Characteristics of materials used in the writing of Singapore popular history

• Main Author: Narayanan, Rakunathan
• Other Authors: School of Applied Science
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::History::Historiography
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/42606
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Given Singapore's short history as an independent country, it was postulated that nonacademic writers and publishers of Singapore popular history may not have been equipped or guided in their craft to the level expected of them as political disseminators, social memory-makers or story-tellers. One way of proving the above was to study the materials used in the writing of popular history. Specifically, the objective of the study was to ascertain the characteristics of materials used through a reference analysis. A total of 1,534 references from locally published books on popular history were tabulated. The findings revealed that monographs were the form of choice(53.12%), in both primary (31.69%) and secondary literature (61.77%). Among serials (38.52% of total), annual reports and newspapers were popular. Manuscripts were hardly used (3.52%). Primary sources were not used as extensively as in other studies of similar nature; slightly less than a third of total references. The median citation age was 27 years and the mean was 42.1 years, with the Price's Index at 14%. In order to cover 80% of the references, one had to go back as far 80 years. Materials in English were used most of the time (93.65% of the references) with about half published in Singapore. The present study did not reveal a core publishing group.