing game of Find the Librarian!
I relate heavily! Also you know those leaflet maps that you get in museums that show you where to find each collection? Guess what got turned into battlemaps as soon as I came back from said museum :D
It is not D&D for me but mostly LARP, but I can feel you ;) Last LARP was in the 1920, i played a medical doctor. I researched for weeks about the medical knowledge of that time and became very annoyed when others contradicted me with modern knowledge...
Your do nots reminded of something my brother told me when i began reading histories."never read just one version try and find one from from friend, foe and someone who appears impartial the truth lies somewhere between them." JIMMY'S MOTTO Heaven is a good library with a comfy chair and a mug of tea, coffee or mead.
I still remember clearly the day when I asked for help at my local library to "research" something for school. I think I was about 12. The librarian showed me their (fairly modest) reference section and the Encyclopædia Britannica. My mind was completely blown away. Not only did this lead me to going back regularly for more information but around 30 years late it caused a slighly awkward moment in a bookshop where I bought my own Britannica - and realised that I needed to phone a friend with a car to help me get it home. I'd add that museums aren't just places with interesting things but they tend to have amazing libraries with books and journals about these things. They are also usually open for reference by members of the public. Oh, and that's one of my favourite second hand bookshops.
Glad you mentioned Abby Cox. I also recommend Nicole Rudolph, she has a series that deep dives historical fabrics, their history, terminology, properties, and common uses. Should give more terms to search for.
As an added resource you can try to see if there is a reenactment group in your area! Almost all groups love to tell people about their own research and why they do things the way they do it. Trust me on this, if you find a group that tries to be authentic you also found people that will never shut up about their historical area of interest. I love talking to other reenactors as well as people that just want to learn more! When we do an immersion event (north Texas area) we always put out a show and tell table. We love telling people about what we do!
Chiming in from an academic library in Washington State USA to say please come in! We love our community patrons. Also take advantage of our specialist librarians to steer your research.
Another thing you can do at libraries, including uni libraries: check whether they have books they're sorting out. The uni library in my town regularly gives away books that are one or two editions behind for free, I have like four academic books on medieval and crusader era art that I haven't paid one penny for by now. You can ask them whether they have anything on your topic, or you can be like me and just hoard everything that sounds interesting and suddenly discover several new topics to obsess over.
The hardest thing about clicking on Jimmy's videos is that I'm so excited to learn stuff that I just wanna watch immediately BUT then I'm like no I have to watch the ads so he gets ad revenue 🤦♀️🤣
Absolutely the best research advice ever, for any subject (which Jimmy mentions): Steal all the bibliographies! Someone already went to all the work of finding sources, so why spend your time trying to figure out exactly what keywords and combinations you need when you could be learning stuff rather than swearing at your computer? Wikipedia is also a great starting place to find keywords, especially if you are researching something that is based on a language or a language variant that is not your native tongue.
“Winters evening”………me, sitting in front of my fan, which is going full tilt, sweating my arse off. Actually even watching you in that very nice, very WARM looking jumper had me almost passing out from heat exhaustion lol
As a science graduate I have found Unpaywall, Scihub, and Libgen very useful for research behind paywalls now that I am no longer at uni; they may also be helpful for humanities subjects.
The only issue I have with libraries and research sites is my ADD brain decides the rabbit hole rather than whatever my intent was by going there. Doing research papers in college was interesting since I had to do research in a field I was interested in, but invariably, when I sat down to research about forests or something, my brain would be like, "hmm, yes, but what about whale migration patterns? or the life cycle of a vole? etc" And then several hours would pass and my homework would be no closer to being finished. My open-ended writing intensive course was the best lol I do love libraries. I need to go more often. And museums. Damn plague. Thank you for all the tips and tricks and pitfalls!
Thank all the gods and deities and helpful spirits and even some of the lesser, mildly annoying spirits for online research images! Some of us want to see ALL THE THINGS but can't get to the other side of the planet to do so. Thanks for these helpful tips (a couple of the web sites I hadn't known about!) which will help me tremendously.
Heh just earlier had a friend in the reenactment group chat looking for a place to buy mead and I pointed her in the direction of another member of the group who makes his own, and to a very high standard at that. Plus was listening to this while weaving a críos, using the no-loom technique of the Aran Islands, of which I had only one (1) video and multiple period photographs to use to work it out. All a distraction from my current textiles research, which in turn is an off-shoot of my late mediaeval fashion research, which at some point will need to go into actual research of historical events to see if the location/period I'm reenacting in would call for more Irish or more English fashions 😅 Jimmy, sir, your enthusiasm for research is infectious! Since discovering this channel, the amount of research rabbit-holes I've gone down and projects I've added to The List has accelerated at an alarming rate! I was perfectly happy to leave uni and get a job, but I am starting to wonder what I could have learned in the library in my free time between lectures, instead of killing time on youtube 🤔
Yes! Been sent down so many research rabbit holes after watching one of his videos. Hours, and hours worth. Lots of, "oh, I see... and then" Jimmy is up to some inspiring stuff, I really dig it.
I graduate from my university next week and I was sad that I had found their resources so late in my academic career. Hearing that there might be a way to have continued access to them has made the thought of historical research beyond graduation so much more achievable. Great video! Thank you so much!
Oh to live in a place with museums and libraries, heaven. Where I live there is 1 museum open by appointment only and hasn't been updated since 1985. The local library closed because of the plague and has yet to reopen. Thank goodness for the internet. And for Jimmy of course, without him, I would know so much less. Thank you Jimmy.
There does seem to be a few historical costumers here on RUclips that DO give citations and link source materials. Some of them even ask you to support them via Patreon to access their hard work. I think these are all wonderful different ways to learn about original sources and why the validation of sources is important.
12:11 As an ex-librarian & records manager, I can definitely confirm: your reference info is sadly only as good as your data organisational system!! 🙈 If you have it but can't FIND it, it's not much use eh... Good file naming, noting your sources as you go along, lots & lots of post-its - whatever works for you, just make sure you can find it again when you need it! 😉
Since i dabble to a certain extent in archeochemistry, i find your videos exhilarating. The constant reminder, that you put out - you have data, rely on data. Far-fetching assumptions albeit interesting and fantastic are usually wrong - has saved me many a times. Thanks. And as chemists say - Three months in a laboratory will save you from spending three days in library. ;)
I’m showing everyone who says I have too many books the end of this video! While there’s no such thing as too many books, there is the problem of not enough shelf space. Great video!
As a baby academic (half way through my Bachelor's for library science) I love this whole video. I'm so jealous that your second hand bookshop is so wonderful though - New Zealand doesn't tend to have such great looking second hand bookshops. Nor do they seem to have much in the way of academic texts even though I live in a city with one university in it, one not far outside it and polytechnic, plus other tertiary educational facilities. Sad student is sad.
I don't know about every country, but in Canada you can borrow any book from any library in the nation, if that book is available at any library within the same system. You can order it and it will be shipped to your local library (assuming it's a book that can be checked out - reference books can be more tricky), no matter what tiny town library you have, as long as they're all part of the same library system, and many libraries are nationalized. You can also RETURN any book you checked out anywhere to any library in the same system. LIBRARIES ARE AMAZNG
thank you for sharing your research, those of us who don't have museums and medieval locations to visit really don't have much access to quality sources without help from academics like you and Dr. Kat who get online to help. it's very appreciated.
Jimmy and I definitely agree on these topics! Libraries are FANTASTIC and have so many books and books are expensive. I never understood why people didn't like museums because they're so INTERESTING! Research is fun, knowledge is power!
