AMER STD 10: Introduction to American Studies

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The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research recognizes excellence in undergraduate research projects that show evidence of significant inquiry using the library, its resources, and collections and learning about the research and information-gathering process itself.

1.  Find a topic that interests you or find a primary source or type of primary source that interest you.  You can browse through primary source databases (see Primary Sources tab), do some general searching in OskiCat (see Secondary Sources tab), or look through an encyclopedia (see below).

2.  Look for background information about your topic (encyclopedias, etc.; see below)

3. Look for secondary sources (see Secondary Sources tab - search OskiCat, maybe some article databases)...look for names, dates, places, events, titles of sources...look through bibliographies...all this will help you find primary sources

4.  Look for primary sources (see Primary Sources tab) - think about what kinds of sources the Library might have? Search OskiCat, and article databases if appropriate, along with some primary source databases as appropriate.

Encyclopedia of American Studies (online)

The Bancroft Library is one of the treasures of the campus, and one of the world's great libraries for the history of the American West.

Some Bancroft materials are available online via Calisphere, which includes primary sources  from many California libraries and museums.

How to Use the Bancroft Library

1.  Be prepared! Read secondary sources and know something about your topic.

2.  Before you go:  Search OskiCat so you can bring call numbers with you. You can limit your OskiCat search to find materials at the Bancroft Library, instead of all campus libraries (choose "Bancroft Library" from the pulldown menu that says "Entire Collection."). Remember that there are primary sources in many other campus libraries as well.

Important:  if the item is in storage ("NRLF") and owned by The Bancroft Library, do not use the Request button in OskiCat.  Instead, use the Bancroft's online request form AT LEAST 72 hours in advance (they prefer a week.)

If you have 72 hours in advance, you can also use the online request form for materials not in storage; that will speed things up when you arrive. 

If the OskiCat record mentions a "finding aid" (an index) to a manuscript collection, you should use it to help you find what you need in the collection.  If the finding aid is online there will be a link from the OskiCat record, or you can search the Online Archive of California to find it. The finding aids that are not online are near the Registration desk at the Bancroft Library.

3.  Learn how to use the Bancroft Library. Read about Access (bring a quarter for lockers!) and Registration (bring two pieces of ID!). Remember to bring call numbers, titles, etc. with you. You will fill out a form to present to the Circulation Desk, and materials will be paged and brought to you.

4.     Read about the new camera policy ($10/day and no flash!) or about getting photocopies.

5.     Ask for assistance at The Bancroft Library's reference desk.

To find books, DVDs, maps, sound recordings, manuscripts, and much more - everything except articles - use a library catalog.

OskiCat = most UC Berkeley libraries

MELVYL = all UC campus libraries, including all UC Berkeley libraries

What's the difference?  more details here

For each item make sure you know the name of the physical library, call number, and whether or not it's checked out, library use only, etc.

Call numbers are on the spine of the book; learn how to read them so you can find what you need on the shelves.

Search an article database to find citations (title, author, title of journal, date, page numbers) for articles on a particular topic.  The Library gives you access to over 200 article databases covering different disciplines.

1.  Think about which academic disciplines might write about your topic.  Examples:  literature, film, anthropology, history...

2.  Find the appropriate article database by subject (academic discipline or department).  Look for "Recommended" databases.

Library home > Articles > Article Databases by Subject

• click on the title to see full record (including abstracts and descriptors)
• to limit by publication type (peer-reviewed journals, conferences, books, etc.) click on the appropriate tab or link
• if necessary,look for other limits (latest update, journal articles only, english only) and more advanced searches
• select records to save to your personalized list; lists may be e-mailed, downloaded, printed

Library home > Articles > General Article Databases > JSTOR

Everyone Loves JSTOR:

• interdisciplinary
• scholarly
• full text available AND searchable - you may find topics you won't find elsewhere because they're only part of an article on a related topic
• covers journals from their earliest publication dates

CAUTIONS:

• DOES NOT INCLUDE THE LAST 3-5 YEARS of a journal!  not good for contemporary topics!
• doesn't include as many journals in a particular discipline as the discipline-specific database (example: MLA Bibliography for literature)

Primary sources can be found in a variety of library tools:

• Catalogs:  OskiCat and Melvyl
• Online book and text collections
• Primary Source databases provided by the Library
      includes databases for finding newspaper articles, such as Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) or magazine articles, such as Reader's Guide
• Vetted sites on the web:
  
  • Library of Congress
  • Online Archive of California or Calisphere
  • History Matters

For specific search strategies, see the Library's Guide to Finding Historical Primary Sources

Learn more about your topic in advance:

• names of relevant individuals and organizations
• dates of events
• places
• what terminology was used at the time by participants and observers? (ex:  negro or colored instead of african american)

Use the bibliographies of secondary sources and reference sources to find citations to specific primary sources; search OskiCat to locate them on campus, or ask for assistance at the Library.

