IA HISTORY IA

[tiiandbiscuits]

Hey,

So I was planning on doing my IA on the 1998 Riots in Indonesia during the reformation. I got it approved by my history teacher/coordinator but now that I'm searching for sources all i can really find is news articles, a few documentaries and a couple books. (and of course a wikipedia page) but is that enough?? 

[alefal]

Hey there! 

 

That's the riot that led to the end of Suharto's rule, isn't it? If that's the case, then there's actually quite a lot of academic literature out there. Use your school/local library for what it's worth - they should have some resources. Also, they might have access to JSTOR or some other online library of academic journals and whatnot. You might also want to try out Google Scholar. Be a bit creative when you're searching - don't just search for '1998 riot Indonesia', but also try 'the end of Suharto's rule', 'the end of the Indonesian New Order' or something like that as well. 

 

Now, using Wikipedia as a source in your IA is of course not advisable at all. However, on the Wikipedia page for the 1998 riots, a lot of different works are cited. Some of them, as expected, are in Indonesian, but it's still worth a check. 

 

And, as for the books you've found - they ought to refer to sources themselves, which you can use to your advantage. All academic and near-academic works cite a number of different sources. If the books are written as an academic work within history, then they ought to cite first-hand sources at some point. First-hand sources are ideal for the source evaluation and to properly analyse the event within the realm of history. 

 

As for your question, though, it all depends on how you frame and write your IA. The thing with the IA is that it's not particularly long at all, so the amount of information you can actually use is rather limited. That's why narrowing your topic down will be very important, since you're supposed to fully analyse your topic within the restrictive word count limit. I used quite a few sources myself, but the amount of sources is not really what matters here. What matters is that you analyse the topic well and remain relevant all the time. Your commentary needs to be on point and your source evaluation should be good as well.