Museums feel like one of the closest things we have to a time machine! 😊 Well, that & the increasingly awesome range of great history-tube channels on YT...? I particularly enjoy the various high-quality experimental/experiential archaeology series! Although very much edited for entertainment, that sort of content really helps provide a practical context for the items that we now see isolated in museums? (Just wish they'd be a bit more rigorous in listing their sources... but I guess that's a fairly common gripe with 'history as entertainment' content! 🙄)
I think one of the reasons people may not like museums is because they get dragged there in groups as children, which may be the worst possible way to visit a museum - you need to look at things at your own pace and discover stuff _you_ are interested in! P.S. I was a nerd to whom museums were fascinating to begin with, but my love of museums and galleries was nurtured by my grandma who understood the above perfectly, took me on my own, and encouraged me to take more time with the things I was interested in.
When I was a child, was a youngster that was really good at book reports. Now it's spilled over into SCA, to now make all the replica things. It's been over 10 years studying information on 16th-century fashion dolls. Hoping to write a book on all that goodness eventually. When I get to London, I have an extensive museum tour planned when we go. My husband and in-laws used to live in London, so am having them take me to their favorite fish and chips and pub tour. York and Edinboro are possible stops on the tour. It will be great fun and educational.
Books are a very happy place. :) As you read secondary sources, be careful and get to know your scholars! There are some academics out there with fancy degrees and affiliations that have...interesting interpretations of the evidence. Major issue in archaeology or history of non dominant groups especially.
This history loving book nerd was made very happy by this video. I also loved the little music at each of the tips. It made me smile. Now I am really exited to research things just because I want to know, but I guess I need to postpone that a bit and focus on my master's thesis (in a completely different, but still really exiting, subject) first for some days...
oh man, that's a seriously aesthetic 2nd hand bookshop, I'm jealous! thank you for the tips, I've been doing some research for a novel and it is exciting but also overwhelming lol. side note, the thumbnail for this vid is adorable and also relatable as someone who loves books!
One of the reasons I really like your channel is because you give us the references and the evidence so we can check for ourselves - context is everything. It's a reason why I like Wikipedia too, it's a good place to start if the article has a lot of citations. As to photography in museums, yes, but check the rules re flash photography, that will probably be a no. Looking forward to reading author Jimmy.
This is all ace advice! It is kind of embarrassing to say that it took me Forever to realise that old texts would have depictions of contemporary clothing, and it's been a fantastic resource ever since. Also also a little tip: if a very old book is in a different language (Latin, or French, say) then the Wikipedia articles for that book sometimes have external links to free online versions of that book, in the original language! Useful stuff, as often translations, particularly older translations, use different terminology, and don't have the same illustrations/marginalia as you can see in original scans. Thanks for the video as ever!
Only thing I would add is check out the journals of local archaeology societies too. For example the Cornwall Archaeological Society journal has its entire back catalogue up to 2019 scanned and uploaded for perusal. Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society has done similar and I imagine lots of other groups outside the South West are doing similar.
In the US, public lending libraries can get books for you from university libraries. And other public library systems. It’s called inter library loan. Since Uni libraries have been closed for covid it’s been fantastic!
Darling Jimmy; I am a retired public historian with specialties in architectural and land-use history, and I share your passion for primary research. So you have a 68-year-old fan with a big-time crush on you and your RUclips channel. I am beginning to dodder a bit (as one does) and I am fretting about the disposition of my personal library. I don’t suppose you’d care to add the history of early Euro-American California to your list of research topics? No Vikings here, I’m sorry to say. Really, I guess what I’m saying is I wish I could find a young person with your intelligence, enthusiasm, and humility to pass my books to before the Big Archive in the Sky claims me. I wish you many happy and productive research ventures in future. All the best, K. D.
With your specialized interests might I suggest that some of the Cultural Resources Management crowd in you area might have an interest in your books. I know that I always loved it when my professors, professionals, etc were doing personal library reductions - got some of the most wonderful older sources. Recently collected a 1938 book on German Forestry in that way (interested even though I am a medievalist like Jimmy and former archaeologist). However, do not fear books going to a Friends of the Library group or good second hand store - you may not know the next person to love your book but it will be loved. I deeply love and adore a treasure trove of books that made it into a Friends sale which I discovered before the second hand sellers had gone through it. Two of my particular favorites were two books of poetry from the turn of the last century - one the required reading for the entry exams to the University of Georgia and the second a book specifically designed to fit into a man’s coat pocket! Maybe identifying the best people to help you disperse your collection, when the time comes, is the best route.
Thank you for this lovely diverse diversion. I end up researching several things again. For example, I did the research on a specific topic, wrote a book with the references, and moved on. Have been asked to do the same thing with a related topic. However, the related topic is the difference between a coffee pot and a tea pot. Both are hot liquid containers Yada Yada. (Not the actual research and book topics, but I am sure you understand.) Many swear words later, I am still doing the research, and none of my original notes help me. Yet, because I did a book on coffee pots, should know all there is to know about tea pots right? Sorry, I didn't know I needed to vent this much. Please forgive me. Bless you Jimmy. Hugs from Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes and lots of idiots cheering on a football team with the worst mascot who have never won the Super Bowl.
I have no problem with yound. Lest you start worrying that's all everyone will comment about at this video, I add that so far this sounds like a GREAT summary of the research process that I shall direct people to from now on. :-)
These are actually very useful tips so I thank you. I am extremely bad at research, but I am getting better! But I think it's a funny thought that High School Me and Present Day Me, are 2 complete different people, but if I did discover reenacting in high school, I think I would have stuck to my classes better. I am now planning on going back to high school to fix my grades, so I can hopefully get into a university of choice, and hopefully study something thing like the history of domestic science and cookery.
I love research. I love doing it, I love listening to other people geeking out about it and what they've found. So thank you for this video - it definitely brightened my day! (And I now have about 20 odd new tabs open as I start going down yet more rabbit holes...)
One thing about bibliographies, if the books you are reading all cite the same sources, look those sources up. They may be great sources but then again they might be bogus. I totally agree about getting newer editions, so much new and better information is becoming available now.
This was a wonderful video to watch while taking a break on my final papers this semester. Research really is my happy place, and I'm sure V or Katie would happily tell you all about my book addiction (don't tell them I somehow walked home with THREE more books about medieval life and economics yesterday). There's a big reason I put my citations in my description, and also take copious notes in addition to my regular commonplace book notes. For watchers: highly highly recommend a commonplace book. It's excellent for learning how to take notes as you read and (if you color code or organize well) it's really easy to pull out and reference if you're forgetting something mid-conversation. Genuinely a lot of the information I'm pulling for one of my papers this semester got thrown into my commonplace book while researching for an entirely different project that wasn't even for school and happened to work with the subject of the paper. Thank you for the video, have an excellent end of semester, and here's hoping for a bit of a break for you!
17:54 I was thinking of you and grateful that you are too busy with papers to watch this video. Jimmy's being hyperbolic, please keep feeding yourself.
@@metacruft Don't worry, I only allow myself one fun book and one academic book a month now. But using my university's ProQuest access? that's free AND it means more books
Oh yay, a new Jimmy video! 😊 I've been feeling a bit unwell and am bingeing your videos for a couple days now. They are very entertaining and make me feel like I'm back in lecture at uni (history and anthropology major). Maybe one day you'll write a book = yes, please! Another idea: perhaps you'll publish patterns for reenactor kit for both men and women? That could be lucrative for you and helpful to people interested in reenacting this time period. Just a thought. Ph.D. first though, of course.
