I have a Masters in American Studies. I spent four years in undergrad studying, then three more for my MA. I also worked at a historical site for 12 years and another during summers in college. I read or listen to nonfiction almost constantly. I prefer nonfiction to fiction. I learned how to use online resources like google books, JSTOR, newspapers.com, and dozens of other sites. I also grew up before the internet so I have a strong knowledge of how to search physical archives, microfilm.and books for information.

I truly enjoy the mysteries of history, the stories of everyday people, and the changes that humans have gone through. I have a BA in anthropology with minors in museum studies and environmental science. Classes in physical and cultural anthropology, history, how to research, etc. I also wrote dozens of research papers, including a 60+ page thesis.

You can acquire the knowledge, it just takes time and a true and deep interest in history. Honestly, if it were affordable I’d be in school for the rest of my life. Learning is my favorite thing.

I’ve followed this sub for months and never replied because I don’t feel like I know enough!

I have a PhD in history. I'm one of the lucky ones with tenure.

The amount of reading required to get thru grad school is nearly unbelievable. A book a week (at least) per class and then another 15ish per class for the end of semester paper. Not a lot of sleep the first year. Or the the second. Then hundreds of books/articles for your dissertation proposal. Then more for the actual dissertation.

After that, if you're lucky enough to get a job (you likely won't, sorry) you'll have three years to get your dissertation published, which requires loads more reading, writing, and re-writing. (All while teaching a 3-3 load and serving on as many P&T-committee-friendly service boards as you can. But that's not relevant to the question.)

To make a long rant shorter, by the time you've finished grad school, you've read hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books that are at least a little bit related to what you "do." If even 1pct 'sticks,' you'll know quite a bit. And you'd better love the process.

The best way to start to find answers and develop an expertise is to read books. Read many different books on the same subject — both academic books and trade books. To get an idea of what's out there, you could talk to your local librarian, and/or you could look at publisher's catalogues, as these list books by topic. I really enjoy reading publisher's lists in topics that aren't my own too.

Most of the real knowledge in the world is not on the internet. I've even had Master's students claim to me that all knowledge is on the internet, and that's just not true, and I don't think it will ever be. There are digitization projects of rare materials, there are increased efforts to have digital book copies if you have the right subscriptions, and there are more good online sources than ever, but there is still a lot of historical information that is not online. So I wouldn't even bother with Google to start to teach you, until you have built up a good basis with books. Google is going to be very surface-level Wikipedia stuff, and it's usually not clear who the authority is.

There are other historical resources, such as academic journals, but I find most of the answers here are book-based and it's the most straightforward starting point imo.

When you read these books, you'll start to ask questions about what it doesn't say. And you'll start to notice how the author came to his or her conclusions, since a good book will cite or weave in an explanation of their sources. Maybe another book will answer something, or it will have a difference of opinion. From there you build knowledge, learn to ask and answer questions.

Many posters here are amateur historians, though many have had some classes on history to develop some sense of the methods. But you could pick this up on your own with a lot of reading.

Hi, OP! I know exactly where you're coming from, because I was in just the same position as you were - just a humble reader, who then wanted to contribute a little to this most excellent subreddit.

where does the knowledge you use come from?

Google-fu is sufficient for other places, but not here. Here you need actual scholarship, the sort that's published by university presses, the sort that occupies a scholar's waking moments for years. I'd say that I hope you like reading, but I already know that - you're here, eh?

people more educated than I could hope to be?

I'm breaking out the quote from The King's Speech again! I have no training, no diploma, no qualifications. Just a great deal of nerve. My highest educational attainment was two years of college, and I dropped out! I have exactly zero historical training, my two history classes were basically just rehashed high school history, and the only thing I learned from them was what a 'mandala state' is. I am very much not a historian by any possible definition.

Have you taken classes on the subjects you answer on?

Nope!

Are there specific books or sources you use that a lot of people don’t know about?

Yep!

Do you have a greater understanding of Google than the average person?

The only thing I use Google for is searching this subreddit for previous answers, and even then, it's my third choice, behind Reddit native search (which is not as bad as people think it is!) and Camas Search (which is what people really want when they complain about Reddit native search).

What tools and resources are good places (in your opinion) to begin finding the answers to our questions ourselves?

First and most important: Access to books. This can be by pretty much any means you can think of. Hit up your local library. Hit up JSTOR. Deliberately take advantage of any university access you can get your grubby little hands on. Use Google Scholar - I haven't, but other flairs here have, and they find it useful for certain purposes. You can't get started unless you have the right material, so go get yourself some books!

Of course, you have to know what to get and where to start. This is often the most difficult part. In my case, I was most fortunate to have someone already interested in the topic, so I got my first few books from her, and then expanded to other titles later on. This is where having an actual, physical library can be helpful - if you already vaguely know what topic you're interested in, you can go to the right shelf and browse. A digital equivalent to this is tossing in search terms into certain bookshops' search engines - I am reasonably certain I got Mark Stoyle's book on Exeter's aqueducts by searching for 'water'.

There's also the subreddit booklist, which is another decent place to start.

