Al Harris Library

Library Instruction for Historical Research

Frederic Murray MLIS, University of British ColumbiaBA, Political Science, University of Iowa

Instructional Services Librarian frederic.murray@swosu.edu

Center for History & New Media

• Teaching & Learning

• Providing free access to primary sources, building high-quality online teaching modules, and offering instruction on critical thinking skills.

“There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed."

--John Kenneth Galbraith

Boyer, Paul S., and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed; The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University

Press, 1974.

WRITING

is essentially

REWRITING…

Today’s Class

• Research Strategies– Process– Thesis– Search

• Boolean• Keyword

– Limiters– Citation Tracking– Works Cited

• Resources– Catalogs– Bibliographies– Databases– Scholarly Journals– WWW– Primary Sources– Secondary Sources– Tertiary Sources

Today’s Class

Register/Create User Accounts

• Open WorldCat• Ebrary• EBSCO Host• JSTOR

Exercise I: Research Puzzle

The Research Process

• GET A TOPIC • DEVELOP YOUR SEARCH

STRATEGY• SEARCH AND READ• WRITE YOUR PAPER, SPEECH

PRESENTATION ETC.• CITE YOUR SOURCES

Goal: write a paper that…

1. Asks a good historical question

2. Tells how its interpretation connects to previous work by other historians

3. Offers a well-organized and persuasive thesis of its own

4. Provides a clear connection evidence/thesis

Writing a Good Paper

What provides the discipline of History with its authority?

What are the possibilities & limitations of witness testimony in historical research?

Create a Thesis Statement

• Thesis Statements– Make an

assertion– Take a stand– Explain what

you’re going to write about

– Are narrow and specific

– Have one main point

• Think about questions your research might help you answer.

• State your topic as a question first, then revise it to be a statement.

Offering a well-organized and persuasive thesis

• Think of your thesis as answering a question

• Have your thesis answer a "how" or "why" question, rather than a "what" question

• “what” leads to mere description• “how” & “why” leads to critical

analysis

Strong Thesis Statement (Exercise II)

1. Is specific

2. Addresses a potential contradiction and is arguable

3. Provides a logical way to structure the argument

Boolean

• AND = Narrow

• OR = Expand

• NOT = Exclude

Searching for Primary Sources

KEYWORDS- Correspondence- Sources - Diaries- Interviews- “Literary collections”- “Personal narratives” “- “Pictorial works”- Posters- Songs/Music- Speeches, addresses, etc.- Treaties

Tell the Catalog/Database/SE what you seek: Specifically!

Keywords & Boolean

Civil War and Diaries

Civil War and Sources

Civil War and Correspondence

WORKS FOR CATALOG/DATABASES/SE

Class Exercise III: KeywordsCivil War and History

Civil War and ?

Civil War and ?

Al Harris Catalog• Remember* Catalog defaults to relevance

search

• Remember* Use a Keyword search and Boolean to help limit results

• Remember* Use Limiters to narrow your search.

• Remember* Use Subject links to focus on your topic.

Open World Cat

• Meta search engine for online catalogs of libraries all over the world. Search for any book using a geographic location for the closest sources.

• Over 9000 libraries combined. • If you find it in WorldCat, and it's

not in our library, we can get it through ILL.

• CREATE A USER ACCOUNT

E-Books: Ebrary/Netbook

• 24/7• Full Text Searching*• Highlight Markup• Note Taking• Changeable Font Size• Multiplicity of Use

• CREATE A BOOKSHELF

Searching for Primary Sources

KEYWORDS- Correspondence- Sources - Diaries- Interviews- “Literary collections”- “Personal narratives” - “Pictorial works”- Posters- Songs/Music- Speeches, addresses, etc.- Treaties

Tell the Catalog/Database what you seek: Specifically!

Keywords & Boolean

Civil War and Diaries

Civil War and Sources

Civil War and Correspondence

In Open WorldCat this is a Gold Mine!