Excellent video! Did not know you access university libraries without being a student. And I really do need to get better at note taking, I barely even took any for my undergraduate dissertation. Hope your own research is going well, both the PhD and any personal research projects. I want “who needs food when you’ve got books” on a t-shirt!
Was feeling a little drained but then I remembered I had this video still waiting for me. You never disappoint, Jimmy❤ (even though I felt a little attacked with my low level of research 😉 I'm a very trusting person 😜)
Thank you for a great video, these are all excellent tips! I love going down research rabbit holes, and digitised museum collections are incredible resources! And you're right, collect allllll the books (both physical and in PDF form!)
Thank you....loved this episode...now I don't feel so alone keeping notes on obscure things I have studied. Our grandmother (70 some years ago) had a set of "Book of Knowledge" and my brother and I could get lost for hours in those things. I like thinking of research as a hobby!
OH HELP. Now I am falling down the hole of the portable antiquities scheme (whaaaaaAAaaAAaaaa)!!! What a sweet site. So. Many. Trefoil. Brooches. Thanks Jimmy!
Jimmy, this is a grand video! Thank you! ...I'd not thought of local university libraries. 🤔 While my current time period of choice is much later and not Viking, your suggestions have been most helpful. My current project is from the mid-1700's and Colonial America: working on an upper-lower class woman's ensemble. Something I've found in this journey is to read enough primary source history as to gain as much of the mindset for one's chosen character from one's chosen time period. For instance, I know it wasn't usual for women in my project's time period to make their own stays. But, there were people living in extreme rural areas of colonial America. Would such a woman have ever contemplated making her own Stays if there was need for such and if the required materials (or adequate materials) were available? Might she have used what was at hand? I made my First-Ever Stays by a purchased pattern. But, I've also done a bit of research into drafting Stays. I'd like to draft a second pair of Stays and try to whittle out the boning from Cane (local bamboo variety) to see if that would work. Upper classes would have the ability to purchase and order. Lower classes kinda had to do what they could with what they had. So, I'm adopting that mindset in my Historical Sewing Journey. ...backed with as much research (hopefully sound!) as possible. 🤞🏻
Thank you! I'm also a bit of a history/research nerd. Although I don't have the ability to get this sort of thing across. Love your channel! Much love & respect from Arizona US. 🖤💚💚🖤
Thank you. This is exactly what I need right now. I got started with a group recently and am starting that long ongoing research journey of piecing a kit together.
I got no sound when I tried watching on my phone despite hearing the ad very well, so opened up my laptop. No problem! And now I can get sound from the video on my phone as well. Weird! Hope this helps anybody else having sound-problems.
I haven't tried any other devices, but coming back to it on my phone now and it played no problem. Guess YT just wanted Jimmy to get that extra little bit of engagement in the comments today 😆
There are far too many people who call themselves a “historian” who have never done any research but “borrow” info from other sources and “publish” information claiming it as their own and as you mentioned Jimmy they never provide any bibliographical sources for the information they state. Yep. BIG 🚩! I belong to a small group of researchers and we usually are sending each other links to bibliographical lists from various sources to comb through data to find the important small items others didn’t think important enough but serve as clues or pointers in refuting information previously passed on as fact when it was only anecdotal information with no substantiation. That’s the real gems in research; finding those important sources others left behind. It’s sort of like metal detecting, where important sites have been detected over and over again but then someone comes along with real skill, fine equipment, AND they did true research before arriving at the site and they uncover the most important find everyone else missed because they were just blindly swinging a device without any goal of what in hades they were looking for then finding a trinket they leave the scene and leave the real treasure behind. Great info Research Jimmy!
I would like to clarify that I have done a fair amount of research but I don’t consider myself a “historian”. Regardless of the historical narratives commonly accepted I usually question everything and accept the premise that there is much more to every event than what has been published and always something else can be discovered if you shift through the debris of seemingly unimportant pieces of the narrative if you are patient enough. My 2¢ Never accept things as final because there is always something new to be discovered.
A nice thing with keeping lots of notes is that if they survive long enough future historians will have plenty of fun reading them (unless you're handwriting is that bad, then they'll have fun trying to figure out what the hel you wrote)
Unfortunately, I live in an area that seems very illiterate. Local library is almost useless (almost the type that would let you colour one of the pages of the book, if you ask nicely 😂.) Fortunately there was a really great book shop. Could get anything I ever thought about asking for. Even one-off prints of out of print books. Sadly closed, last year... Well said, Jimmy!
My sound is good. Jimmy is not the only one having issues with sound on yt today. Regarding research....AVOID VICTORIANS unless you are researching them. Pre raphaelite paintings are not accurate! Says someone who fell into the trap in the early 80s before internet! (There was a bliaut... it was fabulous but nothing like what a bliaut should look like, more like a Hungarian folk costume fantasy disney princess if done by a pre raphaelite ) Listen to Jimmy!
Re: Avoid Victorians: I would add that it can come in _very_ useful to learn to recognise art styles. I can look at a picture someone is showing to illustrate something and go "That was clearly painted 200 years after the fact." But not everyone has that innate intuitive ability, so these sorts of Victorian impressions keep being perpetuated - even more easily so because the Victorians were so darn prolific in their output.
@@beth12svist they produced costume books that were in every regular library. When you look at the Tudor section there are no cod pieces. That should have warned me if I knew about that. I love the pre raphaelites art and William Morris. But one should treat them as Disney art. Inspirational but not real.
@@lenabreijer1311 It did not occur to me as a reply back then, but: having the art styles under your skin is useful for those, too. I can tell Victorian fantasy Middle Ages easily from the real thing because I know the real thing did not look like that, did not use that medium, and they painted different sorts of faces in the 15th century. The faces are often an immediate giveaway. 😉
It got to the point where I wasn’t allowed in a bookstore for more than 15mins lol. Then I worked for a bookstore-don’t recommend my former place of business, corporate and bookstores should not cross-for more than 2 years and had lost of complaints about the sheer volume of books I was bringing home… but yeah, research is fun. You’re essentially your own PI in your topic of choice.
So many museums put their exhibits online during the pandemic that there's no excuse for not looking them up. Hell, the British Museum livestreamed a HUGE presentation on the Vikings right here on RUclips, just last year (May 2020)!
I always remember the Manor library as being much darker - though that is probably because I spent most of my time down the terrifyingly unstable feeling circular stairs! Really miss it though and the Minster library and the second hand book shops. All of the ones locally have close/gone online even though it is a college town. Luckily have access to university library and my state has a statewide library system. My particular favorite is still the map library - online maps just cannot really compare with a good old fashioned map that is larger than most conference tables ;-) Also, it’s always worth noting that many universities have their own artifact/article collections that can be accessed by the public - though that does require some arrangements. The special collections libraries at my BA alma mater and another nearby private college have been great sources for years - in my minor if not major interests.
Reference lists! That's how I go from source to source to source, and end up down research rabbit-holes for my papers (I'm working on my Master's). Good fun! 😆
Agree with your comments on research-I hold an MA in Amer. History from USF, and re-enact CW Navy. My Navy friends are in the SCA, and are pointing me toward there as well-and as I understand there were women viking warriors-and I tend to disguise myself as a man-may end up heading in that direction. Thank you for your comments-enjoyed the video.
My dear little rabbit ripped up one of my reference note books, shredded it! What's worse is that I heard her doing it, and thought, how cute, she's having so much fun with her play paper. It was only when I returned to the room that I discovered the dreadful truth!