Another way is to just ask. People here are quite happy to recommend things to you - I know I will not, for one moment, stop throwing Roberta Magnusson's Water Technology at anyone who wants book recs. I still have to get to Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom or Frontinus, yes, EM, I know....

One more is bibliography mining. Is there an answer that interested you? Look into their sources. And then when you acquire those sources, look into their sources. Check the footnotes for a given statement, see who they're citing, and pull that book. Go straight to the bibliography. If you're into military history, you have a unique advantage - Osprey. Osprey books are for a popular audience and you get them for the art, but the good ones also have well-supplied bibliographies. Check the Osprey book's quality first, then if it's written by a reputable scholar, mine the blight out of the bibliography.

All the methods aside, the important thing here is:

You can do it.

I'm here. I'm flaired. I'm modded. And I started off knowing exactly nothing of my topic except that the popular view was a myth.

You can, too.

I've answered three or four questions here, not really long detailed answers but enough to fit the requirements of the sub (as far as I can tell - I've never had anything removed). so this is how it goes for me:

I'm an undergraduate student majoring in history. there are only a few areas I feel comfortable writing about here - australian history prior to WWII and very occasionally some early modern europe topics. these are areas I've covered more than others in my classes and that I read about in my own time. when I answer a question, it's because I can think of a reasonably detailed answer off the top of my head - I don't write it that way, but it's how I gauge if I think I know enough and can probably find good sources for the details.

learning about an area of history in enough detail to answer questions here generally means a lot of reading! I have access to historical peer reviewed journal articles through my university, and I also read books written by professional historians. popular history books can be hit and miss - some are both well-researched and up-to-date with current information, some are out of date, some have dodgy research/sources that don't get picked up because they're not peer reviewed. I personally don't work that much with primary sources, but that's another angle of approach - here we have an online resource called Trove that I use a lot which archives australian newspaper articles and other paper artefacts.

to answer questions here I start with my own memory, then if I remember reading something specific about it at uni I go looking for the source (usually a journal article or chapter from a book with multiple historian authors - these are usually published by university/academic publishers). I also go have a dig through our library database to see if there's other articles or books I can use. I have a small collection of single author history books by professional historians and non-professional historians that as far as I can tell (from the way professional historians talk about them) do high quality work, which I will also consult (if it's more than 15 years old I won't use it).

I think it's definitely possible to write good answers without being an academic - people here do it all the time - but you probably have to go out of your way to find and read academic material regularly, you can't rely solely on tv documentaries and history books written by, say, journalists or novelists who are interested in history. finding peer reviewed stuff is probably harder, but open source articles do exist, and you might be able to get academic books online or from a library.

I have a BFA in design for the theater, and two years of grad work specifically in Lighting Design. I could count the number of history courses I've taken on the fingers of a careless high school shop class teacher.

The most important thing I learned from those classes is how to do research and how to use microfilm/microfiche viewers... and a lot of my knowledge is obsolete anymore.

Beyond that, my topic knowledge stems from nearly 45 years of reading about the Pacific War. When I was 10 years old, my best friend's father was a wargamer. Avalon-Hill's classic Victory in the Pacific was the second game I ever played, and that's where everything started. There's been a lot of reading, some fortunate talks with WW2 veterans... you'd be amazed at the people you'll meet working in a mall... and some casual writing that I did for fun which mostly doesn't stink.

I do have some pretty obscure books on Midway, and have been a member of the Battle of Midway Round Table for 15 or 16 years... but none of that is impossible for an average Joe to access. Well, one book was privately printed, that one might be a bit difficult. Most of the other books would probably be in any decent-sized library.

I would just love to help answer! I’ve been lurking a while and want so dearly to be one of you commenters.

Keep an eye open! You'd be surprised at how your knowledge of Left-handed blinker fluid will be needed sometime.

In conclusion, anybody that's reading this answer can tell you, I'm no genius. I'm just a guy who knows a bit about WW2... and one of my personal favorite AH answers was about the use of organ music in sports stadiums. If I can answer questions here, anybody can.

First of all, I'd like to put in a good word for Google Scholar. Regular Google will not be of much use to you in finding in-depth historical research. However, Google Scholar is a really fantastic tool. Do you know how to do a Boolean search? We were taught this in school, but I'm not sure if they teach it anymore. It's using AND, OR, NOT, and parentheses and quotation marks to get a more specific search.

So for example, I have a project called Women of 1000 AD where I research women around the world who lived in or around the year 1000. If I want to do a Google Scholar search, I can get better results if I include other years or ways of naming years. So for example:

("1000 AD" OR "1000 CE" OR "AD 1000" OR "950 BP" OR "10th century" OR "11th century")

is a string that I preface a lot of my Google Scholar searches with. The quotation marks ask for specific exact phrases, while the capitalized OR tells Google Scholar that I will be happy to have a result which uses any of those phrases within the parentheses. If I pair this string with something like women Bulgaria, I will get results that talk about the year I'm specifically interested in as well as results that talk about the centuries I'm interested in. I often add in other years too like "AD 950" since historians often round to the nearest 50 or 00 when talking about general trends.

