This module introduces a course on performing historical research that is built around a case study of Douglas Sladen's "Oriental Cairo." It covers studying biography, placing a work in context, searching online catalogs and other information sources, and gaining access to key resources. We have included a table of contents linked to the location of the headings in the modules as well as a list of several research topics as they appear in the course of our virtual research project.
Introduction
"Oriental Cairo" was published in 1911 by British travel author
Douglas Sladen. It is a description both of Cairo at the turn of the century and aglimpse of the perspective of the turn-of-the-century British on that city. The work is
filled with photographs and commentary, maps and travel suggestions, and allusionsto the nature of the Egyptians as well as the British that are sometimes between the
lines and sometimes overt. The work is a valuable insight into the ambiguousrelationship of the British with Egypt, a nation they occupied without ever
officially colonizing.
Timea
Oriental Cairo is one of many artifacts and texts that have been
digitized and published online by the
TIMEA project . TIMEA, or
Travelers In the Middle East Archive, is a digital archive of narratives documentingtravel to the Middle East published between the eighteenth and early twentieth
centuries, along with images and interactive GIS maps. This course contributes tothe project by organizing a virtual research project around the electronic text of
Oriental Cairo . We use the electronic text as the
basis for a case study on conducting historical research and using libraryresources.
Conducting historical research
This module is designed to guide you
through a variety of research tasks centered on "Oriental Cairo". It isalso designed to introduce a variety of resources available to you through a
research library--for the purposes of illustration, we will focus on RiceUniversity's Fondren Library, but the approaches we detail here can be applied at
other libraries as well. We will explore "Oriental Cairo" from a number of angles,namely those addressed by the list of questions that follows this introduction. We
hope to demonstrate that the types of questions historians ask about specific worksoften arise, or are refined, during the research process itself. This project is a
guided exploration of the research process that will enhance your knowledge of thetools of the trade and your ability to advance your own projects productively.
The following list of questions are some of the basics asked at the
beginning of any number of possible research projects. They are also the titles ofseveral modules designed to introduce the preliminary stages of finding answers to
the questions their titles ask. Select any of the questions you see to be taken to ashort description of the content and aims of the modules they represent. While you
are browsing the descriptions, select any of the links in the paragraphs to be takendirectly to that section of the module you are reading about.
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Source:
OpenStax, Conducting historical research: the case of "oriental cairo". OpenStax CNX. Oct 23, 2006 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10291/1.4
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