4-5 Page Business History Research Paper

MUST READ: 4-5 pages (double-spaced), plus notes and bibliography (Please upload as .doc, .docx, or .pdf.; not .txt, .odt, .rtf, .gdoc, .pages, etc.) Topic: You may choose any pre-2000 topic relating to American business history. It is a research paper that should be based mostly on the primary (original) sources; a good paper will 1) put that evidence together to form a thesis that 2) is in conversation with at least one scholarly (history) secondary source on a similar topic. Keep your topic small--perhaps an event or particular person or accomplishment--and then talk about that story in a broader context. If your topic covers more than 20 years, the story is probably too big to tell (primarily) from primary sources. Sources: Secondary sources: Secondary sources are more recent publications or documentaries, etc, that look back at some historical event; as a rule of thumb, more recent sources are better. Please use scholarly history (journals or monographs), which will have footnotes (or endnotes) and a thesis, among other things. Don't use information on the open web except as a starting point to get to more reliable sources. "America: History & Life" tends to be the most helpful library database for finding scholarly historical material for the United States. Exceptions: Normally, this database returns scholarly sources, but they also have a few semi-scholarly journals or magazines that will be reliable for facts but will not provide a thesis. You may use them as reference, but you'll need at least one other (scholarly historical) source. The best way to filter out the semi-scholarly sources is to check the "peer reviewed" box on the "advanced search" page of the database, but that may not catch them all. *Another alternative is to go directly to journals in business history and search (Enterprise and Society, Business History Review). Primary sources: use documents original to the time of your topic. That is, newspapers & magazines, engineering journals, or government reports dating to, say, the 1860s if you're writing about something from the 1860s. * Look on Drexel Learn for some sources that are acceptable to use (under the primary sources folder). If you want to use others, you can, but check with me if they are acceptable if you have any doubts. Your paper is hurt by bad primary or secondary sources. Primary + Secondary: your ultimate goal is to place your original research in conversation with at least one scholarly, historical, secondary source. What does that mean? As a practical strategy, it means finding a relevant secondary source and identifying its thesis (or central argument). Your thesis boils down to one of three options: whether your research 1) agrees, 2) partially agrees, or 3) disagrees with the other scholar's thesis. Your secondary source need not be on your exact topic (and shouldn't be--why write what's already been written?). Other paper resources: Quality of research (these three matter the most): * the secondary source(s) are scholarly; look for the historian's thesis * the primary sources are original documents; depending on the size, it's best to have several and, ideally, more than one kind (that is, not all newspaper articles) * proper citation (the paper receives an F if you provide insufficient citation) Quality of writing: * organization & clarity of paper as a whole and of each paragraph * thesis: this is where you put your primary research in conversation with your secondary research. * active voice (use "The dog ate the bone," not "The bone was eaten."). For more examples, google "grammar active voice." * use proper citation (Chicago Manual of Style). * Your reader should always know where your information comes from. As a rule of thumb, almost every paragraph should have at least one note, which indicates the source and the relevant page number(s) * All direct quotations should be enclosed in quotation marks, except for longer quotations that you indent and single-space.