Now, to make full use of Google Scholar, you do need to get around academic journal paywalls. You can do this if you have a university subscription, or if you have friends who do. There are also sites which I would never, ever tell you to use - I mean, you should never look up the websites Libgen or Sci-Hub. Never ever ever. Those websites get around paywalls which is bad, right? (Well, it's illegal, but it sure as hell ain't a bad thing to do because academic journal conglomerate companies leech ridiculous amounts of money while the authors get nothing.) You can also email the author of a paper and ask for a PDF - most are happy to oblige! Another place to get a lot of free papers is Academia.edu. Many academics upload their papers there. JSTOR also did a new thing during the pandemic where they allow something like 100 free articles a month with a free account.

So I'd say yes, I have a greater understanding of Google than the average person because I know how to use Boolean searches to suck Google Scholar dry! And I have tools to get the papers from it that are locked behind paywalls, so I'm able to take full advantage of it. Not everyone has a university subscription to these databases, but as I mentioned above, there are some ways around that.

As for a history education, as you've seen in the comments below, there are plenty of amazing commenters here who aren't formally trained in history as an academic discipline. Unless you are getting into really knotty historiography, where it does tend to help to have an academic historical training on the specific arc of scholarly arguments about a topic, the most important thing is critical thinking about your sources. That's something that we are taught to do in academia, but it's definitely not something you can only learn there. (And not everyone who goes through academia manages to learn it anyway...) I do happen to have an academic training (I'm doing a PhD on a historical topic), but you definitely don't need one to answer here!

Probably the answer where I've put the most of "how I got the answer" while writing it is this one:

During the Industrial Revolution, factories full of women like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory worked 12+ hour shifts with no bathroom breaks. Uh, how to put this politely... how?

To save a click, I've pasted the text at the end of this comment.

I debunked the premise as being false, and essentially worked through all my steps of doing so; additionally, I had almost no prior knowledge of the situation (I knew about the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, but it would be a challenge for anyone to have known about the toilet situation offhand).

The only bit it looks like I didn't explain is getting the Cornell collection, which I was aware of, but it isn't hard to get to from scratch -- just type "triangle shirtwaist factory testimonial" and it will be the very first search result.

In a meta-sense, I suppose I had to be suspicious of the story to begin with -- and it did set off my exaggeration sensors, although I don't have any real way to teach that other than to read enough historical texts that you get a sense of what's real history and what's made-up pop history. I also knew because it was talking about something personal -- using the toilet -- that my first best shot was using something like an oral history project, as someone would have surely commented on the policy had it been in effect.

...

I'm fairly certain this specific aspect of the story is a myth, or rather, a telephone-game style distortion.

First, out of curiosity, I combed through various first-person testimonies (Cornell has a good collection, including audio recordings), and not a single person indicated they were simply disallowed to use the toilet. The closest was with this recorded interview with Pauline Newman.

They were the kind of employers who didn’t recognize anyone working for them as a human being. You were not allowed to sing. Operators would like to have sung, because they, too, had the same thing to do, and weren’t allowed to sing. You were not allowed to talk to each other. Oh, no! They would sneak up behind you, and if you were found talking to your next colleague you were admonished. If you’d keep on, you’d be fired. If you went to the toilet, and you were there more than the forelady or foreman thought you should be, you were threatened to be laid off for a half a day, and sent home, and that meant, of course, no pay, you know? You were not allowed to use the passenger elevator, only a freight elevator. And ah, you were watched every minute of the day by the foreman, forelady. Employers would sneak behind your back. And you were not allowed to have your lunch on the fire escape in the summertime. And that door was locked.

Notice it's not "you're not allowed to go", just "they're going to threaten to send you home with no pay if you go to the toilet too long".

I decided to check in the other direction; most Internet sources that made the claim had this phrasing:

At the Triangle factory, women had to leave the building to use the bathroom, so management began locking the steel exit doors to prevent the “interruption of work” and only the foreman had the key.

The use of "interruption of work" in quotes was a good flag for me -- it's distinctive enough that if the same phrase got used elsewhere, it's probably the source. Leon Smith's book The Triangle Fire, a 1962 volume which got many eyewitness accounts, did not mention the issue at all.

(Quick aside, for those wondering about where the "fire" came from -- the reason the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory is famous in the first place is a 1911 disaster in a ten-story building where 146 people died in a fire mostly centered on the 9th floor; the women working there couldn't get out because of a locked door to the stairwell -- see the first account I quoted. There was also a rusty fire escape (which collapsed), and no sprinkler system. There was a famous court trial which resulted in a not guilty verdict, outraging people enough to kick off major reforms in labor. Now back to toilets.)

It does pop up instead in a "grab bag" book, Disasters Illustrated: Two Hundred Years of American Misfortune, from 1976, by Woody Gelman and Barbara Jackson. It features (more or less) one disaster each page.

To reach a toilet belonging to the Triangle Waist Company, the girls, who worked on three upper floors of the building, had to go through big steel doors at the end of the floors on which they worked, then go down many flights of stairs and out of the building. The bosses did not want the girls to use the elevators. It would be too easy, they felt, for the girls to carry stolen merchandise from the shop that way. In fact, the bosses didn't want the girls to use the toilets either. To prevent what they called "interruption of work," the doors were locked at intervals when going to the bathroom seemed like an indulgence.

