HST 102: The United States Since 1865HST 102: The United States Since 1865HISTORY 102: Biography Project [Due in Section the week of February 15].
For this assignment, each student will receive the name of an individual who made a significant contribution to American society in the period covered by this course. [No two students will be studying the same person.] There are two purposes, and two parts, to this assignment:
Purposes: 1. To come to understand how a particular person's experience can illuminate our understanding of the period and circumstances in which s/he lived.
2. To learn to do research of the sort professional historians do—locating, examining, and using appropriate source materials, and presenting one's findings to readers.
Your finished project should be approximately 5 pages long, and should consist of the following two components, of roughly equal length:
1. Biographical Sketch. This section should be approximately 2 to 3 pages long and should accomplish these two objectives:
a) Briefly provide a factual account of the person's life, emphasizing those aspects of the life that are of historical significance (that is, do not dwell upon the person's parents, hobbies, marriage and children, or other things of private concern unless you can show them to be of historical importance).
b) Provide evidence and explanation of the person's historical contribution(s). This evidence must be documented with references and citations to sources, but these may be in short, parenthetical form (rather than by means of formal footnotes). How and why is this person considered to be important? What does her or his life tell us about the times in which s/he lived; about important social, scientific, cultural, economic, or political developments; about the United States at the time? In this section, you should provide concrete examples and should cite evidence of the person's accomplishments, contributions, etc.
2. Annotated Bibliography of Biographical Sources. This section should be at least 2 pages in length, and should list a variety of the sources (including unpublished manuscript/archival collections) that are available and of relevance in illuminating your subject's life and contributions. It must not be confined simply to full-length biographies! It should also contain entries for the following sorts of materials: books on subjects relevant to the person's accomplishments or historical significance; articles from scholarly journals and anthologies; newspaper and magazine articles; archival/manuscript collections of the person's papers; dissertations and theses; works (books, essays, artistic creations, etc.) by your person; etc. And it should not simply contain the sources you use in preparing the biographical sketch but, within reason, should include as wide a range of sources as you can identify—both those available in Bird Library and those unavailable to you at S.U. (but locatable through various reference sources (to be described below).
On the sheets attached, you will find information about how to go about searching for relevant materials, as well as examples of appropriate forms of bibliographic citations (to be used in the second part of the assignment). But—these are just preliminary suggestions! Be creative in searching out materials and, most importantly, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO GET HELP: from your TA, from the professor, and/or from the reference librarians in Bird. It is our hope that you will find this assignment interesting and that you will go about it creatively. We want it to be FUN, believe it or not—and we are available to help you make it so if you only ask us!
[One more preliminary note: Like all assignments, of course, the final product of your efforts should be clearly and grammatically written. And do not forget to proofread!]
HOW TO BEGIN LOCATING SOURCE MATERIALS ON YOUR SUBJECT.
[Note: This section was compiled with the assistance of Pamela Thomas, User Education Librarian and History Bibliographer, Bird Library.]
1. BOOKS
Begin with the SUMMIT Local Catalog. This is the electronic card catalog for the Syracuse University Library. It is searchable in many ways, including by author, subject heading, or by keyword. The catalog will tell you what items the Library owns, where each item is kept, and whether it is charged out to a patron. The Local Catalog is available in all campus libraries or on the Web at http://libwww.syr.edu/summit.htm.
After searching the SUMMIT Local Catalog, you may wish to find out what other books may have been published about the person you are researching. The best way to do this is to search what is known as a union catalog. Union catalogs represent the holdings of hundreds of libraries around the world. Two useful union catalogs called WorldCat and RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network) are located on the SUMMIT Databases Menu.
2. ARTICLES
In order to find articles in magazines, journals, and newspapers you will need to use an index. Many useful indexes can be found on SUMMIT from the Databases Main Menu (also available at http://libwww.syr.edu/summit.htm). This will present you with an alphabetical list of over 500 indexes and databases, many of which will contain valuable biographical, historical, and bibliographic references. Some indexes you may find useful include:
You will find many useful sources in the First Floor Reference Area of Bird. Among those you will find most useful are:
in the Media Services Dept., Bird Basement.
--For more recent figures (especially those who may have died since 1978), as
well as for others, see also the New York Times Index (also in the reference area).
a) National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC).
Z6620/.U5/N3 [Bird: 1st floor.]
--begin with the Index to Personal Names in the National Union Catalog of
See also: b) Women's History Sources: A Guide to Archives and Manuscript Collections in the United States. Andrea Hinding, comp. HQ1410/.W66 [Ref. stack 9]
IMPORTANT!! All the sources listed on this page are general. Not listed here are the many specialized biographical and reference resources available in Bird for persons and topics in particular areas of endeavor (business, sport, the arts, science, etc.). Check to see if your person is included in one or more of these specialized sources (ask librarians for help in finding the ones you need).
5. THE INTERNET
Use any of the principal search engines—or, to save time, a metasearch engine (which compiles references from several stand-alone search engines). Among the best stand-alone sites are:
--Hotbot (http://www.hotbot.com): offers
an option to search under a person’s name.
--AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com)
Among metasearch engines, MST’s favorite is "InferenceFind" (www.infind.com); others include Metafind (www.metafind.com), Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com) and Mamma (http://www.mamma.com).
Other useful general sites to check include: Northern Light (www.northernlight.com), Internet Sleuth (www.isleuth.com), and Ask Jeeves (www.askjeeves.com). NOTE: See the course website for links to these and other useful internet resources for this project, such as The Mining Company, Voice of the Shuttle, etc.