Exercise IV: Catalog/WorldCat/Ebrary

Topic: Russian Revolution

Try to find a Primary Source

What types of sources will you use for your research?• Books/Bibliographies

– Use Databases to find new Books• Journal Articles• Primary Documents

– Print documents and manuscripts– First person accounts in newspapers– Online digital collections

• CITATIONS

Bibliographies, Indexes & Abstracts

• Bibliographies– Annotated– National– Subject

• Indexes– An open-end finding guide to the literature of an

academic field or discipline.

• Abstracts– A brief, objective representation of the essential

content of a book, article, speech, report, dissertation.

Traditional Reference Tools used to find sources.

Keywords & Boolean

“Civil War” and Bibliographies

“Civil War” and Indexes

“Civil War” and Abstracts

WORKS FOR CATALOG/DATABASES/WEB

Databases: Social Sciences

• America: History and Life with Full Text• Historical Abstracts with Full Text• New York Times, 1851–2004 • JSTOR Journal Archive/Project Muse

• Oklahoma Historical Society • OSU Library Electronic Publishing Center

Use Advanced Search: Boolean/ Keywords/Limiters

Limiters: Database Field Headings • Title• Author• Source• Date• Abstract• Full Text• Subject/

Keyword

Databases can be

searched using any

combination ofthe field

headings.

Ebsco Demonstration(finding New Books)

JSTOR

• JSTOR is a full-text scholarly journal archive. JSTOR specializes in making available the back issues of journals in a wide variety of humanities and social science disciplines.

Project Muse

• Project Muse contains the full text of over 40 Johns Hopkins Press scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences

Finding Articles: Citations

Citations

Shriver Jr., Donald W. “Bosnia in Fear and Hope .” World Policy Journal; Summer2001, Vol. 18 Issue 2, p43, 11p

Formats: PDF (Portable Document Format) HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

Citations

Shriver Jr., Donald W. “Bosnia in Fear and Hope.”

World Policy Journal;

Summer2001, Vol. 18 Issue 2, p43, 11p

PDF / HTML

Search the Virtual StacksSearch the Virtual Stacks

Tracking Citations

Shriver Jr., Donald W. “Bosnia in Fear and Hope .” World Policy Journal; Summer2001, Vol. 18 Issue 2, p43, 11p

The Citation Video

Exercise V: JSTOR & Citation Search

Topic: Tulsa Race Riot

Deprivation and Race Riots: An Extension of Spilerman's Analysis

• Create/Login to JSTOR• Locate Deprivation Article in

JSTOR• Review References• Locate three full-text citations &

add to your JSTOR Account

Peer-Reviewed ArticlesPOPULAR MAGAZINES

COME IN MANY FORMATS, BUT USUALLY SOMEWHAT SLICK AND ATTRACTIVE IN APPEARANCE

RARELY CITE SOURCES. INFO. IS USUALLY SECONDARY, REPORTED FROM SOURCE

ARTICLES SHORT, WRITTEN IN SIMPLE LANGUAGE AND FOR A MINIMAL EDUCATION LEVEL

USUALLY LOT OF ADVERTISING AND PICTURES

PAGINATION RESTARTS IN EVERY ISSUE

SCHOLARLY JOURNALS

HAVE A SOBER, SERIOUS LOOKALWAYS CITE THEIR SOURCES

IN FOOTNOTES/BIBLIOGRAPHIES

ARTICLES WRITTEN BY A SCHOLAR OR RESEARCHER “HORSE’S MOUTH”

PEER-REVIEWED BY SCHOLARSLANGUAGE OF JOURNAL

ASSUMES SOME SCHOLARLY BACKGROUND ON THE PART OF READER

ADVERTISING IS SPECIALIZED TO THAT DISCIPLINE

PAGINATION IS CUMULATIVE

Ulrichsweb: Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory • Global source for periodicals since

1932.• Bibliographic database providing

authoritative information on serials published throughout the world.

Exercise VI:

What Makes a Journal Scholarly ?

Primary Sources

• Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories.

– Print documents and manuscripts

– First person accounts in newspapers

– Online digital collections

National Archives &Records Administration

DEFINITIONS Sources that contain raw, original, non interpreted and unevaluated information.

Sources that digest, analyze, evaluate and interpret the information contained within primary sources. They tend to be argumentative.

Sources that compile, analyze, and digest secondary sources. They tend to be factual.