Read carefully, the text indicates that the doors were locked "at intervals" when going to the bathroom seemed like "an indulgence". A less careful reading of the actual text gets the extreme version of "no bathroom allowed, the entire day".

Great! Now I just need to check the references where this came from and ... nope. This is a "popular" book from Harmony Books, New York.

I also found myself puzzled by multiple references to "the toilet room" in the testimonials as women tried to escape the fire.

Then I went to the toilet room. Margaret disappeared from me and I wanted to go up the Greene Street side, but the whole door was in flames, so I went and hid myself in the toilet rooms and bent my face over the sink, and then I ran to the Washington side elevator, but there was a big crowd and I couldn't pass through there.

After the fire, the Fire Department discovered a lock amongst the debris; as part of the trial, the prosecutor Charles Bostwick tried to prove the closed lock belonged to the door on the 9th floor which trapped the women inside. As part of his argument, he points out that the toilet doors had no locks, so the lock couldn't be from the toilet rooms.

This indicates to me that the "toilet outside the building" story was an invention of Disasters Illustrated.

So, to summarize:

A popular book from 1976 did a bit of exaggeration based on the true story that going to the toilet while working at the factory was difficult, linking it to the fact the doors were locked at regular intervals. As part of that story, it claims the doors were locked at intervals specifically because of the bathroom. This later got exaggerated by a second source which claimed trips to the bathroom simply weren't allowed, but this claim doesn't appear at all before the 1976 book. The full myth of no-bathroom-for-12-hours was built off this book by someone (quite possibly a writer on the Internet) who misread the text.

...

Further reading: Leon Stein's book I mentioned has had a recent re-issue with new material, and is the one I'd recommend most:

Stein, L. (2010). The Triangle Fire. United States: Cornell University Press.

Also, while I linked it once already, I highly recommend the Cornell collection of primary sources.

Thank you for the question and for being honest.

I write this from the perspective of someone with no formal academic training and who is entirely self-taught in their subject.

By my question I mean where does the knowledge you use come from? Is the well-presented and well-written information in the comments coming from people more educated than I could hope to be? Have you taken classes on the subjects you answer on? Are there specific books or sources you use that a lot of people don’t know about? Do you have a greater understanding of Google than the average person?

To take it line by line

Study, lots and lots of study over many years. Which to be honest is going to be the answer to a lot of this as you have seen from the others. People read a lot, absorbing information, gaining expirence in how to interpret and read deeper (what the bias here, issues and so on).

Have you ever been to a school? Not a university or college or higher education but a school? Yes. Well your at my completed level of education, well done. We have people here who have never completed university, people still studying or about to go to uni as well as the historians with an H. We don't ask a person's education before they post or for becoming a flair. Your educational level is not a requirement

Alas three kingdoms in Ancient China was not a subject in English schools. The video game Dynasty Warriors was my class. Also Kessen 2 but we don't talk about that one.

Books I'm going to do as a separate bit

Google no, I am certainly not even the best google person in my own family. We ban answers from google as a lot of unreliable stuff on the internet anyway. I once remarked a basic beginner question for my era, google can provide three different answers (so googling wouldn't provide much help here). Then Another here remarked his google on that question got him a lot of lovely art of the figure instead. Which is awesome but probably not going to provide an answer either.

What does happen when you study a lot is you get a sense of where to look among your sources and where you don't need to look. You will also pick up works via people's citations (which I then might google to find a copy) and expand your knowledge base. We answer becuase we have studied and so can draw upon knowledge gained from said study, google or a wiki is not reliable or in-depth.

Just going to circle back to the how well written bit before moving on: bear in mind often people here have honed their writing over time. Your not often seeing the first go's (and certainly not with anyone flaired) but people whose writing has been honed by doing this again and again and again.

On the books: Yes but don't let that put you off so bear with me as I explain.

Define a lot? I mean the fact that the three kingdoms has historical sources is not something I can claim all three kingdoms fan know. Simply knowing they exist is a start. Now does the average person then go and read the primary sources? No. Will people who start reading the primary sources be able to read them properly initially (ie aware of bias, flaws and way they knit together)? No.

The fan who got as far as even reading a bit of the primary sources might also pick up the odd historian name and book. Does my collection go beyond that? Yes. Things I got from jstor, books, medieval china journal and so on. I think you would be disappointed if our answers weren't? Is it impossible for you to do? No.

As you read and got more in-depth, you will end up expanding your list of works you read. Being more aware of people who have written about the subject, who the experts are and where to find more.

In essence, how does one become you? What tools and resources are good places (in your opinion) to begin finding the answers to our questions ourselves? Not that I don’t find every answer super interesting and compelling—I would just love to help answer! I’ve been lurking a while and want so dearly to be one of you commenters.

It would be fun to say it involved deep dark rituals in the base of an ivory tower, blood oaths to the dark deities of knowledge and time-travelling but there is no short-cut. Read a lot and read some more, have a love of whatever subject you pick and enjoy the studying and studying.

u/DanKensington has provided typically excellent suggestions on how to get started with reading material so really urge looking at that.

