Through clear graphs and informal prose, readers will find hard data, practical advice, and answers to common questions about the study of history and the value it affords to individuals, their workplaces, and their communities. A resource for intellectual exploration and personal inspiration, it includes a statement shaped by cooperating faculty at over 100 colleges and universities describing the abilities and habits of mind that students develop in history programs at diverse institutions. The booklet’s contributors include alumni working in a wide range of fields and occupations as well as professional historians. Together, they suggest ways that today’s college students can prepare themselves to bring historical thinking to bear in solving tomorrow’s problems.
Current and prospective students, and their families, will discover an array of useful materials inside, as will career and academic advisers, faculty, program administrators, and staff. General readers can explore statistics, personal stories, and reflections on the many ways that a disciplined knowledge of the past—as well as the skills it takes to understand and communicate that past—empowers individuals to contribute and thrive in their academic, work, and civic lives.
For more resources from the American Historical Association, please visit
"A history degree doesn't narrow your opportunities after college. Instead, the history major opens a world of possibilities for your future. Federal government data show the variety of exciting career paths that history majors follow."
For Noeline Kyle, the National Library’s oral histories provided a fresh view of her family and childhood
In the 1980s, Rob Willis, National Library folklorist and oral historian, began collecting stories of the dairy-farming families along the Nulla Nulla Creek on the Upper Macleay River, which runs through the hinterland between Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie. He completed more than 30 interviews of early settlers and their families. Many of these were with the Kyle family, including my father, Lawrence ‘Lawrie’ Kyle, who was interviewed in 2002 when he was 90 years of age, his sisters ‘Alice’ Grace Partridge and Mary Hudson, his brother Allan Kyle and cousins Vaughan Kyle, Brian Kyle, Geoffrey Kyle, Jack Kyle, Joe Kyle and Coral Ball. My father’s exploits, both the exciting and the problematic, emerged often enough in these interviews to fill a special recording of what Rob and I now refer to as TheLawrie Stories.
Angus McNeil Studio, Lawrence ‘Lawrie’ Kyle, aged mid-20s, c.1936
When Rob was collecting these stories, I was not yet writing a childhood memoir (Ghost Child: A Memoir) nor had I begun my search for the records. It was more than 20 years before my mind turned towards the idea of writing about that past. Rob was, by this time, in the latter stages of his recording for the Nulla Nulla Creek Project and he invited me to take part in some of the interviews he did with my aunts and uncles. It was not until some years later however that I began reading these oral histories more closely and I found a valuable source for my writing. I also found that this new material challenged my ideas of what that past had been.
Every childhood is lived in a family context (whatever form that family takes) and our family was struggling to survive for most of my early years. As well as writing a story of my childhood, I was also charting the beginning and the end of my parent’s marriage. The end came as I turned 15 and walked out the gate of the local school for the last time. Once the divorce was finalised, Mum did not speak Dad’s name again. For her, that past remained hurtful and harsh and she rarely talked about it except in negative terms. My parents spent the rest of their years well apart, in different states, leading very different lives. It was only in Dad’s old age that I was able to talk to him about his own childhood and adolescence.
But it was Rob’s interviews with Dad and other family members that gave me some fresh insights into that past. As I studied the fragments of my personal history, what I knew and how I knew it shifted inexorably towards a more nuanced view, and I began to see something else. It was not that the events that I remembered were now in greater doubt, but that how I knew them, how I interpreted them and how I told their story had become more porous and open.
Grace Partridge interviewed by Rob Willis, 2006, nla.cat-vn3789113. To see full picture captions, view the video in YouTube.
It is a truism to say that we remember the long past more fondly. Ask a family historian to name their favourite character from any part of the family story and invariably it is a grandmother or a great-grandmother or a great-grandfather. Time can place a romantic, sometimes uncritical, layer on memory. But it also makes sense that we remember this way. We know enough about a grandparent or great-grandparent to tell their stories, but these lives are far enough in that distant past to have lost that edgy currency of the present tense; that place where we know too much. We are less able to blur the closer, known, sharper memories we have of our parents and siblings; these are more challenging, sometimes painful, always raw. And so it is with my parents too.