One of my community college professors had us do a research assignment where we walked into our local university and found two good book resources on a topic and two sources from online databases. Oh, and a photo of us actually being there on campus. That was the day I found JSTOR. ❤ It was an amazing lesson, though. At most universities, if you're not taking physical books out, you don't even need a card to look things up. You just need to show up, in person. Feels like cheating. P.S. Found out later that some of the bigger databases were accessible from most community college libraries, as well. Including the one that was walking distance from my natal family home. You don't necessarily need travel as far as you might think or buy a library card - at least to get started. Other tip, about libraries: *Actually talk to the librarians.* Knowing things and knowing how to find things are completely different skills. Librarians are incredibly resourceful and often know where you might find information that's filed in a different section of the library than you're expecting - and they know their database offerings.
And in smaller libraries, they may have even read those books themselves, or at least scanned the contents - it's the librarians who get the books into the library in the first place. This was more fiction than research, back then, but I remember how almost every time I was checking books out at the local library as a teenager, invariably a stack, the nice librarian lady scanning them into the system would have read at least one of them and commented on it...
Hugely entertaining as always 👍 Absolutely agree about Wikipedia. I found some excellent books and articles by checking the bibliographies of relevant entries. The overview is usually nice to have, although that is definitely to be treated with care.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Some of you are having sound issues but I've checked on a laptop and a phone, both working fine, so I'm powerless to help, sorry! All settings are as usual.
Thanks for assuming it's my fault, though, some of ye. Charming...
Worked A-OK for me, first time on laptop and on phone.
_sigh_ other people's children. Thank you so much for the research tips. It's one of my favourite things.
- Cathy (&, accidently, Steve), Ottawa/Bytown/Pimisi
Sound is perfect both on laptop and phone for me as well!
To be fair, you probably are the common denominator for them Jimmy. 🤷🏻♂️
I've seen at least one other RUclipsr today mention sound issues, apparently on the second viewing. Sounds like a RUclips issue...
I missed my time at uni because of the access to the university library. For years now, I was pining for it. And then you come and tell me I can just go and get a library card. I looked at their website at once and, lo and behold, I can get a library card as a non-student. Just like that. :) (And in a stroke of luck, I just moved closer to my old university town.) :)
Excellent! Enjoy your adventures at a temple of books :)
Have you looked into alumni membership of your old uni library? You sometimes get extra privileges for having previously been a student 👍
Heh, this. I was actually aware you could do that while I was there as a student, and then in the busy-ness of life I forgot. There's this great book where I learned a good deal of what I needed to know about my ancestral folk costume, forgot to take notes because it was just a side reading next to my school projects, and then found out the book was sold out everywhere... I could go back and borrow it and do it properly this time! :-)
Abby's friend Nicole Rudolph has a whole 101 series on different textiles that would be a great starting point for fabric research.
Yes. Nicole is the more "bookish" of the two, though Abby cracks me up ! Killer combination !
I recently discovered Nicole’s Fabric 101 series and was going to post this, too! Thank you!
Jimmy: Libraries are amazing
Me, a library studies student: YEEEEEEES
Library studies student, how very cool! Libraries are totally amazing, one of my happy places.
Me too = I'm halfway through my degree. I looooovvvvveeee libraries.
Yay, MLS/MLIS!!
Librarian in the States at an academic library who affirms librarians, archivist, and curators ENJOY helping patrons with research questions. Particularly if it's something the library folks are specialized in, or are nerds about. Love it even more if the patron has done some footwork in advance! If we don't know, we can ask our colleagues in the building, or in the profession, who might have the answers. We like sharing what we know.
Regarding primary sources--if you don't have at least a bachelor's level of expertise in the subject you are studying, be cautious of trying to interpret primary sources on your own. Use secondary sources *with* primary sources. Find expert interpretations of the primary sources, or look up primary sources to see if the expert interpretations seem legit.
Non-experts can make some really off-the-wall interpretations of primary sources because they lack context for what they are seeing.
True. At the same time, though...
Janet Stephens the historical hairdresser is a good example of how sometimes practical knowledge of a subject makes for better interpretation of a subject than scholarly knowledge of an era. :-) So I'd say the rule of thumb is mainly "take everything with a grain of salt and be open to correction".
Chiming in to be contrary- I’d say this almost proves the first point. Janet may not have advanced degrees in history, but she was an expert in hair to start with before she started studying historical styles. Whereas many historians who previously wrote about hair, knew nothing about that subject, and may have gotten things wrong in their research. It think the first point is more about starting completely from scratch.
@@grannyweatherwax8005 Thanks for bringing that up and making it clearer - I wasn't exactly negating the first point, more like qualifying it further, which sadly seems to be my Achilles heel in internet discussions.
@@grannyweatherwax8005 I think your point goes to the idea that we have to think about what people's expertise is actually in. People can't be experts at everything, so even if they are an expert in a culture, they might not have enough expertise in hair styling or textile production etc. to correctly interpret what they find. Question everything :)
@@amywhitson9479 And also this is where Living History is really fun because it's basically this conversation between the scholars and the people with practical experience (sometimes in one person :D ) out of which new understanding of a subject often emerges.
There's also the wonderful thing where you can get inter-library loans. Definitely worth talking to your local library. You reminded me of an old (pre-meme) saying: when I get paid, I buy books. If I have any money left over, I buy food. (Also known as full-time tertiary students - less picky about what they will eat than a pigeon.)
Just came to comments to say the same thing. Your local library will help you find ANYTHING ! For a FREE service, they can NOT be beat !
P.s. I am in the U.S.A., so my experiences are based on that. East Coast resident.
I would add beware of rabbit holes -- I was looking at Ostrich eggs and ended up chasing that bird around the world. Who would have thought "zoo" were a thing in Early Middle Ages.
One of my weirdest rabbit holes was getting sucked into the story of Czech Tramp movement WW2 resistance and the people involved, on which there is very little as a complex subject and mostly just tantalising mentions here and there... it isn't my era at all, though it is my country. I can't even remember where it started, but it was something innocuous like the origins of a song or 1930s hiking gear... and then I think I spent most of 2019 sucked into that research black hole and developing _feels_ for the people involved as I put together all the little mentions here and there and built up a more concrete picture...
I dragged myself to an exhibition about Tramps and the museum in which it was held at the beginning of March 2020 because of that, and boooy was I glad I had, soon afterwards! :D
A librarian chiming in to add that you can use citation management software, like Zotero or Endnote, to organize your research notes and citations.
Great tips and thank you for the lovely content. Cheers!
I (as a historian) work with Citavi and am quite pleased. :)
Librarians are the BEST !!!! Thank you !
I went to college before citation software was a widely used thing. My mother started back to school a couple of years ago and they taught her how to use citation software for her references. I was aghast, and told her that was cheating and totally not fair. I had to learn APA and MLA citations. Lol
One of my thesis supervisors also recommended Zotero to me last week.
@@m.maclellan7147 You are very welcome :)
Another pro tip: It's not just museums that digitalise their collections these days, libraries do, too, so lots of books out of copyright can be read online now, and sometimes even downloaded. Great way to find those primary sources, especially for later eras.
Ah, researching... speaking right to my little dark heart. Libraries are temples, and librarians are the guardians of knowledge. Your used bookshop is lovely, I'd vanish in there for a long time! Thanks for giving a nod to us geeky book loving, museum going, researching weirdos out here. :)
I got SO excited to hear that museums are FREE in the U.K. ! If it weren't such a pain to move with pets, I'ld be flying that way already ! (U.S.A. where everything - EXCEPT LIBRARIES - costs money!)
