History/Social Studies Senior Seminar
| Librarian contact info and reference hours |
| Examples of reference sources |
| Sources of historical statistics |
| Catalogs |
| Databases |
| Locating articles cited in research databases |
Suggestions for finding primary sources |
| Catalogs |
| Union catalogs of archival material |
| Newspapers |
| Archives and historical societies |
| Online history and genealogy projects |
NoodleBib (note-taking software and bibliography composer) |
1) Consult your reference librarian! For help, make an appointment with Charlotte Gerstein (468-6409) or consult the reference librarian on duty (468-1257). These are the hours the reference desk is staffed:
| Monday-Thursday | 9:00 am - 5:00 pm | 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm |
| Friday | 9:00 am - 5:00 pm | |
| Saturday | 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm | |
| Sunday | 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm |
2)
Consult sources in the reference section of the library, for an overview of
your topic and for references to primary or other sources, among other uses…
Some examples:
American National Biography (REF 920.073 Am35)
Dictionary of American History (REF 973.03 D561)
Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History (REF 973.03 En193)
Encyclopedia of American History (REF 973.03 En1934)
Encyclopedia of the American Civil War (REF 973.703 En197)
A resource for finding sources on Vermont topics
3) Some sources for historical statistics:
Historical Statistics of the States of the United States: Two Centuries of the Census, 1790-1990 (REF 317.3 D661h)
Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times
to the Present
(5 volumes: Population, Work and Welfare, Economic Structure and Performance,
Economic Sectors, Governance and International Relations) (REF 317.3 H629)
Datapedia of the United States 1790-2000 (REF 317.3
K965d)
Presents the most significant historical statistics of the U.S. in 23 selected
areas from 1776-1990.
The CSC Library has Vermont population schedules from the censuses since 1790 on microfilm. If you search the VSC catalog on "Census" as a subject, you'll find the list of our holdings. The Vermont Historical Society has this material on CD-ROM.
Vermont
State Colleges Online Catalog
For materials at CSC, the other VSC libraries, the Vermont Historical Society
Library, and beyond! If you aren't finding items of interest in the VSC
catalog, try the other catalogs available through "Multiple Library Search."
Click on "Place Request" or "Place Interlibrary Loan" to request to have the
item sent to the CSC library for you.
Suggested databases for history topics (to find citations to articles from journals and some full-text articles)
| To locate an article cited in a research database: |
See if full-text is available online
or in the CSC library |
If what you have is only a citation to the article of interest (or citation and abstract) and not the entire article: 1. Click on Journal Holdings List (a link from the library's homepage) and type in the title of the periodical where the article was published. Pay attention to the date of the article you'd like to find when you check the information in the "Journal Holdings List." Your article might be available in full-text through another database or in "Castleton Print Holdings." If you click on "Castleton Print Holdings," you will find out where to locate the journal in the CSC library, in print, or on microfilm or microfiche. 2. If the article is not available full-text
through another database, or in CSC's holdings, you can click on "Request
an Article" (on the library’s homepage) and copy and paste
or type in the citation to request the article through interlibrary
loan. |
If you think a particular journal would have something on your topic and you'd like to search within that journal, first check CSC's Journal Holdings to see if a CSC database includes it. If the journal isn't listed, you can try this tool (CUFTS) to see where the journal is indexed so you might search it. Of course, ask for help if you need it!
1) Search libraries' catalogs for specific kinds of primary source materials (especially: the VSC Online Catalog, Multiple Library Search through the VSC catalog, or WorldCat). (In WorldCat, in "Advanced Search," you can limit the search to archival material.)
This is an example of a keyword search that includes
terms that are likely to be used to describe primary sources in an
online catalog:
(personal narrative$ or corresponden$ or diar$
or interview$)
|
2) Search union catalogs
of archival material.
ArcCat is a
cooperative catalog describing archival and manuscript collections held by
various Vermont institutions.
http://arccat.uvm.edu/
National
Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections from the
Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/
--Lexis Nexis contains full-text of major U.S. and foreign papers. Coverage for most is from the mid-1980s to the present.
--New York Times Historical provides full-text of the New York Times from 1851 - 2004
--Vermont Newspapers Index
offers a searchable index to the Burlington Free Press and the Rutland Herald
from 1984 to the present.
--Union List of Vermont Newspapers (http://vtnp.uvm.edu,
also in the Library's Vermont collection: VT 071.43 Un313). This is
a searchable index to the newspaper holdings of close to 100 newspaper repositories
in Vermont. It includes Vermont newspaper titles that date from the
18th century to the present.
4) Archives and historical societies' catalogs,
finding aids and digitized documents can sometimes be found online.
Here are links to some local and state historical societies:
The Vermont Historical Society (Barre, VT) offers its catalog online.
http://www.vermonthistory.org/
http://www.rutlandhistory.com/
Castleton
Historical Society
http://www.bsi-vt.com/castleton/chs/
New
Hampshire Historical Society
http://www.nhhistory.org/library.html
New
York Historical Society
https://www.nyhistory.org/web/default.php?section=library
5) Online history and genealogy projects can also be good sources.
For Civil War documents:
http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/
Vermont Women's History Project
http://www.women.state.vt.us/vwhp.html
Mike
Schroeder’s family research (Castleton)
http://www.familyhistoryfiles.com/MasterIndexes/DocumentsIndex.htm
Vermont
Resources from the Johnson State College Library
http://www.jsc.edu/Library/FindArticles/Databases/VermontResourcesDatabase.aspx
Middlebury College's Guide
to Vermontiana
http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/lis/lib/guides_and_tutorials/subject_guides/collection_guide-vermont/
Library
Research: Finding Primary Sources
From the Teaching Library at UC Berkeley
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/PrimarySources.html
Using Primary Sources
on the Web
From the Reference and User Service Association History Section of the American
Library Association
http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/History/RUSA/
Here's help
using Chicago/Turabian style for footnotes and your Works Cited list,
from the University of Wisconsin's Writing Center
http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocChicago.html
To see the difference between APA and Chicago style for different kinds of sources, see Citing Sources from Duke University.
--compiled by Charlotte
Gerstein, Reference & Instruction Librarian, Castleton State College
-- last updated 1/30/08