TIMING OF PUBLICATION CYCLE

Primary sources tend to come first in the publication cycle.

Secondary sources tend to come second in the publication cycle.

Tertiary sources tend to come last in the publication cycle.

FORMATS--depends on the kind of analysis being conducted.

Often newspapers, weekly and monthly-produced magazines; letters, diaries.

Often scholarly periodicals and books. (Professors like these.)

Often reference books.

EXAMPLE: Historian

(studying the Vietnam War) Newspaper articles, weekly news magazines, monthly magazines, diaries, correspondence, diplomatic records.

Articles in scholarly journals analyzing the war, possibly footnoting primary documents; books analyzing the war.

Historical Dictionary of Vietnam ; The Vietnam War, An Almanac

PRIMARY SECONDARY TERTIARY

Works Cited Page

• TWO PARTS

• Primary

• Secondary

• Be sure to divide your sources into primary and secondary.

Finding Primary Sources: WWW•  Library of Congress

An outstanding and invaluable site for American history and general studies. Contains primary and secondary documents, exhibits, map collections, prints and photographs, sound recordings, and motion pictures. The LOC's American Memory Historical Collections, a must-see, contain the bulk of digitalized materials, but the Exhibitions Gallery is enticing and informative as well.

•  National Archives and Records Administration

The NARA offers federal archives, exhibits, classroom resources, census records, Hot Topics, and more. The Online Exhibit Hall has features on the New Deal, WWII, and photographs from 1864 to 1921.

Finding Primary Sources: WWW• American Memory: Historical

Collections for the National Digital Library

• Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

• Making of America: 19th c. books and magazines

Finding Primary Sources on the Web II

• The Internet History Sourcebooks – The Internet History Sourcebooks are

collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts. The Sourcebooks include an Ancient History Sourcebook, a Medieval Sourcebook, and a Modern History Sourcebook, as well as assorted other Sourcebooks on topics such as Women's history, Islamic history, and East Asian history.

Oklahoma History and Culture • Chronicles of Oklahoma

– The first 40 volumes of the Oklahoma Historical Society's journal, digitized by Oklahoma State University.

• Eastern Oklahoma County Regional History Center – This project of Rose State College was established to preserve the unique

history of the communities of Eastern Oklahoma County, including Tinker Air Force Base, and to promote the understanding of the importance of the region to the State of Oklahoma, the southwestern region of states, and the United States. Collections include oral histories and historic photographs of Tinker Air Force Base.

• Oklahoma Crossroads – Oklahoma Crossroads: Documents and Images consists of selected digital

collections of the Oklahoma Department of Libraries spanning more than 100 years of rich, vibrant history. These collections include documents, photographs, newspapers, reports, pamphlets, posters, maps, and an author database ranging in date from the late 1800s to present.

• Western History Digital Collections – The Western History Collection is a special collection within the University

of Oklahoma Libraries system. Its purpose is to enhance the University Libraries general collection on the history of the American West; to support the research and teaching programs of the University of Oklahoma; and to provide opportunities for research through the acquisition, preservation, and access of materials relating to the development of the Trans-Mississippi West and Native American cultures.

• OSU Library Electronic Publishing Center

Searching for Primary Sources

KEYWORDS- Correspondence- Sources - Diaries- Interviews- “Literary collections”- “Personal narratives”- “Pictorial works”- Posters- Songs/Music- Speeches, addresses, etc.- Treaties

Tell the Webpage what you seek: Specifically!

Primary Sources

http://the-primary-source.blogspot.com/

Google Scholar

• Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.

Google Scholar

• Works best for citations• Restrictions to Content

– Fee-based– Often your Library already owns

material

– We’re working on improving access

Wikipedia

Wiki: A Web application that allows users to add content to a collaborative hypertext Web resource (coauthoring), as in an Internet forum, and permits others to edit that content

(open editing).

Wikipedia

• Jimmy Wales January 15, 2001• No Original Research• NPOV (Neutral point of view)• No owners, multiple anonymous

authors• Anyone with Internet access can

create or edit an entry…Anyone

Wikipedia

• Participation maps popular, not academic concerns

• It is a working community…but is it a good historical resource?

