Designing Your Project

Going forward, you need a plan that covers where you need to look, how much is enough, and some sense of when you are finished. This chapter, intentionally, comes right after two chapters about conducting scouting expeditions in the archives and the digital realm. Although you have not yet “done your research” in the fullest sense, you know a great deal more than when you started. Now it is time to settle on a chronological scope for your inquiry, consider a latticework of relevant comparisons or contrasts, and look for ways to improve your interplay of primary sources—or perhaps, in the spirit of the social sciences, we could call it your sample. By the end of the chapter, the focus is firmly on stating your research plan, spelling out exactly how the materials you intend to use connect to your big questions.