We would love to have you, or anyone else, becoming a commentator, we always need more people willing to answer and we embrace people from all sorts of educational backgrounds if they have the knowledge. All we require is that expertise and to get that, requires studying to gain an expertise whether it be by formal education or by self-study like myself and Dan.

I do hope this has helped and encouraged

Hiya!

So I would not consider myself a scholar of history or any expert of sorts. However I am lucky enough to be from a culture that greatly appreciates its history and had always made a habit of recording stuff down, so the original texts from many a past time is always available for us descendants to read through.

Of course with cross examination things may sometimes become confusing, but I think the more of history we have it is always a better option (than having less). Historical debates are also way more fun if we can get to poking at each other's arguments to form a more well-rounded picture.

​

So to answer your questions: my knowledge tend to be from the primary and secondary sources that I can get my hands on. I think education helps in teaching methods and language (the key to any source), but it can be also accomplished by a beginner who is willing to delve deep enough (and persevere through the sometimes arduous language that older texts use). I did study history in school, but being my interest also means that I purchased quite a large number of historical text reprints where I can.

My personal interest is in Zhou 周 to Han 汉 history, so the main texts I refer to are: Shi Ji 史记 (Records of the Grand Historian), Zuo Zhuan 左传 (Zuo Commentary on the Spring Autumn Annals), Han Shu 汉书 (The Book of Han), Hou Han Shu 后汉书 (The Book of Later Han), San Guo Zhi 三国志 (Records of the Three Kingdoms), Jin Shu 晋书 (The Book of Jin) and Zi Zhi Tong Jian 資治通鑑 (Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government). Most people already know of these books, although they may be a difficult read for those delving in the first time. Also, being on an English platform, many find picking up the language difficult and translations always leave much to be desired, so being effectively bilingual is an advantage here.

​

I think if you have an interest, just start reading! Maybe a basic history book, or an introduction course first. But sooner or later move yourself to more secondary or primary sources wherever possible. For cultures without historical texts, other records like letters, journals or even pictures can all be helpful. Don't be afraid to delve in and seek to always enrich yourself be seeking more information wherever possible.

Here's to hoping you enjoy your learning journey~

MA in historical Chinese linguistics, PhD in description and Tibeto-Burman linguistics, also do a lot with Tai (Thai) languages and some eastern Indo-Aryan languages. BA focus on Semitic linguistics with a lot of Arabic and Hebrew under my belt. Super interested in history as it relates to migrations and the modern linguistic environment, so read a lot about e.g. 19th century Asia in my free time.

Unless you mean my history of cheese answers in which case I guess I'm originally from Wisconsin? 🧀

It involves a lot of reading, and a lot of practice at comprehending and accurately, concisely summarizing the key points of existing historians' written works!

Quickly understanding how a question (and its answers) fit into a broader narrative is what makes historians' answers useful and informative. Knowing every granular fact is less important than understanding the relevance, context, and significance of trends and events, and understanding how things fit into those aspects of any given event or pattern.

Reading textbooks, 'primers', or "introduction" works can be useful as the beginning of study, but it's not the end. They get you enough background information on a subject to make you casually familiar with the most important events, places, and names, but they hide the detailed, and occasionally messy, analysis of each specific area of study behind a neat curtain of plain, sometimes oversimplified facts.

To gain a better understanding of a topic from there, you would want to seek out monographs on the subject! A monograph is literally "writing about a single topic"; and they're what historians write to build on past research, but with a novel, expanded, or more nuanced understanding of the topic in question, usually based on reevaluation of primary sources, or sometimes evaluation of newly available primary sources.

You can start practicing the skills of "Being an historian" by reading monographs, discussing them with other people reading the same monographs, and by attempting to write concise summaries of the authors' ideas (called a "précis"), and having those summaries reviewed and critiqued by someone who already has a deep understanding of the subject matter, and of the specific authors' ideas.

If you read and understand enough stuff to acquire a deeper background in a specific area of study, you might start to see places where our collective understanding of that area could be improved upon, expanded, or maybe even where it should be revised.

I went to a university and studied history for 5 years, and I still hesitate to answer questions on here most of the time because I know whatever understanding I can offer could likely be provided with more finesse and a broader and/or deeper understanding by someone else, likely someone with a nice colorful rectangle under their name with some words in it, because the community has recognized their deep understanding of that highly specific topic.

In all the time I spent studying history in college, I saw one area where I think I could have potentially contributed some significant new research and maybe a new understanding to the historical field (specifically, Soviet Ethnography and demographic studies in the 1920s and 30s and their relationship with the development of 'national identity' in Soviet satellite states)

But, I never ended up doing that; instead, I got a software development job offer, and I decided I'd rather take that than roll the dice on a career in academia and likely spend the next 22 years (I did the math) paying off student loans. Literally just knowing which books to seek out is half the battle, honestly; I've been trying to work my way through some books which have a bearing on the subject from the periphery, but when you aren't making it your full-time job, it's hard to do that and also just... You know, live life.