6. Still coming up short? If you have found any information at all about your person, then try consulting sources relevant to his or her activities. For example, you might find little or nothing specifically about Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, but once you have any information about her at all—that she was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a Southern civil rights activist, etc.—you might begin by looking at materials related to SNCC, Freedom Summer, Civil Rights, etc. That should lead you even further to other sources.
7. Be sure to consult the bibliographies and reference notes in your initial sources to identify additional ones. Also, when you go to the library shelves, look at the books surrounding the one(s) you've gone to search for specifically (i.e., with related call numbers); they may contain a great deal of relevant information.
8. If you are completely at a loss, once again, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO ASK FOR HELP!!! (AND WHY HAVE YOU WAITED SO LONG TO DO SO?)
Preparing Your Biographical Sketch.
Your TA will tell you more about this, but please be aware that you are expected to go beyond biographical dictionary/encyclopedic sources. We expect you actually to use some of the sources, other than the indexes and reference books, that you locate in your initial search!
The Annotated Bibliography.
An annotated bibliography contains brief (1-2 sentence) descriptions/evaluations of the particular items listed. For examples of annotations, see the bibliographies at the end of each chapter of Out of Many.
You may find it helpful to organize the sources you locate into categories: primary sources (works by your person), biographical sources, manuscript (unpublished) sources, sources on related subjects. Or you may want to categorize your sources by type: books, articles, manuscripts. If you do this, provide clear headings to each section of your bibliography. NOTE: Whether you have a single, all-inclusive list, or whether you subdivide it, entries should be in alphabetical order (either for the bibliography as a whole or within each subsection).
You should annotate all the sources you are able to examine (i.e., those available in Bird)—and not simply those you read in their entirety or use in preparing your biographical sketch. This includes articles as well as books, and includes materials on events/organizations/topics surrounding your person, and not simply biographical sources.
Important: Your bibliography should include all the major sources you have located, and not just those you have looked at or used. Those you have actually examined should be indicated by an asterisk (*) at the beginning of the entry.
Proper Bibliographic Citation.
Scholars have developed specific formats for citing sources: books, articles, manuscripts, etc. There are a number of accepted formats, and examples of proper citations can be found in any writing or research manual (the Turabian manual, Chicago Manual of Style, The Modern Researcher, etc.). Below are some examples of citation styles. If you are already familiar with another format, you probably can use it, but check first with your TA. The important things to remember are to keep the form consistent from entry to entry and to make sure all the necessary information is included in a clearly identifiable way. Note such characteristics as underlining and quotation marks (and when each is appropriate--they are not interchangeable!), punctuation marks, etc.
BOOKS
[Book by a single author]
Dallek, Robert. Lone Star Rising:
Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991.
[Edited book]
Sterling, Dorothy, ed. We Are Your
Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton
& Co., 1984.
[Reprint edition]
Myrdal, Gunnar. Population: A Problem
for Democracy. 1940; reprint ed., Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1956.
--NOTE: The
first date refers to the work's ORIGINAL publication; the rest of the information
refers to the edition actually consulted.
[Author's work in a collection edited
by another]
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Complete
Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by W. G. T. Shedd. New York:
Harper & Bros., 1884.
ARTICLES
[in a scholarly journal]
Thompson, Margaret Susan. "Cultural
Conundrum: Sisters, Ethnicity, and the Adaptation of American Catholicism."
Mid-America 74 (Oct. 1992): 205-30.
[in a magazine]
Tuchman, Barbara. "If Asia Were Clay
in the Hands of the West." Atlantic, Sept.1970, pp. 68-84.
[in an edited anthology]
Bradley, Ritamary. "The Truth Shall
Make You Free." In Midwives of the Future: American Sisters Tell Their
Story. Ed. Ann Patrick Ware. Kansas City, Mo.: Leaven Press, 1985,
pp. 69-81.
[in a newspaper, no author given]
"Amazing Amazon Region." New York
Times. 12 January 1969, sec. 4, p. E11.
[book review]
DeMott, Benjamin. Review of Briefing
for a Descent into Hell, by Doris Lessing. Saturday Review,
13 March 1971, pp. 25-26.
MANUSCRIPT/ARCHIVAL MATERIALS OR COLLECTIONS
James A. Garfield Papers. Washington,
D.C. Library of Congress Manuscript Collections.
Diary of Mother Praxedes Carty. Archives
of the Sisters of Loretto, Nerinx, Kentucky.
DISSERTATIONS AND THESES (unpublished)
Thompson, Margaret Susan. "The 'Spider
Web': Congress and Lobbying in the Age of Grant." Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Wisconsin-Madison. 1979.
--[NOTE:
this differs from the citation to the published version: Thompson,
Margaret Susan. The "Spider Web": Congress and Lobbying in the Age of
Grant. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1985.]
Anderson-Bricker, Kristin. "From Beloved
Community to 'Triple Jeopardy': The Evolution of Feminist Consciousness
Among Black and White Women in the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, 1961-1975." M.A. thesis, Syracuse University, 1992.
INTERNET WEBSITES
Harris, Jonathan G. "The Return of
the Witch Hunts." Witchhunt Information Page . 19 Apr. 1997. 19
Nov. 1997 <http://web.mit.edu/harris/www/fells.short.html>.
--First date is
that of web publication or last update (if known); the second is for when
you accessed the site.
For more info on citing internet resources,
see: http://www.smpcollege.com/online-4styles~help/cite5.html#1
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