Not surprisingly, most of the stories I heard about Dad, especially from my mother, were apocryphal – his worst faults, irresponsible behaviour, neglect of his family and an inability to earn enough to keep us fed and clothed. My elderly aunts, his sisters, tell me in their soft, gentle voices that ‘he had good points’. He was a good person, they say, he always helped others. Everyone agrees that he was a rogue, a charismatic charmer. And like all charming rogues, what I hear about Dad is both terrible and terrific. He could have been a preacher, a politician or a powerful advocate for change, but instead I hear that Dad was a small-time conman, a storyteller, a jack of all trades, a philanderer, a charlatan, a ne’er-do-well. How could I reconcile all of these versions of my father and also be true to my mother’s stories and my memories of that past?
Lawrie Kyle interviewed by Rob Willis, 2002, nla.cat-vn628235. To see full picture captions, view the video in YouTube.
I have researched and written enough history, biography and family stories to know that human beings are not one-dimensional. I knew too that it would be wise to find a way to tell the stories of both my parents without malice and with some compassion. There was little doubt that Dad was a charismatic, irresponsible, unfaithful man and a neglectful father. Mum, on the other hand, was strong, resourceful, responsible, caring and always there. I cannot, could not, change any of that. But I can look back with empathy and wonder, with a renewed affection for that past. The Lawrie Stories have seeped into my consciousness too and have tempered my version of it. They do not negate my mother’s memories but add layers of complexity, of human endeavour and human frailty. They tell me of parents who did not always succeed, of a family waking each day to work hard, of parents who had little in the way of material comfort and of hard times that affected all the families who lived in that small dairy farming community along the Nulla Nulla Creek.
Noeline Kyle, Morning Mist, Kyle Farm, Nulla Nulla Creek
And so I have had to write these stories anew, unravel them and re-arrange the layers to write about my childhood. Both of my parents, in their own separate and singular ways, were full of potential, hardy and hopeful, and both lived long enough to enjoy long, healthy and productive lives well apart from each other. My childhood story is the richer for reading their lives more fully through Rob’s oral history. I can listen to their voices, hear them tell their own stories, know there was hope, understand the toughness, recognise the difficulties but also see the rich tapestry of their lives, over and over again. It is a gift. I am grateful for it.
DrNoeline Kyle publishes women’s history, biography, memoir and she teaches and publishes widely on how to write family stories. She is an Emeritus Professor at Queensland University of Technology and an Honorary Professor within the Nursing History Research Unitat the University of Sydney.
Stay as
local as you can for the publishing/printing process.Using a local printer/publisher provides for
easy access to obtain quotes and to talk to the printer.If you have extra questions or there is a
problem it is easy to contact a local person.The same rule applies to online printer/publishers.A local website in your
county/country/town/locality is a good first option. It is the case that with
online/internet access it is also possible to contact overseas
printers/publishers and many of these are an excellent choice also.
Gather Information via 3 Quotes
Obtain
printing quotes from at least 3 printers.Learn from them.Ask additional
questions as you become more familiar with the process. Here is a preliminary
list of questions/ideas for the printers:
·
200 copies (you can ask for a quote for 20, 50, 100 or 200 copies), in most
cases the printer will be offering print-on-demand and the unit cost will not
differ (you can check this with the printer when you contact them)
(Print-on-demand
is a fixed cost per copy of your book regardless of the size of the order.In the past typesetter printers would charge
less per unit if you ordered 200 copies compared to say 100)
·26,000 words ( let your printer know
the number of words as well as page number)
·Page size: A4 is an easy
size to work with if you are new to formatting and decide to do it
yourself.A4 allows you to arrange
images and text easily.However, if you
decide on a different size, say C5, 230
x 155 mm you may have to pay someone to do it for you, (more of this later in this
blog post).