I learned enough in college to learn what I need to read to get caught up to speed again on past research, I just need to actually take the time to do that. I need to wade through Miroslav Hroch's "Social preconditions of national revival in Europe", almost everything Benedict Anderson has ever written about Nationalism, a book about the 1926/27 polar census expeditions, a couple books on Soviet policy towards satellite states by Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin, and then if I ever have time to do that, I'll be caught up enough to start participating in some of these discussions in a more serious way, and to start asking around here for if there's been any major developments or changes in that area in the last ~5 years. But like... I could do it. I haven't, but it's feasible. Hell, I already own a lot of those books. Just gotta read 'em. I knew I'd likely get distracted with job learning for a while, so some of my first software job paycheck went into buying a lot of those books, because I knew if I didn't get them immediately, I might forget where I 'left off' in a sense. I wanted to be sure I'd have the right material already available when I finally had time to dive back in.

The most important takeaway here though, should be that you DO NOT need a degree to build those skills, but the resources a college provides do make some things a lot easier. What you do need is access to a system of PEER REVIEW by other historians. I cannot overstate the importance of peer review with the aim of uncovering faults, logical fallacies, reading comprehension errors, and writing mistakes. In a college program, your papers are almost always guaranteed to be graded by a knowledgeable historian who's paid to grade them in a timely manner. Because of that, a college program does arguably offer the most easy-to-use "system of review" possible, but it is not the only option. I'll be honest, I don't actually know a ton of other options. You could try to get yourself published in an academic, or credible, but non-university-linked journal, in order to get feedback, but... That would likely be prohibitively difficult.

This subreddit itself though, is a fantastic resource because it's one of the only places in the world outside of a university where you have this kind of ready, immediate access to people who already have depth of knowledge in any given area of history, and where you can find people who might agree to peer-review your summaries and your work.

On that note, I am curious; is there a particular time, place, or theme in history that you're interested in studying?

If so, you might be able to find someone here to recommend some books, possibly an 'overview' work to start with, then maybe some recommendations for more detailed books that hone in on specifics, and you might even be able to find someone on here who could critique and grade any précis you might write. If you work at that enough, you might begin to see the line blur, and find yourself continuing that process as a peer in the area of study yourself.

I'm a history major and a history teacher, but I don't dare to comment on most posts because I see people alot better tham myself already doing it.

Mostly classes. I did an undergraduate degree in history, got a master degree in medieval history, and currently doing a PhD in medieval studies. The amount of reading required by universities at a post-graduate level is actually absurd at times.

If you want some good sources on medieval history, a brief reading list would be: Chronicles by Froissart, Chivalry by Maurice Keen, The Crusader States by Malcolm Barber, The Penguin History of: Medieval Europe by Maurice Keen, Medieval Europe by Bennet and Hollister. It is a bit biased towards knights and chivalry, as that is my current research, but it'll provide you with a solid base to work off of.

The International Medieval Bibliography is a database hosted by the University of Leeds in England that provides many medieval sources on subjects of your choosing. It may or may not be free to individuals outside of universities, so I am sorry if that ends up being a roadblock.

The major difference between academic commenters and historic enthusiasts, regarding the quality of anser, is typically the preference of sources. Many enthusiasts congregate around work written to entertain more than educate, or they rely on the history channel and other pop-history media sources. While they have their merits, such avenues of information distribution tend to leave out the nuances of historical discussions. There is no digression to alternate interpretations of a text or artefact, noacknowledgement of gaps in the information, just dramatic music and quipy delivery of information. However, they are an excellent place to start. But from there, its books, conference papers, articles, and the occasional documentary (produced for educational not entertaining purposes).

The most obvious difference is the qualifications. I've spent the last eight years of my life getting to this point and I still have some years to go before I am a credible expert. Getting a PhD is not as trivial as many non-academic enthusiasts make it out to be. Appeal to authority when refering to an individual with expertise in that field of study is not a fallacy, that is just what having credentials allows. It is not uncoming for academics to formally cite themselves in their own research, as you ethically are not allowed to plagarise yourself. havings a masters degree or a phd in a field of study means that individual is a credible source of information, within reason.

If you wish to "become one of (us)" then let the pages fly and the citations roll. Read and read and read until you have printed words pouring from your ears. Take notes on what you read, cite authors and texts when you share information, and (bar having the degree) you'll be right along side us. Hopefully this helps and answers your questions.

I tend to post answers about the history of the English language, and perhaps unsurprisingly I have a slightly different background from other people who post here.

In my undergraduate degree, I took American English and the History of the English Language. Then in my graduate degree, I did coursework in Old English, Old Norse, and Latin that were primarily language learning and literature oriented, as well as a historical linguistics class on Old English specifically. I also worked part time at a historical dictionary of English for about a year and a half, and later worked as a TA for classes on the English language both in the past and the present. Since graduating, I work as a professor at a very small, teaching intensive school, as a result of which I teach a lot of very different classes, covering English grammar, history of the English language, and sociolinguistics (as well as writing classes and occasionally literature classes).

When people ask questions about the history of the English language, my first recourse is often to dictionaries, which can be more or less accessible. The Oxford English Dictionary is the gold standard, but it generally requires a university library account to access (and if you've never used a historical dictionary, it can be a little bit overwhelming on first look). I also use the Dictionary of Old English (requires a subscription, but there is a free trial option that allows a little bit of a work-around), the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (free online), the Middle English Dictionary (free online), Cleasby-Vigfusson (for Old Norse, free online), and Lewis and Short (Latin, free online through Perseus, although I also have a hard copy).