@@m.maclellan7147 Right! Free museums, yay! They have a ton of museums, too. I am in the US as well, and I think the Smithsonian museums, in DC, are still free. But yeah, other museums are expensive. Like the Field in Chicago, costs $16-$26, plus extra for certain exhibits. Worth it, but yikes. Our local Detroit Institute of Arts is free to residents of metro Detroit. We fund it with tax dollars now, just to keep it open. Totally worthy investment. The ultra cool main library, across the street, is also free. It's such a cool library.
@@m.maclellan7147 As a Czech I got super-excited, too! :D Museums here have entrance fees, too - the one exception I know of are some of the permanent exhibitions in the Moravian Gallery. Libraries have enrollment fees, sometimes annual, though those are usually a pretty laughable amount so that's okay, I'm happy to support libraries. I think the most I ever paid for library enrollment was in the Prague Municipal Library, and that's one of the biggest ones in the country, with a number of branches all over Prague.
Twenty years ago when the internet was young and so was I, I decided that I wanted to learn about the Vikings, who they were and where they went and all of those kinds of innocent things. I quickly discovered that nearly every website I found that claimed to have educational material related to the Vikings, if not run directly by WP groups, was linked to websites that were. It was incredibly upsetting, and I ended up deciding that I just couldn't use the internet at all as a way to learn about Viking history, but I still didn't really know how to start. Thank you so much, Jimmy, for helping me get started learning about a topic I've wanted to learn about for literally twenty years.
Ugh. Can we just put all the WP on an island somewhere ?! 🤔
@@m.maclellan7147 I nominate Atlantis.
I've experienced this recently too! Many of the Viking clothing/dress websites are old (10-20 years)... So the material might have been good in the early 2000s etc. when it was written, but we have new archaeological finds and new interpretations as well that are not included in the page. We think OH, INTERNET, must be new. But now that Im solidly in my 30s haha.. a lot has happened since middle school when the world at large gained access to yee olde web.
@@nerudh I kind of find the same thing going on in the Regency section of the historical costuming waters, too. People are still referring to websites I was referring to when I started researching the topic around 2007-2010, and some of those were old _then..._ There's this effect of the same old garments being recreated, et cetera - though thankfully with later eras with a lot more extants that effect gets mitigated by the ongoing museum digitalisation and Pinterest. But I think part of it is also the fact that the era of people diligently putting things into writing online is now kind of past, and that's why people still refer to the old writeups. And this is why we should revive the tradition of costuming blogs! ;-)
@@m.maclellan7147 It's why I didn't want them to change the name of the Ultima Thule dwarf planet. I was hoping they would all get on a rocket and go there.
So, um, books, you say? What a novel idea. Thank you, I'll just show myself out.
Also, I LOVE how many Librarians this drove out of the woodwork! Like a rousing game of Find the Librarian!
"who needs food when you've got books?" - Jimmy
Honestly I want a sticker or a button or a shirt or something with this on it lol
That's a really good idea. Goes nicely with the "well read hominid" idea for shirts, and stuff. I like it, very relatable.
*flaunts signature look of superiority with my JSTOR access*
JSTOR rocks!
JSTOR takes me back to my History Degree days 🥲😁
@@diehard096 I'm not even in the history department lol
As far as research goes, 90% of the research I do goes onto my D&D games. It makes for a bit more immersive experience.
I relate heavily! Also you know those leaflet maps that you get in museums that show you where to find each collection? Guess what got turned into battlemaps as soon as I came back from said museum :D
It is not D&D for me but mostly LARP, but I can feel you ;) Last LARP was in the 1920, i played a medical doctor. I researched for weeks about the medical knowledge of that time and became very annoyed when others contradicted me with modern knowledge...
@@kahorere im "borrowing" that idea! that's clever!
Your do nots reminded of something my brother told me when i began reading histories."never read just one version try and find one from from friend, foe and someone who appears impartial the truth lies somewhere between them."
JIMMY'S MOTTO
Heaven is a good library with a comfy chair and a mug of tea, coffee or mead.
The thumbnail says "Books are my happy place." That made me happy.
So did the content of the video. Thanks for doing this.
I still remember clearly the day when I asked for help at my local library to "research" something for school. I think I was about 12. The librarian showed me their (fairly modest) reference section and the Encyclopædia Britannica. My mind was completely blown away. Not only did this lead me to going back regularly for more information but around 30 years late it caused a slighly awkward moment in a bookshop where I bought my own Britannica - and realised that I needed to phone a friend with a car to help me get it home.
I'd add that museums aren't just places with interesting things but they tend to have amazing libraries with books and journals about these things. They are also usually open for reference by members of the public.
Oh, and that's one of my favourite second hand bookshops.
Those noises over St Cuthbert book... so relatable XD
Not in that particular book, just whatever I like, which can still be of a historical nature.
I fell down the museum rabbit hole one night looking trying to find examples of Celtic jewelry. It was a fun ride.
Glad you mentioned Abby Cox. I also recommend Nicole Rudolph, she has a series that deep dives historical fabrics, their history, terminology, properties, and common uses. Should give more terms to search for.
I'm so jealous of your free museums! I would happily spend the rest of my life wandering through them.
As an added resource you can try to see if there is a reenactment group in your area!
Almost all groups love to tell people about their own research and why they do things the way they do it. Trust me on this, if you find a group that tries to be authentic you also found people that will never shut up about their historical area of interest. I love talking to other reenactors as well as people that just want to learn more!
When we do an immersion event (north Texas area) we always put out a show and tell table. We love telling people about what we do!
Chiming in from an academic library in Washington State USA to say please come in! We love our community patrons. Also take advantage of our specialist librarians to steer your research.
Another thing you can do at libraries, including uni libraries: check whether they have books they're sorting out. The uni library in my town regularly gives away books that are one or two editions behind for free, I have like four academic books on medieval and crusader era art that I haven't paid one penny for by now. You can ask them whether they have anything on your topic, or you can be like me and just hoard everything that sounds interesting and suddenly discover several new topics to obsess over.
The hardest thing about clicking on Jimmy's videos is that I'm so excited to learn stuff that I just wanna watch immediately BUT then I'm like no I have to watch the ads so he gets ad revenue 🤦♀️🤣
I mean, feel free to skip! I specify they be skippable so you can :)
Absolutely the best research advice ever, for any subject (which Jimmy mentions): Steal all the bibliographies! Someone already went to all the work of finding sources, so why spend your time trying to figure out exactly what keywords and combinations you need when you could be learning stuff rather than swearing at your computer?
Wikipedia is also a great starting place to find keywords, especially if you are researching something that is based on a language or a language variant that is not your native tongue.
“Winters evening”………me, sitting in front of my fan, which is going full tilt, sweating my arse off. Actually even watching you in that very nice, very WARM looking jumper had me almost passing out from heat exhaustion lol
Here it's about -3 F I'm curled up under a blanket 😅
@@amaliaseven7 Lol, well it’s really humid here which makes the heat, which by international standards, isn’t THAT bad, pretty unbearable.
As a science graduate I have found Unpaywall, Scihub, and Libgen very useful for research behind paywalls now that I am no longer at uni; they may also be helpful for humanities subjects.
That "Can beards be professional" & "How much mead is too much" 😂 LOL these videos are such joy to watch
One of the best part of the Internet, is to be able to do a virtual tour of so many museums!
Ah,intellectual integrity and how to attain it... I admire your work.. May the clouds leave you mind!
The only issue I have with libraries and research sites is my ADD brain decides the rabbit hole rather than whatever my intent was by going there. Doing research papers in college was interesting since I had to do research in a field I was interested in, but invariably, when I sat down to research about forests or something, my brain would be like, "hmm, yes, but what about whale migration patterns? or the life cycle of a vole? etc" And then several hours would pass and my homework would be no closer to being finished. My open-ended writing intensive course was the best lol
I do love libraries. I need to go more often. And museums. Damn plague. Thank you for all the tips and tricks and pitfalls!