·Paper: something like Satin Art
paper, 95 gsm.Each printer will have
suggestions for your publication.Fuji Xerox
have Colotech paper which is 100gsm white, and excellent for producing clear
and vivid text and images, (can be purchased from Officeworks).
·Colour: no colour, all black
and white, including all images, and the cover. Or you might have some colour,
and you will be required to detail these.
·Cover: You will need to do your
own cover and supply a PDF file, more on this later in this blog.
·Binding: Perfect binding.
·ISBN:
It is not necessary to have an ISBN, however including it will identify
your book and simplify the ordering process for bookshops and libraries, for
Australia, see ISBN Australia http://www.thorpe.com.au
The Software
For most
self publishers the manuscripts will be completed in WORD. If you are inserting images as you go it is
best to work on each chapter individually as large WORD files can become
unstable. Each chapter can be converted
to a PDF (if this is how your chosen printer specifies) and then combined into
one PDF file with a program like PDF Combine https://combinepdf.com/or CutePDF http://www.cutepdf.com/
Your chosen
printer can also combine your files for you.
However, be aware that if you ask another party to combine your PDF or
WORD files the result may shift your
images/text in ways that you then have to edit again. A good strategy is to ask your printer to combine
your files and then return the final file to you for checking. You can take the file to Officeworks or some
other printing company and have a draft of your book printed (back to back
pages) in a simple print edition that can serve as a draft for you to work from.
Be Realistic
If you are
not confident to do your own editing and/or formatting then you can employ
individuals to do this for you. For some
straightforward advice on editing see my chapter 4, p.42 of my ebook Writing Family History Book 5: Publishing
your family history, a practical guide obtainable from Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPA1MM
for $2.79 AU.
For formatting your text you can ask a family member who is
confident and experienced with this task to do it for you. If you do not have a friend or family member
to help and you would like to employ a professional then look at the following
and choose several, say 3, and obtain a quote for the work you want them to do,
Australian Book Designers Association https://abda.com.au/members/
You can also use this association to find a cover designer as well. You will need to provide some information on
what your approach is both for the formatting (book size) and for the cover
provide information about the major themes and what images you might like on
the cover.
For example
when I was publishing a book on Midwives of the Mid North Coast, one of my
major sources were the almost daily and/or weekly advertisements these women
placed in local newspapers. The book
designer Karen Scott Book Design cleverly used these to design a cover that mimicked
a newspaper page. She also utilized an
image of a midwife with a baby and photographs from the main streets of the
towns featuring children and/or historicalscenes, see following images:
The back
cover should have a description of your book content plus a biography of you,
the author, see above:
Copyright is a set of rights that provide protection for all kinds of artistic products. It protects them from being copied, changed or exploited and acknowledges that the artistic product belongs to someone.
In Australia copyright is free and exists automatically once an artistic product is created.
Copyright is owned by the creator and/or by a collecting institution.
If the creator is commissioned or contracted to make the work, or if it is made under normal employment, the standard copyright rules can change. For example:
When a work is created as part of regular employment the copyright is generally owned by the employer.
When a work such as a painting or photograph is commissioned or made under contract the commissioning organisation/person usually holds copyright. However this may not apply if the artist is working freelance.
With films and sound recordings the producer usually own copyright though in some situations performers can share copyright.
It is critical to have a contract which clearly specifies the terms of copyright.
In Australia copyright begins when the work is created and generally lasts 70 years after the death of the creator.
Exceptions occur: copyright on sound recordings last 70 years from the date of the first publication and copyright on published written work is 25 years post publication date.
Once copyright lapses the work is considered in the ‘public domain’ which means that anyone can use it.
For example, copyright has expired on photographic images and negatives (although not their digitised copies) taken before 1955. For any photographs taken from 1955 on, copyright is for 70 years after the death of the creator.
Other countries have different copyright rules and timeframes.
There are two main ways of managing copyright which are used when an organisation or an individual want to reproduce or use a copyrighted work which is not their own.
