Research experience?

[Nikki]

I want to get some additional research experience this summer, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I do not need to work this summer (I teach high school so I have the summer off), so I'm looking for funded or unfunded opportunities.

Should I email the department chair of my local university and ask? Or should I get in contact with specific professors? What should I ask?

[TMP]

Given the info from the other thread you did, I think you might be best served to wait until you start your graduate courses so you can work from a paper and expand it into a research project.

[Sgt. Pepper]

You can...

Apply to be someone's research assistant at a local historical society. (I did this.)

Volunteer in an archive to process documents, which is great experience with primary sources and learning how they're organized, etc. (I did this, too, as a profession.)

Pick a topic and start researching. An undergrad paper, something that interests you... Look at what local archives/repositories have on hand and see if anything grabs your interest and start researching. (I did this, too, and having your own primary source research experience and examples is what helped me get jobs 1 and 2. People hiring you as a research assistant like to see that you can be creative, resourceful, and find copious amounts of related documents on a topic.)

[advice]

Volunteering with a local historical society or archive as the above poster mentioned is a good idea.

Here is what I would recommend in addition to doing something like that. As soon as you're able to register for a e-mail address or username and password with the school you will be attending, you will probably have some access to their online library resources. Spend some quality time poking around on their library webpage. What databases do they have for finding primary sources? How do ILL services work through their library? Are they connected with any special consortium (Chicago's library is academically connected with the schools in the Big Ten athletic conference, for example)? What databases turn up a lot of research materials that interest you and what resources are less effective for the general type of research you anticipate engaging in?

Trial and error is your friend. Especially the summer before you start when you have some time.

Have fun and good luck!

[endangered]

Here's my advice:

1. Poke around some secondary literature. Get a grasp of what kind of research paper you'd like to write

2. Go to a professor who you trust. Ideally, this professor has specializes in this time period/place so he/she can help you with an independent research project. If not, then he/she can "recommend" you to one of his/her colleagues. If so, then that colleague may be able to work with you.

I don't know about your university, but most professors left campus during the summertime. You may be SOL until next year. As another poster has mentioned, you can volunteer with a local archive, however, I don't believe this will help you very much. You can spend this summer studying for the GREs if your score is not high.

If you can write an excellent and original paper which incorporates primary source documents and foreign language sources, then I'd say you will be in good position for the next application cycle.

[feisty]

I think the most important research experience w/r/t getting into grad school is your own. Some of my classmates in undergrad did work for a professor (mostly going through archives in the States while said professor was out of the country, or translation) but it was more of a summer job than a research opportunity. Assisting a professor doesn't seem to have the same value in the humanities as it does in other fields (those with lab work, pretty much.)

Depending on what year you are--does your school have independent projects, senior theses, etc? The most grad-school-pertinent thing I did as an undergrad was receive funding to go to London one summer for my senior thesis research. I was able to spend about 3 weeks in the India Office archives in the British Library, and I think my--albeit brief--familiarity with archival research for *my own* work helped me more than anything.