Sunday, January 22, 2012

How to Reference an Article?

History books and Journals (Academic Magazines) do a lot of research from the sources they use such as other books, journals themselves, old newspapers, genealogical records, photographs and minute books. These sources are always and should be referenced. Lets start with the most common used source in an article - the book. You will see all these sources used near the end of the history book.

Book

In any reference bar newspaper or genealogical record it always starts with the author's surname so a book I will take for example will be Land, Revoultion and Nationalist Politics by Dr. Fergus Campell.

A book is referenced this way; author's surname, author's name, title of book in italics, then the name of the publisher and year in brackets)

So it would go like this Fergus, Campell, Land, Revoultion and Nationalist Politics in the West 1891-1921, (Oxford University Press, 2005).

 'Dr.' is left out of the reference. If you are referencing this on a page from a book in a thesis you can do it the same way as above but after '(Oxford University Press, 2005)' put the page no. in e.g ' (Oxford University Press, 2005) p6'.

You will find the publishers on the spine of the history book or after the main title page.

Journal

A journal is slightly different. So for example I will take the Athenry News and Views as an example. Journals have issue and volume numbers that books don't have. So to reference a journal it is authour surname, name, 'Title of Article not in italics', Title of magazine/journal in italics, volume number, issue number, which results in below:

Killeen, Ronan, 'Athenry Western Sack & Bag Factory', Athenry News & Views, Vol.2, No.4, (April/May, 2011) p18.

No.4 = the issue number of the journal

Thesis/Disserations    

(A) An undergratuate dissertation = Killeen, Ronan, Capital Punishment in Galway 1885-1923, (Unpublished B. A. Dissertation, Department of Humanities, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, 2011)

(B) A MA (Masters) Thesis = The only thing that changes here is the degree so the the undergratuate thesis becomes in brackets (Unpublished M. A. Thesis, School of Humanities, Galway-Mayo Insititute of Technology, 2011

(C) PhD Thesis = Once again the only change is in brackets (Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Humanities, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, 2011)

Websites
This is simple all you have to do is copy and paste to the url e.g http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2776758945557745334&postID=421950787267289651 to your footnote.

In you blog you could be reference the national archives website in you bibliography just type in http://www.nationalarchives.ie/ but it you want to reference something specfic on the national archives like those in the railway hotel you have to copy and paste it to your footnote or whatever type of reference you are using and type in http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Galway/Athenry/Cullairbawn/1385360/.

Manuscript

This is our very last piece to look at in this article/lesson of some sort.

National Library of Ireland, Dublin, MS. 8499, Photostat Copy of a Draft a War Bulletin by P. H. Pearse, Commandant General of the Army of the Irish Republic, 27 April 1916.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

A Little Bit More Bureu of Military History by Ronan Killeen

This should give the reader more of a deeper look into the Bureu of Military History which has been featured in the article by Dr. Ferghal McGarrry - 'Too Many Histories: The Bureue of Military History' in the Nov/Dec issue of History Ireland which you can get in Burke's Newsagents.

WS = Witness Statement

In the case of the Irish Civil war 1922-1923 and the Treaty negotiations  were excluded from the Bureu’s sphere of activity, a practical decision given its ambition to secure co-operation from veteran’s on both sides of the civil war divide. Army officers were given the task of gathering ino off former revolutionaries.

  Then oral accounts were written by the witness but more frequently they were based on their oral testimony and composed into ‘coherent statements by the investigators before being approved and signed by witness statements.’
  After the archive of the WS were compiled they were sealed into 83 steel boxes in the strongroom of Government buildings where the documents remained unavailable for public or scholary scrutiny until the release in 2003 following the death of the last witness.

There are some problematic issues with the WS for example the bias of oral history, the shape of historical memory, the selective nature of the testimony collected and the reliability of the witnesses memories. In some of the content of the WS from the BMH some are 'egocentric, self-serving or others to justify actions or settle scores.
  What is interesting about the unknown volunteers according to Dr. McGarry's article is that the 'unknown volunteers believed  in the importance of recording th minor role they played in an event that they regarded  as he most important of their lives. They make no great claims as to the wider significance of their actions and are characterised by modesty rather than vanity or self-interest.'

Of course, there were some veterans who refused come forward for the reasons of betraying confidences or just wished to forget the past. One member of a 'Flying Column' explained that his memories were tainted with 'feeling aversion and self-disgust'. The well known Éamon De Valera - the leader of the government that established the Bureu and the former IRA chief-of-staff Richard Mulcahy. Another reason why others refused to record a statement to the Bureu was perhaps their distrust of the project or their antipathy to the state.
   One lady, Elizabeth Farrell - who was best known for handing over Padraig Pearse offer of surrender to Brigadier General Low, declined on the grounds that 'all governements since 1921 had betrayed the Republic'.  Another lady Pauline Keating, who did submit a statement, was astonished by her former comrades the Cumman Na mBan that 'they would rather burn anything they had than give it to the Bureu...I suggested that the information might beof interest to future generations, but I did not succeed in convincing them'.

To read more read:

McGarry, Fearghal, 'Too Many Histories: The Bureu of Military History and Easter 1916, History Ireland, November/December 2011 issue, p26-29

Bibliography
McGarry, Fearghal, The Rising, Ireland, Easter 1916, (Oxford Press 2010)

Ryan, A, Witness: Inside the Easter Rising, (Dublin, 2005)
 

I have written about the Bureau of Military History 1913-1921 one before but I am adding more content in this article. An aspect of oral ...