The copyright owner can either assign or licence a third party which transfers all, or some of the rights associated with copyright to that person/organisation.
Both these transfers must be done in writing and the process is best done with legal advice and a formal contract.
Copyright and intellectual property rights of Indigenous cultural product may vary from the Copyright Act because ownership is often intergenerational and group-owned.
Appropriation of Aboriginal imagery such as pattern, motifs, spiritual figures, or story by non-Indigenous artists is considered as cultural theft and a breach of cultural protocols.
There are specific protocols and permissions around using and taking photographs of Aboriginal people that should be observed and having signed model release forms is desirable.
Arts Law suggests that Indigenous copyright be clarified through contract. They are specialists in the field with an Aboriginal liaison officer who can provide advice and the dedicated Artists in the Black website. Arts Law offers workshops which provide an in-depth explanation of Indigenous copyright issues and the implications of breaching protocols.
Provisions for collecting institutions
Under Australian copyright law collecting institutions are allowed to copy material in their collections to maintain and conserve the collection as long as the collection is not-for-profit.
Museums and galleries fall under the definition of an ‘archive’ which is considered by law to be “a collection of material of historical significance or public interest, being maintained for the purpose of conserving and preserving the material.” (Australian Copyright Council, Information Sheet G068v07)
Key collection institutions (defined as those holding an archive of material which is of historical or cultural significance to Australia) can make three preservation copies of original material, editions, films and sound recordings. Other collecting institutions can make one copy of the original version for preservation.
These images, usually photographs, also carry copyright which is owned by the collecting institution.
Moral rights are different to copyright and exist as a complementary set of rights or obligations that must be observed when collecting, displaying or exhibiting artworks or objects.
Moral rights include correctly and accurately attributing the creator of the work and caring for, or displaying the work in a way that does not prejudice the creator’s reputation or honour.
When copyright has formally expired the material is considered to be in the public domain. This means that people can use it without seeking permission.
Exceptions exist: all digital copies of old photographs currently attract copyright under Australian law, as digital images are considered to be an artistic product in their own right.
Collecting institutions own copyright on these images and are entitled to charge for reproductions/prints of them.
It’s important not to confuse online availability with something being in the public domain. Online images are often subject to the same copyright rules and have restrictions on their use.
What is a Creative Commons licence?
Providers such as Google Images, Flickr and Wikipedia Commons offer access to digitised material through the Creative Commons licence. A range of licences are available, most of which require attribution to the creator and a declaration if changes have been made to the work. Creators are able to limit the type of use or adaption.
Standard copyright law usually applies: users own and retain copyright of what they post, create, or contribute to a website, social network or other online service.
There are exceptions. Tweets, comments and short phrases of text are usually considered to be outside copyright because they are of general usage and no significant individual contribution to ownership can be demonstrated.
Best practice in using this kind of material is to request permission from the contributor and to document the response. If an organisation is using shared material via social media it is a good idea to ensure the Risk Management Policy outlines responses to copyright breaches.
In signing up to, or opening an account on many social media platforms such as Twitter, Facecbook and YouTube, users agree to give permission for their material to be shared. In most situations privacy settings can be altered to control some of the ways the provider uses and distributes the material.
Social media is a complex copyright area and in many cases the technology means that copyright and breaches of it is difficult to control.
Copyright does not protect ideas, information, techniques or style. It does not protect names, slogans or titles.
While all care has been taken to ensure information is accurate at the time of publication, all information in this resource is intended as a guide only. You should obtain professional advice if you have any specific concerns.
I am delighted to find so many readers worldwide who seek out my books on writing and publishing family history. Thank you. I hope to continue to work with and support how family history can be presented, written and published through my workshops, talks and books. Please contact me if you have questions, ideas or just want to say helllo!
There is nothing as joyous as the enthusiasm and delight of the young
It is the case that one of the more difficult tasks we do as family historians is working our way through the plethora of sources available today and then work out how to reference these in our work.