Teaching also has given me a fair amount of knowledge to draw on, both from what I assign to students but also what students work on. I tend to give students a lot of flexibility in what they write about, and so inevitably I get some papers each year about something I know very little about, so I get to learn from that. Students also ask me a lot of questions about the kinds of things that people are generally curious about, and that often gives me things to draw from. The textbooks I've used can often be a good starting point for information about answers, as well as other books that I own, but I also usually end up looking for additional sources which I can find either openly available on the internet (lots of academics fortunately post PDFs of their work) or through my university's databases. One of the biggest boosts is just knowing what key terms to search for. For example, if I'm searching for academic studies on texting, I will get very different results if I'm searching google books for texting versus computer mediated communication, but you won't know to search for computer mediated communication in the first place unless you have read an article that uses the phrase. I can target my searches in a much more effective way because I know a little bit about a lot of things than someone who is trying to approach the subject from scratch.

Except on the rare occasion that I feel confident answering completely off the cuff (this is usually the case if someone asks something kind of generic about Beowulf), I end up doing an hour or two of research before writing an answer on AskHistorians. I tend to track other answers while I write, and I find that they often get deleted. What usually happens is someone answers a question based on what they learned in an undergraduate History of the English Language course or from a popular magazine article or the like but without any further knowledge. These answers are often basically correct, but they tend to be pretty surface level because they haven't done additional research to give more context or better sourcing.

As a side note, I have never requested a flair because questions about historical linguistics don't come up all that often, and due to my teaching schedule I don't always have a lot of time to answer. I'm also not traditionally what someone would call a historian. But I do answer at least a few questions per year, so I thought it might be useful to give my perspective.

I think most people here have at one point in their lifes studied History and might have a degree, so that's a start. But the unimaginable amount of literature you have to read during your studies doesn't make you an expert who can give a well researched and nuanced question to every question asked, just a tiny tiny fraction. Some questions here require crosssectional knowledge you won't get with any degree in History, might be Literature, Archaeology or Sociology, for example.

You might miss something really important here, nobody knows all the History, no prof. emeritus who taught his whole life could possibly know. When you are studying for a degree your goal is not to know as much history as possible, like in school - you want to learn how to approach history in a proper scientific manner, starting with the basics, how to research, how to quote, how to write a decent thesis and so on - and then repeat it and repeat and read and read even more until you drop and know how to adress history and might one day come up with a somewhat new thesis or idea. When you are focusing on ancient Greece for example you won't come up with anything new, the likelihood of never read before sources showing up is pretty low (and finding new inscriptions for example is not a Historians job, that's what archaeologists are for). This sub works so well because from the countless people here there is always a good chance that someone here wrote a paper, visited a lecture or seminar about this specific topic, might even has dissertated or given lectures on this topic.

I personally "only" have a Bachelor in History and now I'm studying Political Sciences and Anglistics. I was still able to give two or three decent answers here, also because one of them wasn't really a question for a Historian, since the question required mostly crossectional knowledge regarding academic analysis of literature and literary traditions, although being medieval.

Don't beat yourself up, I think a lot of people here are actual historians. I know when my husband answered one we did double check but he knew the answer from his masters in history/minor in archeology. His father has an equal interest and just read(s) all of my husband's uni books (+ others) and goes to lectures from a local group of history/archeology enthusiasts.

I would say that 3 things are needed to be able to answer questions on this sub: time, communication skills and knowledge. 

Time is the number one obstacle in the way of people contributing more to the sub. Unfortunately, it cannot be acquired, you either have it or you don't. Having said that, it gets faster as you answer more questions and get more familiar with your specialty. Sometimes you can just link one of your old answers, or link an old answer and add on a few details. Or maybe you come across an article while you research an answer, which forms the basis for another answer.  

Communication skills are really important on a public forum like this one. Research often means reading a multitude of academic books and articles and distilling it into a relatively short answer while using the bare minimum of jargon. My background is actually in communication rather than history, so perhaps I really do have relevant background for this sub, just not in the obvious sense! 

Lastly, there's knowledge, which I tend to think can be more easily acquired now than at any other time in human history (although access varies considerably based on location, wealth etc.) Most of my knowledge is acquired from JSTOR (I think you can sign up for a free account), and I'm very lucky to be a citizen of a country with a really, really good public library with a wide range of ebooks. But I think 90% of my knowledge comes from JSTOR. 

To put it all together, I would advise picking a subject to specialise in. As you use JSTOR to research answers to questions in that area, you'll get familiar with the 'big name' academics in the field, their work and the reputable journals. And sometimes there really are interesting dissertations and peer reviewed articles freely available on Google. The first few answers will take ages but it will get easier, especially if your field is quite narrow. I would suggest picking a subject that isn't overly popular - I find it's a lot less stressful because you're not 'competing' with PhD holders in… I dunno, the Roman Empire or something like that. I also find great satisfaction in representing a region that is very underrepresented. 

Answering questions on this sub has been incredibly fulfilling for me and I hope you'll give it a go too! 