• Lack of Critical Analysis• Problematic as a sole source of

information • Like all encyclopedias…ok to start,

terrible place to stop. • Benefits are to its active participants,

not its readers.• Anyone can edit a page…..Anyone

wikirage

• A site listing pages in Wikipedia which are receiving the most edits per unique editor over various periods of time.

• Wikipedia is a disruptive tertiary information source.

DEFINITIONS Sources that contain raw, original, non interpreted and unevaluated information.

Sources that digest, analyze, evaluate and interpret the information contained within primary sources. They tend to be argumentative.

Sources that compile, analyze, and digest secondary sources. They tend to be factual.

TIMING OF PUBLICATION CYCLE

Primary sources tend to come first in the publication cycle.

Secondary sources tend to come second in the publication cycle.

Tertiary sources tend to come last in the publication cycle.

FORMATS--depends on the kind of analysis being conducted.

Often newspapers, weekly and monthly-produced magazines; letters, diaries.

Often scholarly periodicals and books. (Professors like these.)

Often reference books.

EXAMPLE: Historian

(studying the Vietnam War) Newspaper articles, weekly news magazines, monthly magazines, diaries, correspondence, diplomatic records.

Articles in scholarly journals analyzing the war, possibly footnoting primary documents; books analyzing the war.

Historical Dictionary of Vietnam ; The Vietnam War, An Almanac

PRIMARY SECONDARY TERTIARY

Open Web/Deep WebArchives and Manuscript Collections - [New Window] - This is a selective guide to finding archives and manuscript collections. It includes catalogs and finding aids at Columbia, as well as national catalogs and databases. It also includes a list of national archives and libraries, college and university collections, and historical society archives. 

Footnote - [New Window] - Search for original historical documents online. 

Gateway to Resources and Information on Preservation - GRIP - [New Window] - GRIP is a a fully searchable database of information on preservation of the documentary heritage. It contains selected and annotated references to literature on preservation-related topics, links to websites, projects, organizations and discussion groups. GRIP presents a core of accessible and recent materials selected by experts and provides an introduction to a great many aspects of preservation. The database can be searched by category, keywords (descriptors) and free search. 

Histor eSearch.com - [New Window] - History research resource links for high school and college students. 

History Buff - [New Window] - Provides a searchable library of historical information. 

History Guide - [New Window] - An Internet-based subject gateway to scholarly relevant information in history with a focus on Anglo-American history and the history of Central and Western Europe. 

Internet Modern History Sourcebook - [New Window] - Directory of modern history resources. 

Repositories of Primary Sources - [New Window] - A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar. All links have been tested for correctness and appropriateness. 

UNESCO Archives Portal - [New Window] - The UNESCO Archives Portal gives access to websites of archival institutions around the world. It is also a gateway to resources related to records and archives management and to international co-operation in this area. 

WTJ Portal - [New Window] - Directory of online military resources for researchers, hobbyists, military professionals and all others with an interest in military history, science and defense. The directory is composed entirely of sites relating to the active prosecution of warfare and military issues. 

WWW Virtual Library: Labour and Business History - [New Window] - Links to organizations, archives, libraries, museums, research institutions and resources around the world in the field of labour and business history.

CampusGuides

KEY Elements for Your Paper

• Works Cited Page

• Divide into Primary/Secondary ! • NO ENCYCLOPEDIAS !

• 20% of your grade is based on critiquing your fellow classmates

KEY Elements for Your Paper• Stress analysis: Do not simply parrot

your sources i.e. “radical leaders” “Marxist Professors.”

• Who says they are radical? Marxist?

• Watch your assumptions.

• Do your own analysis.

Writing Your Paper

• Writing Center– Located in the basement of the

library– Call for appointment #774-7083

• Turabian Style– Style Sheets– Turabian Handbook at Reference &

Circulation Desk

Questions?

• Contact me:

• Frederic Murray• 774-7113• frederic.murray@swosu.edu• http://faculty.swosu.edu/frederic.murray/

• Exercise I: Research Puzzle• Exercise II: Thesis • Exercise III: Class - Keywords• Exercise IV: Catalog/WorldCat• Exercise V: JSTOR/Citation• Exercise VI: Scholarly Tutorial