Humanities Homework Help

I’m working on a history discussion question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.

Introduction: Right now you should be researching your topic. That should continue through Week 4. By Week 5 you should move on to writing your paper. That means if you haven’t done much research on your project you need to move into full speed with your research as you will have only three more weeks to do your major research (you can do some additional research as you write your paper and realize you do need a few more bits of evidence).

As you do your research, you will be taking lots of notes from your primary sources. There are many ways to physically record your notes. In the old days, like when I was an undergraduate or working on my Master’s Thesis, I wrote all of my research notes on note cards. That was a killer on my hand (lots of notes) and not very fast, but it did produce notes that I could rearrange by my note cards; I could sort of deal them out at the end of my research into piles of related topics.

In my dissertation and my later research projects I have used a laptop to record my notes. Using a laptop or even an electronic notebook is much easier on your hand, more accurate if you have messy handwriting, and easy to search and cut and paste material into your final paper. The only drawback is if your computer fails, all of your research is gone! Because of that I highly recommend that you back up your research on a device other than your laptop or notebook. You can copy your note taking files onto a zip drive (small and convenient), an external hard drive (what I use for big projects), or onto a different computer. Another way to save your notes is to print them out at the end of each day. This takes time and paper and printer ink, but printed notes won’t disappear into electronic limbo (just make sure your pets don’t eat them).

As the readings highlight, you should include several things in your notes. First, you should have a complete bibliographic entry for the overall source. That is important to do as you might have to return a book or an archive manuscript and not have access to it later on. Secondly, you should include any sub-document bibliographic entry, especially true for archival manuscripts or documents contained in a printed collection. For example, if you are citing a letter from Joe Smith to John Doe, written on July 5, 1889, you should also note that. Then you should include the contents of the source that relate to your project in your notes. If you are quoting a primary source, make sure you put that quote in quotation marks so you can remember three weeks later if the information is a quote or a paraphrase. I also find it very useful to write on the note where I think I will use this factual information in my final research project. That way, when I have all of my notes, I can easily organize them by section of my paper rather than having to reread all of my notes again to see what they were about in a general sense.

For this assignment, I want you to post an example of your note taking from your research for your History 495 project/paper. You should post your example note by Saturday (10/30). Additionally, I want you to describe why you have decided to use the note taking method you have used. If you are taking notes by hand, you might have to scan in a copy of a note and then attach that as a file. If you are taking notes electronically, just copy and paste an example note into your initial post. In your two peer responses, I want you to give feedback to your peers on their note taking. These could be pointers about things their notes are missing or ideas about how to take more complete notes. You need to provide feedback to two of your peers about their note taking style by Wednesday (11/3).

This discussion (both initial response and two+ peer responses) are worth up to 30 points (3% of your final course grade).

Dr. Jeff Glasco

Below is an example of actual notes taken by UMGC’s Dr. Jeff Glasco (me) from primary sources that he found at the Public Record Office in London (now called The National Archive). Dr. Glasco took these notes electronically, and he made one file for each manuscript collection. These notes are from a manuscript entitled ADM 1/1024: Letters to the Admiralty from Portsmouth 1797 (nos 601-800). He has included annotations (the parts in red) to explain the different sections of my notes.

ADM 1/1024: Letters to the Admiralty from Portsmouth 1797 (nos 601-800) (This is the archival manuscript title, I know it was from the Public Record Office as all of the ADM manuscripts were held there, but if you have lots of notes from different archives, you might also note the archive where you found the manuscript/primary source. I could go back to this archive and give the archivists this number and they would be able to provide the document collection for me.)

Request for ship’s pay (Pompee) (Nore) (This is my note about what the document told me, sort of my description of contents.)

Letter from Captain Vashon of the Pompee to Admiral Peter Parker, Pompee at Spithead, June 26, 1797 (enclosed in a letter by Parker to Evan Nepean, Royal William at Spithead, June 27, 1797): (This is the sub-document title. This is what I found at the top of the document which identified it as a letter and who the letter was to and who authored the letter.)

Vashon wanted his ship paid off before it sailed from Spithead or to be able to remain at Spithead until it was paid off. Nepean on the back of the Parker forward letter said no and that the ship was going to be paid off on the 30th of this month (June) anyway. (This is the note I took from this letter. It wasn’t a big bit of information, but it was useful to my project in the end. There are no quotation marks, so I know that I paraphrased the points in the letter.)

Mars and potential courts martials (Spithead) plus potential for further mutiny(This is a second letter I found in the same manuscript collection. Basically, the archive put a bunch of letters in a big box and I had to go through all of them to see what would and wouldn’t be useful for my project. I put the titles I constructed for each source in bold to alert me that this was a new primary source document.)

Letter by Alexander Hood, Captain of Mars to Sir Peter Parker, Admiral of the White, July 4, 1797: (Again, I identify this as a letter and note who wrote it, who it was to, and the date it was written.)

“Sir

Since I received your Memorandum to prepare charges against the Mutineers of the Mars, the greatest part of my time has been occupied at a Court Martial, which has prevented my sending this Letter to you sooner, and I am now sorry to inform you that I do not think I have as yet sufficient evidence to fully prove any charges of Mutiny, having only one Witness to any one act, but all my information tending to prove the Ships company at Sea to have been in that disturbed and unsettled state described in my Letter to Lord Bridport (a duplicate of which I have the honor to enclose, also a Copy of two Letters for Courts Martial) since which I have received a paper enclosed herewith signed by Four hundred and Seventy Nine of the Crew of the Mars, acknowledging their improper conduct and promising future good behaviour, but I have reason to suppose from what I can collect form Andrew Brown, the Man who gave me the first account of the Mutiny at Spithead, that should the Ship be seperated from, or any future disturbance happen in the Fleet, they would not remain quiet unless the suspicious Men whom I now suppose are influencing by fear might come foward with sufficeint proof. I beg leave to add that since I left the Fleet the Ships company have been very orderly and obedient.” (Note that this is a direct quote from the primary source so I have put it in quotation marks to let me know that.)

Copy of Seamens Petition of the Mars enclosed with above:(This source was found in the above letter, which I noted, and I have summarized what it was about and that the original source noted that this was a copy of a different document.)

“Brothers

It is desired you will inform the whole of your Ships Company that their Petitions are laid before the Lords of the Admiralty relating to their several grievances and that they will take it into immediate consideration that the five Eights of Prize Money that was agreed to by the whole Fleet to be equally distributed between the ships Company and that all Ships captured as Prizes within three months after to be sold and the money immediately to be divided as follows viz. Seaman & Marines excluding Masters Mates and Midshipmen and all Officers above their Capacity and for further satisfaction the Lords of the Admiralty will publicly advertize their determination in the daily Papers so that the whole Navy may be convinced that those grivenaces may not be neglected as before, Desiring you will inform your Ships Company not be begin the third perseverance – this caution is given to every ship in the Navy and that a limited time may be appointed for the rating of Ordinary Seamen and Landmen well knowing the above demandes to be just and not distressing either King or Country.

United Brothers of the Fleet

Their determination you

will see in the daily Papers

in a few days” (Again, I have directly copied the original primary source and directly quoted it, why it is in quotation marks.) Remembering the Circleville Massacre (Summer 2016) | Utah Division of State History