However, there are general principles that are useful to keep in mind which, if you keep these in mind, will make your job as a historian so much easier and more professional:
Consistency - whatever citation method you choose stay with that choice throughout your book/writing.
Sufficient information - okay so that letter/document/story/newspaper report you found seems to be in a complicated place which almost defies commonsense referencing. Keep in mind that your task as a writer and a family historian is to include as much information in your footnote, endnote or other reference so that your reader will be able to find it, do further research and check for further information about it. In other words, 'my mother's bible' is not sufficient as a reference. If your mother's bible is a reference, then you might do something like the following:
The Holy Bible, The Stereotype Edition, printed Dublin by Richard Coyne, 1847, a family bible of the Kyle family found in the papers of Kathleen Kirkpatrick, in possession of the author.
Acknowledgement - the inclusion of a footnote/reference is to tell the reader where you have included, text, either verbatim or in a paraphrased form, from another author's work Citing these sources is your obligation as an author to ensure your writing is professional and free from plagiarised material. There is much to find online about plagiarism, the following is a beginning: What is plagiarism? This website provides the following succinct note:
All of the following are considered plagiarism:
·turning in someone else's work as your own
·copying words or ideas from someone else without
giving credit
·failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
·giving incorrect information about the source of
a quotation
·changing words but copying the sentence
structure of a source without giving credit
·copying so many words or ideas from a source
that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not..
Creative Characters and Blazing Sunsets. Writing Family History
These days, with a plethora of information available on the internet, it’s become easy to collect your family history, find names, dates, and the places and anecdotes unique to your family history.
The challenge comes in having the confidence to shape this information, to build a narrative and write a family history that is credible, riveting and professional. Dr. Noeline Kyle will focus on using specific strategies to help you shape your family stories. Looking at ways of weaving memoir, biography and local history to enrich a family tale and ensure it is both an interesting read and a professional family history.
Mosman Library is one of my favourite libraries where local studies is valued, supported and highlighted in the collection. I have presented several workshops here in the past and look forward to catching up with the librarians and participants on 2 May.
It is always a pleasure to listen to the family and local historians of our communities, to learn from them and share their amazing research and writing journey with them.
Investigate the laws, conventions and social customs of relevant past eras, this is another useful strategy for finding the sources and writing about your female ancestors.
There is no doubt that becoming more knowledgeable about the laws, social conventions and customs of the era your women lived in is important. Unless you think about the broader historical context of women’s lives in various historical periods and study the laws and conventions therein you will not know what to do when the same old problem emerges: the names of women are missing and how we construct their history will remain limited and bare.
A good example of this is how women fared in relation to property after marriage, their rights to care for and be with their children, separation and divorce, and domestic violence. More about this in a later post.
My Aunt Wilhelmein Florence Kyle and Ernest Chaffey on their wedding day in 1927, with Wilhelmein's dress in a suitably shortened 1920s style, and her headdress that could from a Downtown Abbey set!! Wilhelmein was born in 1907, the eldest child of my paternal Grandfather Billy Kyle and Florence Maude Matilda Rose. Wilhelmein died in a car accident in 1951.
Original records usually have much
more detailed information, are less likely to have errors, and are more likely
to be located in the context of the times. Original cemetery headstones,
certificates, probate data and property records will yield information not
available elsewhere. For women ancestors such a strategy
is especially important as we try to locate names and construct a
fuller biography. Finding a photograph or a biography of an individual on the
internet is usually only a first step in the research process. Your next step is to locate theoriginal source/s from which the web story or images were
drawn and then access these directly. The National Library of Australia, the
British Library, Library of Congress, state libraries and archives will have
leads to find an original source and you should continue your search here.
Inter-library loans, digitised records and online library resources will help
you gain access to the documents once you have located the original source. Use
birth, death and marriage certificates to map out a woman’s life, and research
backwards and forwards across these documents to find more information.