I get you. Adhd here too.
I'm a fellow Medieval history and research graduate and share your passion for research! Thanks for this! :D
Thank all the gods and deities and helpful spirits and even some of the lesser, mildly annoying spirits for online research images! Some of us want to see ALL THE THINGS but can't get to the other side of the planet to do so. Thanks for these helpful tips (a couple of the web sites I hadn't known about!) which will help me tremendously.
The sweater/jumper game is on point in this video.
Heh just earlier had a friend in the reenactment group chat looking for a place to buy mead and I pointed her in the direction of another member of the group who makes his own, and to a very high standard at that. Plus was listening to this while weaving a críos, using the no-loom technique of the Aran Islands, of which I had only one (1) video and multiple period photographs to use to work it out. All a distraction from my current textiles research, which in turn is an off-shoot of my late mediaeval fashion research, which at some point will need to go into actual research of historical events to see if the location/period I'm reenacting in would call for more Irish or more English fashions 😅
Jimmy, sir, your enthusiasm for research is infectious! Since discovering this channel, the amount of research rabbit-holes I've gone down and projects I've added to The List has accelerated at an alarming rate! I was perfectly happy to leave uni and get a job, but I am starting to wonder what I could have learned in the library in my free time between lectures, instead of killing time on youtube 🤔
Yes! Been sent down so many research rabbit holes after watching one of his videos. Hours, and hours worth. Lots of, "oh, I see... and then" Jimmy is up to some inspiring stuff, I really dig it.
I graduate from my university next week and I was sad that I had found their resources so late in my academic career. Hearing that there might be a way to have continued access to them has made the thought of historical research beyond graduation so much more achievable.
Great video! Thank you so much!
Oh to live in a place with museums and libraries, heaven. Where I live there is 1 museum open by appointment only and hasn't been updated since 1985. The local library closed because of the plague and has yet to reopen. Thank goodness for the internet. And for Jimmy of course, without him, I would know so much less. Thank you Jimmy.
There does seem to be a few historical costumers here on RUclips that DO give citations and link source materials.
Some of them even ask you to support them via Patreon to access their hard work. I think these are all wonderful different ways to learn about original sources and why the validation of sources is important.
12:11 As an ex-librarian & records manager, I can definitely confirm: your reference info is sadly only as good as your data organisational system!! 🙈 If you have it but can't FIND it, it's not much use eh... Good file naming, noting your sources as you go along, lots & lots of post-its - whatever works for you, just make sure you can find it again when you need it! 😉
Haha... feeling chided on the side. My notes are organized, mostly, in a way, sort of :)
Since i dabble to a certain extent in archeochemistry, i find your videos exhilarating. The constant reminder, that you put out - you have data, rely on data. Far-fetching assumptions albeit interesting and fantastic are usually wrong - has saved me many a times. Thanks.
And as chemists say - Three months in a laboratory will save you from spending three days in library. ;)
I’m showing everyone who says I have too many books the end of this video! While there’s no such thing as too many books, there is the problem of not enough shelf space. Great video!
As a baby academic (half way through my Bachelor's for library science) I love this whole video. I'm so jealous that your second hand bookshop is so wonderful though - New Zealand doesn't tend to have such great looking second hand bookshops. Nor do they seem to have much in the way of academic texts even though I live in a city with one university in it, one not far outside it and polytechnic, plus other tertiary educational facilities. Sad student is sad.
Your local 2nd hand bookstore would be the best vacation ever. Also, waiting for that book...
Primary sources...woot.
I don't know about every country, but in Canada you can borrow any book from any library in the nation, if that book is available at any library within the same system. You can order it and it will be shipped to your local library (assuming it's a book that can be checked out - reference books can be more tricky), no matter what tiny town library you have, as long as they're all part of the same library system, and many libraries are nationalized. You can also RETURN any book you checked out anywhere to any library in the same system. LIBRARIES ARE AMAZNG
thank you for sharing your research, those of us who don't have museums and medieval locations to visit really don't have much access to quality sources without help from academics like you and Dr. Kat who get online to help. it's very appreciated.
Jimmy and I definitely agree on these topics! Libraries are FANTASTIC and have so many books and books are expensive. I never understood why people didn't like museums because they're so INTERESTING! Research is fun, knowledge is power!
Museums feel like one of the closest things we have to a time machine! 😊 Well, that & the increasingly awesome range of great history-tube channels on YT...? I particularly enjoy the various high-quality experimental/experiential archaeology series! Although very much edited for entertainment, that sort of content really helps provide a practical context for the items that we now see isolated in museums? (Just wish they'd be a bit more rigorous in listing their sources... but I guess that's a fairly common gripe with 'history as entertainment' content! 🙄)
I think one of the reasons people may not like museums is because they get dragged there in groups as children, which may be the worst possible way to visit a museum - you need to look at things at your own pace and discover stuff _you_ are interested in!
P.S. I was a nerd to whom museums were fascinating to begin with, but my love of museums and galleries was nurtured by my grandma who understood the above perfectly, took me on my own, and encouraged me to take more time with the things I was interested in.
When I was a child, was a youngster that was really good at book reports. Now it's spilled over into SCA, to now make all the replica things. It's been over 10 years studying information on 16th-century fashion dolls. Hoping to write a book on all that goodness eventually. When I get to London, I have an extensive museum tour planned when we go. My husband and in-laws used to live in London, so am having them take me to their favorite fish and chips and pub tour. York and Edinboro are possible stops on the tour. It will be great fun and educational.
Make up a small group tour (that you lead) & the folks on the tour will be paying your way !
It really sounds interesting to me ! ;)
Books are a very happy place. :)
As you read secondary sources, be careful and get to know your scholars! There are some academics out there with fancy degrees and affiliations that have...interesting interpretations of the evidence. Major issue in archaeology or history of non dominant groups especially.
Why had I never thought of going to uni just to use the library? That’s brilliant I’m so going on my next day off
This history loving book nerd was made very happy by this video. I also loved the little music at each of the tips. It made me smile.
Now I am really exited to research things just because I want to know, but I guess I need to postpone that a bit and focus on my master's thesis (in a completely different, but still really exiting, subject) first for some days...
oh man, that's a seriously aesthetic 2nd hand bookshop, I'm jealous! thank you for the tips, I've been doing some research for a novel and it is exciting but also overwhelming lol.
side note, the thumbnail for this vid is adorable and also relatable as someone who loves books!
One of the reasons I really like your channel is because you give us the references and the evidence so we can check for ourselves - context is everything. It's a reason why I like Wikipedia too, it's a good place to start if the article has a lot of citations. As to photography in museums, yes, but check the rules re flash photography, that will probably be a no. Looking forward to reading author Jimmy.
This is all ace advice! It is kind of embarrassing to say that it took me Forever to realise that old texts would have depictions of contemporary clothing, and it's been a fantastic resource ever since. Also also a little tip: if a very old book is in a different language (Latin, or French, say) then the Wikipedia articles for that book sometimes have external links to free online versions of that book, in the original language! Useful stuff, as often translations, particularly older translations, use different terminology, and don't have the same illustrations/marginalia as you can see in original scans.
Thanks for the video as ever!
Only thing I would add is check out the journals of local archaeology societies too. For example the Cornwall Archaeological Society journal has its entire back catalogue up to 2019 scanned and uploaded for perusal. Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society has done similar and I imagine lots of other groups outside the South West are doing similar.