I am a professor- and I wish higher education in our country wasn't so consistently under attack by both bad-faith actors looking to discourage the public from being fully informed, and by college administrators looking to squeeze every living cent out of students and faculty (like me).

The result is that while the value of higher education is being questioned, simultaneously the actual price of higher education is increasing exponentially. And this encourages so many people to seek that knowledge elsewhere, online and in forums like this.

And I completely understand that- especially given the price gouging that many universities practice. And I think that forums like these, especially because of the quality of contributions and the moderation, are critically important. But I am always struck by how much more I've learned from actual humans, sitting in classrooms, teaching me in the old, "boring", (and now too often prohibitively expensive) way.

And so, I can only speak for myself, and hold no bias against those whose experience is otherwise. But where did I learn much of the information I know about my field (music and music history)? From college.

Lots of good advice in here but I'll add my voice anywho. I've never taken a college level academic class - not one. I entered a trade school/apprenticeship before realizing that wasnt the best fit, then spent 7 years in a business apprenticeship, another 3 working with that operation. About that time I began to volunteer at a local historic site as a docent (basically a guide), and that taught me a lot about interpretation. Interpretation quite simply is taking a thing and interpreting it to an audience. This can be a house, a piece of art, a battlefield, a concept or practice, pretty much anything can be interpreted in the historical context. That helped me refine how to convey history to others. The rest comes from reading, reading, and reading and that comes from a passion for my subject area... I've just always loved history and it's grown stronger with age.

By my question I mean where does the knowledge you use come from?

Effectively self taught by resources available to all.

Is the well-presented and well-written information in the comments coming from people more educated than I could hope to be?

Nope, I is uneducated meat popsicle.

Have you taken classes on the subjects you answer on?

Unless we count "auditing" open lectures on the interwebs, not one class.

Are there specific books or sources you use that a lot of people don’t know about? Do you have a greater understanding of Google than the average person?

No, they're available to all (but some cost money). One of my favorite book stores has a 1$ shelf they refresh weekly. I've found some really good finds there, including some pretty rare biographies. Thrift shops are also great source for books - I picked up the John Adams biography the HBO series was based off for 2$, and found a fantastic work covering the American Revolutionary War with a lot of rare art for 10$.

So, if there's an area of history that you find compelling and you have a decent amount of time you can devote to understanding it then you're golden. Pick up a book. You might even find that you're more interested in something else along the way... I grew up in an antebellum town founded in the 1830s and burned in 1864 so the Civil War is where I originally started, then I kept wondering how we got there. Tracing that led me further and further back and I came to realize colonial history of the English in North America is really really interesting to me. Now I work in a non-academic role at a very historic colonial site, and I still have a hand in interpretive history. I love my job. It certainly helps me maintain a lot of specific facts and understand some larger concepts of the time but it doesn't replace that desire to pursue the information on my own.

In short, follow your passion and learn about it, that's all it takes. Hope that helps, happy to answer any relevant questions.

Well that history degree has to do something, and it's definitely not paying the bill.

I have a PhD in English Literature (and Masters + Undergrad in the same subject). The literature I focused on is from the Early Modern period, so I found myself getting knowledgeable about history while learning about literature.

I really, really want to emphasise that this is not the only way to become knowledgeable, nor the only kind of knowledge that has value. Anyone who spends enough time reading about a subject eventually becomes well-versed in it enough to give interesting answers to questions on here.

What I think further study does do is teach you to be good at finding sources that are reputable and reliable. The pop history stuff on the bookshelf at your local book shop is not going to be as in depth, and won't necessarily cite their sources for knowledge. This isn't necessarily a sign that the book isn't reputable, but what it does do is make it harder for you to get interested in some rabbit hole and then follow up and read what that author read.

Many universities now have online catalogues at their libraries. Start browsing there for areas you might be interested in, and find out if there are ways you can get hold of those books! Journal articles are also a great way to dig deep on a subject. They are much shorter and more accessible for the time-poor, and tend to focus on niche little areas of a subject. They can be harder to access (many are pay walled) but there may well be open-access journals in your area of interest.

Basically, I think 'educated' is as educated does. Higher education is expensive and precarious and I have very little time for anyone who says you need a higher degree to be well versed in a subject. 😊

1. I have only a bachelor degree covering ancient, classical, and early modern to twentieth century history, but I've continued informal study since then.
2. Good tools and sources include university bibliographies and publisher bibliographies as tertiary sources, providing a good overview of reliable secondary sources, as well as journal articles for literature reviews, assessments of scholarly consensus or status quaestionis, and specific topics.

I have a degree in Earth Science, two degrees in psychology, one a masters and a degree in history, plus a teaching qualification. My masters degree involved research training. I make a living researching and collating information. Plus I have far too many old books.

There are some great answers here so I won't repeat them, but I do want to say that identifying reliable sources is one of the most important skills I have when answering here. I learned this in grad school, but you can read books about it and generally pick it up by reading. I understand how to evaluate an argument, I can identify author bias and how it affected the research, etc. - all skills you can learn without grad school. I don't have to know everything to post here - I just have to know how to determine "yes, this is a good source, I can use this" when I'm researching.