Mary Holland is one of 7 convicts in my family. She was tried at Surrey in and sentenced in 1794 with three other women Mary Mattingly, Elizabeth Evett and Elizabeth Robinson. She was transported to Botany Bay arriving in 1796 on the French-built convict ship the Indispensable. Mary Holland began her life in Sydney in a de facto relationship with a Marine Corp soldier Lachlan Ross. She had two children and was deserted by Ross in the early 1800s. Mary began another de facto relationship with the convict Joseph Butler and their son Sylvester's daughter married into the Rose family linking Mary Holland to my father's family history.
Writing
about Mary Holland illustrates how the stories of convicts, crime
and criminality are vexed and complex things, their stories enmeshed with and
mired in the strictures of social class, gender, continuing injustice and
grinding poverty. Mary Holland was caught in a time of history when the
seething masses of poor in England had to fight, literally, for their bread.
That she stole bed clothing most likely from the beds she was then making is
ironic and poignant. But that she survived to be a grandmother and perhaps see
her children prosper[i]
suggests there is a lasting and positive legacy to link us to her long, tough
and largely forgotten life.
[i]I have yet
to find the exact record of Mary Holland’s death but according to the convict
musters she was still alive when aged in her 50s.
Online indexes are a boon to family
historians. But keep in mind that the complex familial relationships affecting
women’s lives can be obscured by the attention given to main names (mostly
male), public organisations (which ignore women) and the algorithms used by
online technology that tend toward that which is visible and easy to access.
And the missing names, the misspelt
names, and data about individuals that is not recorded is still not there in
the index and/or the digitised record and its up to you as the researcher to go
that extra mile and do additional research to find it.
I love this photograph of a very happy bride Eunice Kathleen Johnson 1950.
DNA from envelopes? Read this interesting article on how My Heritage has begun testing the DNA from your anestor's DNA from envelopes. In other words now testing dead people?
Women waged their wars from the
back row, often quietly and can be overlooked as leaders and shapers of
society in the past. Even when married and burdened with children and domestic duties a
woman worked outside with her husband on the farm and in the shop. She was a volunteer
at her church and in her community. She taught her children and she supported
her sisters and female friends. Women may not have occupied public office
making them immediately visible in records but they were occupying other roles
as volunteers and workers in women’s organisations, at her local church and in
the local community. Try to find these and write about them.
One of the biggest problems in writing my great grandmother's story (Mary Kirkpatrick was a midwife) was finding out more about her. She was a trained midwife so there were
records of that, she advertised in local papers and I could track her there and
I researched her childhood etc in Belfast.
But I didn’t know about her as the woman…so I turned to what I call my circle strategy.
Draw a number of circles around your female ancestor and write in these: family, friends, work, neighbours, local community. And begin asking questions:
Look at the her sisters and brothers, she may be a
witness to a marriage, she may be a witness to a birth, which will give you an
impression of the close relationships in that family. Was she the youngest, the
eldest? What kind of social behaviour would have been expected of her? If she
did marry other questions come into play around family. What age was she when
she married? Was this the norm at the
time? Do you think she used birth control? Why?
Why not? Who delivered
her babies? Was it a neighbour, a
midwife, a friend? How
do you think she dealt with death, disease, the loss of young children? The
loss of family members, friends, a husband?
How
did she travel with small children?
Did
she have favourite recipes, are there cookbooks, was she religious…Women like
men went through many changes in their lifetime. They were children, young women, mature
adults, married women, had children, grew older and then aged…Many lived to a
long old age, map this as fully as you can.
We
know even from a common sense point of view that women always had women
friends, also she might have sisters, cousins, neighbours, old school friends. And always one or two close friends that were very
important to her. I know my great grandmother Nurse Mary Kirkpatrick had many
friends , many of the women she birthed became lifelong friends,
and other midwives in the towns were her friends as well, and she was a long
time resident and became well known, my mother told me Mary K had a lot of
friends, and it was certainly true. And by researching these women I found out so much more about my great grandmother; about her friendships, work colleagues, partnerships in private hospitals, and participation in community events.