In the US, public lending libraries can get books for you from university libraries. And other public library systems. It’s called inter library loan. Since Uni libraries have been closed for covid it’s been fantastic!
Not to add to the issue, but I've checked all my own settings and the sound isn't working, sorry!
So weird, because the sound is working for me. I did a youtube update today, maybe it's that. Something to check anyway.
Darling Jimmy;
I am a retired public historian with specialties in architectural and land-use history, and I share your passion for primary research. So you have a 68-year-old fan with a big-time crush on you and your RUclips channel. I am beginning to dodder a bit (as one does) and I am fretting about the disposition of my personal library. I don’t suppose you’d care to add the history of early Euro-American California to your list of research topics? No Vikings here, I’m sorry to say. Really, I guess what I’m saying is I wish I could find a young person with your intelligence, enthusiasm, and humility to pass my books to before the Big Archive in the Sky claims me. I wish you many happy and productive research ventures in future. All the best, K. D.
With your specialized interests might I suggest that some of the Cultural Resources Management crowd in you area might have an interest in your books. I know that I always loved it when my professors, professionals, etc were doing personal library reductions - got some of the most wonderful older sources. Recently collected a 1938 book on German Forestry in that way (interested even though I am a medievalist like Jimmy and former archaeologist). However, do not fear books going to a Friends of the Library group or good second hand store - you may not know the next person to love your book but it will be loved. I deeply love and adore a treasure trove of books that made it into a Friends sale which I discovered before the second hand sellers had gone through it. Two of my particular favorites were two books of poetry from the turn of the last century - one the required reading for the entry exams to the University of Georgia and the second a book specifically designed to fit into a man’s coat pocket! Maybe identifying the best people to help you disperse your collection, when the time comes, is the best route.
Thank you for this lovely diverse diversion.
I end up researching several things again. For example, I did the research on a specific topic, wrote a book with the references, and moved on.
Have been asked to do the same thing with a related topic. However, the related topic is the difference between a coffee pot and a tea pot. Both are hot liquid containers Yada Yada. (Not the actual research and book topics, but I am sure you understand.)
Many swear words later, I am still doing the research, and none of my original notes help me. Yet, because I did a book on coffee pots, should know all there is to know about tea pots right?
Sorry, I didn't know I needed to vent this much. Please forgive me.
Bless you Jimmy. Hugs from Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes and lots of idiots cheering on a football team with the worst mascot who have never won the Super Bowl.
I have no problem with yound. Lest you start worrying that's all everyone will comment about at this video, I add that so far this sounds like a GREAT summary of the research process that I shall direct people to from now on. :-)
These are actually very useful tips so I thank you. I am extremely bad at research, but I am getting better! But I think it's a funny thought that High School Me and Present Day Me, are 2 complete different people, but if I did discover reenacting in high school, I think I would have stuck to my classes better. I am now planning on going back to high school to fix my grades, so I can hopefully get into a university of choice, and hopefully study something thing like the history of domestic science and cookery.
Excellent. I work in an academic research library and I appreciate your channel for all these reasons you mention. Thanks for kudos!
I love research. I love doing it, I love listening to other people geeking out about it and what they've found. So thank you for this video - it definitely brightened my day! (And I now have about 20 odd new tabs open as I start going down yet more rabbit holes...)
Yesss >:]
One thing about bibliographies, if the books you are reading all cite the same sources, look those sources up. They may be great sources but then again they might be bogus.
I totally agree about getting newer editions, so much new and better information is becoming available now.
This was a wonderful video to watch while taking a break on my final papers this semester. Research really is my happy place, and I'm sure V or Katie would happily tell you all about my book addiction (don't tell them I somehow walked home with THREE more books about medieval life and economics yesterday). There's a big reason I put my citations in my description, and also take copious notes in addition to my regular commonplace book notes.
For watchers: highly highly recommend a commonplace book. It's excellent for learning how to take notes as you read and (if you color code or organize well) it's really easy to pull out and reference if you're forgetting something mid-conversation. Genuinely a lot of the information I'm pulling for one of my papers this semester got thrown into my commonplace book while researching for an entirely different project that wasn't even for school and happened to work with the subject of the paper.
Thank you for the video, have an excellent end of semester, and here's hoping for a bit of a break for you!
17:54 I was thinking of you and grateful that you are too busy with papers to watch this video. Jimmy's being hyperbolic, please keep feeding yourself.
@@metacruft Don't worry, I only allow myself one fun book and one academic book a month now. But using my university's ProQuest access? that's free AND it means more books
Oh yay, a new Jimmy video! 😊 I've been feeling a bit unwell and am bingeing your videos for a couple days now. They are very entertaining and make me feel like I'm back in lecture at uni (history and anthropology major). Maybe one day you'll write a book = yes, please! Another idea: perhaps you'll publish patterns for reenactor kit for both men and women? That could be lucrative for you and helpful to people interested in reenacting this time period. Just a thought. Ph.D. first though, of course.
Excellent video! Did not know you access university libraries without being a student. And I really do need to get better at note taking, I barely even took any for my undergraduate dissertation.
Hope your own research is going well, both the PhD and any personal research projects.
I want “who needs food when you’ve got books” on a t-shirt!
Was feeling a little drained but then I remembered I had this video still waiting for me. You never disappoint, Jimmy❤ (even though I felt a little attacked with my low level of research 😉 I'm a very trusting person 😜)
Thank you for a great video, these are all excellent tips! I love going down research rabbit holes, and digitised museum collections are incredible resources! And you're right, collect allllll the books (both physical and in PDF form!)
Thank you....loved this episode...now I don't feel so alone keeping notes on obscure things I have studied. Our grandmother (70 some years ago) had a set of "Book of Knowledge" and my brother and I could get lost for hours in those things. I like thinking of research as a hobby!
OH HELP. Now I am falling down the hole of the portable antiquities scheme (whaaaaaAAaaAAaaaa)!!! What a sweet site. So. Many. Trefoil. Brooches. Thanks Jimmy!
Right?!
Jimmy, this is a grand video! Thank you! ...I'd not thought of local university libraries. 🤔 While my current time period of choice is much later and not Viking, your suggestions have been most helpful. My current project is from the mid-1700's and Colonial America: working on an upper-lower class woman's ensemble. Something I've found in this journey is to read enough primary source history as to gain as much of the mindset for one's chosen character from one's chosen time period. For instance, I know it wasn't usual for women in my project's time period to make their own stays. But, there were people living in extreme rural areas of colonial America. Would such a woman have ever contemplated making her own Stays if there was need for such and if the required materials (or adequate materials) were available? Might she have used what was at hand? I made my First-Ever Stays by a purchased pattern. But, I've also done a bit of research into drafting Stays. I'd like to draft a second pair of Stays and try to whittle out the boning from Cane (local bamboo variety) to see if that would work. Upper classes would have the ability to purchase and order. Lower classes kinda had to do what they could with what they had. So, I'm adopting that mindset in my Historical Sewing Journey. ...backed with as much research (hopefully sound!) as possible. 🤞🏻
Thank you! I'm also a bit of a history/research nerd. Although I don't have the ability to get this sort of thing across. Love your channel! Much love & respect from Arizona US.
🖤💚💚🖤
Thank you. This is exactly what I need right now.
I got started with a group recently and am starting that long ongoing research journey of piecing a kit together.
I got no sound when I tried watching on my phone despite hearing the ad very well, so opened up my laptop. No problem! And now I can get sound from the video on my phone as well. Weird! Hope this helps anybody else having sound-problems.
