When it comes to research ...

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.42.90
Current Song - Reminiscing (Little River Band)

I know what I'm doing.

This may sound strange, but I never liked doing research. It took the love of high school sports to get me to like research. I enjoyed doing research stories for the Gazette (Newman's 1985 Wrestling season, the brief history of Sauk Valley high school football, the 50th anniversary of Sterling Youth Baseball). When I left there I carried this over to NISB. Then it got me interested in Illinois High School Glory Days.

NISB began to take shape during my first years of college, where I was taking a Western Civilizations class at the time. After doing the college research papers, I began to get a feel for credible research and used it for certain NISB historical articles. My history instructor, Rich Eichman, spoke these words about research that I will never forget:

"Consider your source."

I've done quite a bit of high school sports/history research in the past few years. There are plenty of sources out there when trying to uncover when doing high school research.

Let's go into the making of my article "The History of the NCIC" -
http://www.northernillinoissportsbeat.com/2009spring/news/ncichistory.html

I wrote this piece because different newspapers were writing different histories of the conference. For example, one paper had the conference forming in 1942 (it was really 1929), another had Geneseo joining in 1947 (1942), another had Rock Falls as a charter member (1942). My article aimed to correct this information.

Most of what was written in the papers came as a result of looking at a past issue of recent timing, before the popularity of microfilm. The problem with referring to recent information is that the possibility of it being skewed exists. Some newspaper writers are absolutely certain that what was in their paper at one point of time is really true.

Say something happened in 1958. Which is the best source? A) A 30th Anniversary Article of the event from 1998? B) An account of the event from 1958? The answer is B. You try to find information dating back to the most recent account. It is freshest this way, and is not filled with after-the-fact information. Historical accounts often have this after-the-fact information to define it's legacy. However, in newspaper writing, one is limited to the amount of space they are alotted. Therefore, namy details about the event are left out in order to give readers a recent link (interviews). In most instances of historical accounts written before the 1980s, the research isn't as easy.

Since I'm from Sterling, I started looking through Sterling-based accounts. There's the newspaper's microfilm. There's also the high school yearbooks.

Yearbooks are the most underrated source of information. They are extremely valuable. That's because the books are made for the SPECIFIC purpose of preserving the memories, events, and life in the high school. We turn to newspapers because of trust, but the purpose of newspapers and yearbooks do not match. Which has more information about the school? The yearbook does. This is why libraries attempt to keep a collection of high school yearbooks, and safeguard them extensively. The collection at Sterling and Rock Falls libraries are behind the front desk. Sterling's first yearbooks require gloves in order to touch - I'm not kidding.

When trying to find Sterling's first year in the NCIC, I sifted through yearbooks in a quick fashion. Yearbooks are quicker to go through, and I went 1970, 1960, 1950 and so on until I hit 1920. I didn't find the NCIC in the 1920 edition, so I went 1921, 1922, 1923 and so on, knowing I'd hit it sometime before 1930. I eventually found it in 1929.

After finding Sterling's first year in the NCIC I didn't say that was the first year of the NCIC. The 1928 yearbook still mentioned the Rock River Valley. From there I did fact checking through the newspaper, but noticed that a small paragraph in the 1928 book mentioned the formation of a new conference. That had to be verified, so I did the same motions at the Dixon Library.

From there, after knowing that both Sterling and Dixon were charter members of the NCIC, every yearbook was looked at up until LP joined. I was able to get information on what conference opponents were, and when the football divisions were created. After going through other school's yearbooks, I had a good idea what the history was.
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So it's all about which source is better. When going on a research adventure for Illinois High School Glory Days, I'm always looking through the County Histories of the late 1800s. Subsequent county histories are always sourcing the previous one.

I look at all of the published county histories to see if the dates match. There could have been a recent discovery. There was an instance where two histories of the same county had different dates for a school's establishment. Which one is it? If the most recent county history cannot prove a contradiction to the earlier one, I go with the earlier history. If a contradiction is proved, then I go with the later history. Memory is fresher in the earlier histories.
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I did a piece on the founder of the University of Illinois football, which happened to be the founder of Sterling High School football. In the process, I was able to relook at a piece of Sterling football history that I think only I knew about.

http://www.geocities.com/northernillinoissportsbeat/aa_winter08_columns_scottwilliams

First off, the name Scott Williams, to me, was known as the founder of SHS football - and there was a Scott Williams who was the founder of U of I football. Little did I know about his connections to the Fighting Illini until stumbling upon an article while doing GD research at SVCC. This particular piece linked the U of I's Williams with a newspaper position at the Gazette. It had me thinking if the two Scott Williams's were one.

The little "unknown piece of history" I had looked at was Sterling's 1898 football season consisting of just one game. It's not documented in the official SHS athletics research. But looking at the 1924 Blue and Gold, it had an article on the first and second teams. It mentioned the first team as an afterthought because the 1899 season fared much better.

So it does take a little going back-and-forth to get something right.
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I have nothing new to share at this time. In my Kewanee-Princeton research, I was able to find evidence of a Princeton Football game taking place in 1895 against Geneseo. This was from the 1896 Princetonia yearbook. I know someone who is doing research on the history of Geneseo Football, beginning in 1912.