I haven't tried any other devices, but coming back to it on my phone now and it played no problem. Guess YT just wanted Jimmy to get that extra little bit of engagement in the comments today 😆
@@InThisEssayIWill... excellent point, that must be it!
I know Amazon had problem with their servers earlier today ?! Then RUclips?! Hmmmmmmm ?!
I don't know where you have been all my life. Thank you so much!!! 🧡💛💚
INTER LIBRARY LOANS RULE!!!
Also: cats
(need food, whether there are books available or not. cats don't care)
Inter Library loans are so cool, and helpful.
Edit: Also cats! How did I forget the cats? Tragedy!
Thumbs up for both ILL and cats.
Where can I find the CATalogue for Inter Library Loans; I'd like to see what sorts of cats are on offer?
I love going down rabbit holes!
My new word for the day is now 'Fabulous'. Thank you 😁
There are far too many people who call themselves a “historian” who have never done any research but “borrow” info from other sources and “publish” information claiming it as their own and as you mentioned Jimmy they never provide any bibliographical sources for the information they state. Yep. BIG 🚩!
I belong to a small group of researchers and we usually are sending each other links to bibliographical lists from various sources to comb through data to find the important small items others didn’t think important enough but serve as clues or pointers in refuting information previously passed on as fact when it was only anecdotal information with no substantiation. That’s the real gems in research; finding those important sources others left behind. It’s sort of like metal detecting, where important sites have been detected over and over again but then someone comes along with real skill, fine equipment, AND they did true research before arriving at the site and they uncover the most important find everyone else missed because they were just blindly swinging a device without any goal of what in hades they were looking for then finding a trinket they leave the scene and leave the real treasure behind.
Great info Research Jimmy!
I would like to clarify that I have done a fair amount of research but I don’t consider myself a “historian”. Regardless of the historical narratives commonly accepted I usually question everything and accept the premise that there is much more to every event than what has been published and always something else can be discovered if you shift through the debris of seemingly unimportant pieces of the narrative if you are patient enough. My 2¢
Never accept things as final because there is always something new to be discovered.
A nice thing with keeping lots of notes is that if they survive long enough future historians will have plenty of fun reading them (unless you're handwriting is that bad, then they'll have fun trying to figure out what the hel you wrote)
Unfortunately, I live in an area that seems very illiterate. Local library is almost useless (almost the type that would let you colour one of the pages of the book, if you ask nicely 😂.)
Fortunately there was a really great book shop. Could get anything I ever thought about asking for. Even one-off prints of out of print books. Sadly closed, last year...
Well said, Jimmy!
Oh, every time a bookstore closes a demon gets it's horns ! ;(
My sound is good. Jimmy is not the only one having issues with sound on yt today.
Regarding research....AVOID VICTORIANS unless you are researching them. Pre raphaelite paintings are not accurate! Says someone who fell into the trap in the early 80s before internet! (There was a bliaut... it was fabulous but nothing like what a bliaut should look like, more like a Hungarian folk costume fantasy disney princess if done by a pre raphaelite ) Listen to Jimmy!
Re: Avoid Victorians: I would add that it can come in _very_ useful to learn to recognise art styles. I can look at a picture someone is showing to illustrate something and go "That was clearly painted 200 years after the fact." But not everyone has that innate intuitive ability, so these sorts of Victorian impressions keep being perpetuated - even more easily so because the Victorians were so darn prolific in their output.
@@beth12svist they produced costume books that were in every regular library. When you look at the Tudor section there are no cod pieces. That should have warned me if I knew about that.
I love the pre raphaelites art and William Morris. But one should treat them as Disney art. Inspirational but not real.
@@lenabreijer1311 It did not occur to me as a reply back then, but: having the art styles under your skin is useful for those, too. I can tell Victorian fantasy Middle Ages easily from the real thing because I know the real thing did not look like that, did not use that medium, and they painted different sorts of faces in the 15th century. The faces are often an immediate giveaway. 😉
It got to the point where I wasn’t allowed in a bookstore for more than 15mins lol. Then I worked for a bookstore-don’t recommend my former place of business, corporate and bookstores should not cross-for more than 2 years and had lost of complaints about the sheer volume of books I was bringing home… but yeah, research is fun. You’re essentially your own PI in your topic of choice.
Great video topic! Thank you! 😎
So many museums put their exhibits online during the pandemic that there's no excuse for not looking them up. Hell, the British Museum livestreamed a HUGE presentation on the Vikings right here on RUclips, just last year (May 2020)!
I understand "vague brain". Mine's been like that for months now. Hope it clears up for you by the New Year.
I always remember the Manor library as being much darker - though that is probably because I spent most of my time down the terrifyingly unstable feeling circular stairs! Really miss it though and the Minster library and the second hand book shops. All of the ones locally have close/gone online even though it is a college town. Luckily have access to university library and my state has a statewide library system. My particular favorite is still the map library - online maps just cannot really compare with a good old fashioned map that is larger than most conference tables ;-) Also, it’s always worth noting that many universities have their own artifact/article collections that can be accessed by the public - though that does require some arrangements. The special collections libraries at my BA alma mater and another nearby private college have been great sources for years - in my minor if not major interests.
I also don't get sound :(
Update: I don't know what went wrong, but now I too have sound. Didn't change anything in my settings though 🤷♀️
Me neither. Tried closing the app and coming back but still nothing 😕
Adore your nerdiness! Thank you! All good advice and info! (Sorry- seem to be addicted to exclamation points...Hahahah)
Reference lists! That's how I go from source to source to source, and end up down research rabbit-holes for my papers (I'm working on my Master's). Good fun! 😆
Agree with your comments on research-I hold an MA in Amer. History from USF, and re-enact CW Navy. My Navy friends are in the SCA, and are pointing me toward there as well-and as I understand there were women viking warriors-and I tend to disguise myself as a man-may end up heading in that direction. Thank you for your comments-enjoyed the video.
Take a tranquilliser before you watch Abbey. She gets *really* excited! (But very good)
Thank you for the video Jimmy, i really enjoyed it!
Really usefull at usual bro!
My dear little rabbit ripped up one of my reference note books, shredded it! What's worse is that I heard her doing it, and thought, how cute, she's having so much fun with her play paper. It was only when I returned to the room that I discovered the dreadful truth!
A vid on historical places, mythological places worth visiting in wales…visiting wales from Australia next yr!
One of my community college professors had us do a research assignment where we walked into our local university and found two good book resources on a topic and two sources from online databases. Oh, and a photo of us actually being there on campus. That was the day I found JSTOR. ❤
It was an amazing lesson, though. At most universities, if you're not taking physical books out, you don't even need a card to look things up. You just need to show up, in person. Feels like cheating.
P.S. Found out later that some of the bigger databases were accessible from most community college libraries, as well. Including the one that was walking distance from my natal family home. You don't necessarily need travel as far as you might think or buy a library card - at least to get started.
Other tip, about libraries: *Actually talk to the librarians.* Knowing things and knowing how to find things are completely different skills. Librarians are incredibly resourceful and often know where you might find information that's filed in a different section of the library than you're expecting - and they know their database offerings.
And in smaller libraries, they may have even read those books themselves, or at least scanned the contents - it's the librarians who get the books into the library in the first place. This was more fiction than research, back then, but I remember how almost every time I was checking books out at the local library as a teenager, invariably a stack, the nice librarian lady scanning them into the system would have read at least one of them and commented on it...
Hugely entertaining as always 👍 Absolutely agree about Wikipedia. I found some excellent books and articles by checking the bibliographies of relevant entries. The overview is usually nice to have, although that is definitely to be treated with care.