Search OskiCat for primary sources using keywords and adding terms that denote primary sources, such as:

-correspondence
-sources
-diaries
-personal narratives
-interviews
-speeches
-documents
-archives
-newspapers

Examples:

puerto rican* interviews
african american soldiers personal narratives
irish american* newspapers

add primary source subheadings: 

women homestead* diaries

limit by date of publication:

advanced search

women frontier*

years:  1880-1900

western stories

years:  1860-1900

limit by format:

country music

(pull down "entire collection" menu to:)  music scores

(or):  sound recordings

really fancy search hardly anyone knows about:

more searches:

genre/form:  dime novels

See a more complete list of library databases of primary sources in American History

• American Social History Online
  Provides access to 175 digitized library collections related to U.S. social history.
  
• Everyday Life and Women in America
  Providing access to primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.
  
• Chronicling America
  This site allows users to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. To date, over 200,000 pages of California newspapers have been digitized.
  
• Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment
  Includes prints, drawings, paintings, maps, bibliographies, letters, photographs, and original facsimile pages documenting the relationships among peoples and with the environment in North America. Focuses on personal accounts and providing unique perspectives from all the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, Native Americans as well as a wide range of Europeans.
  
• Historical Newspapers (ProQuest)
  Includes Chicago Defender (1910-1975). Chicago Tribune (1849-1988). Los Angeles Times (1881-1988). San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922). New York Times (1851-1994) with Index (1851-1993). Wall Street Journal (1889-1994). Washington Post (1877-1995).
  
• Readers' Guide Retrospective
  Covers more than 500 leading American magazines and journals from 1890 to 1982.
  
• HarpWeek
  Full-image reproductions of Harper's Weekly from its beginning in 1857 to 1912. Provides access to information about 19th and early 20th century advertising, illustrations, culture, history, literature, and notable figures.
  
• Nation Digital Archive
  Full text access to The Nation, a weekly news magazine covering U.S. politics and society since 1865.
  
• Working Women, 1800 -1930
  Provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image collections. Explores women's roles in the US economy between the Civil War and the Great Depression. Documents working conditions, conditions in the home, costs of living, recreation, health and hygeine, conduct of life, policies and regulations governing the workplace, and social issues. When completed, the collections will contain more than 2200 books and pamphlets, 1000 photographs and 10,000 pages from manuscript collections.
  

In order to avoid plagiarism, you must give credit when

• You use another person's ideas, opinions, or theories.
• You use facts, statistics, graphics, drawings, music, etc., or any other type of information that does not comprise common knowledge.
• You use quotations from another person's spoken or written word.
• You paraphrase another person's spoken or written word.

Recommendations

• Begin the writing process by stating your ideas; then go back to the author's original work.
• Use quotation marks and credit the source (author) when you copy exact wording.
• Use your own words (paraphrase) instead of copying directly when possible.
• Even when you paraphrase another author's writings, you must give credit to that author.
• If the form of citation and reference are not correct, the attribution to the original author is likely to be incomplete. Therefore, improper use of style can result in plagiarism. Get a style manual and use it.
• The figure below may help to guide your decisions.
  
  

This content is part of the Understanding Plagiarism tutorial created by the Indiana University School of Education.

If you've never used Zotero before, use the QuickStart Guide to get started.

Change your preferences if you want  Zotero to

• set your default citation style
• search the full text of pdfs you save
• Automatically attach associated PDFs and other files when saving items

To use Zotero to find specific articles in our library's databases, set up the Open URL resolver with this link: http://ucelinks.cdlib.org:8888/sfx_local? 

An in-depth discussion of the relative virtues of Endnote and Zotero,

The UCB Library Guide to Citing Your Sources discusses why you should cite your sources and links to campus resources about plagiarism.  It also includes links to guides for frequently used citation styles.  Also:

• MLA handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th edition. New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2009.
  Doe Reference Reference Hall LB2369 .G53 2009
  Main Gardner Stacks LB2369 .G53 2009
  Many older editions available throughout the UCB libraries.
• The Chicago Manual of Style (UCB-only access)
  15th ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2003. Searchable, online version of the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition).
  Many print editions available throughout the UCB Libraries.
• Cite Right: A Quick Guide to Citation Styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More (UCB-only access) Charles Lipson. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2006.
  Many print editions throughout the libraries.
• Columbia Guide to Online Style (UCB-only access)
  Janice R. Walker and Todd Taylor. 2nd ed. NY: Columbia Univ. Press. 2006.
  Many print editions throughout the UCB libraries.

Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles.  Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but any are easier than doing it by hand!

Zotero: A free plug-in that works exclusively with the Firefox browser: keeps copies of what you find on the web, permits tagging, notation, full text searching of your library of resources, works with Word, and has a free web backup service.

RefWorks - free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies. Use the RefWorks New User Form to sign up. Refworks Help is pretty good.

How to link from the Refworks record to a pdf on your hard drive

Exporting from OskiCat to Refworks

EndNote: may be purchased from UC Berkeley's Software Central.  The Library's Guide to EndNote.  And more Tips from EndNote.

It's always good to double check the formatting -- sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.

You already know that you should evaluate anything you find on the Internet.  Here are some reminders of what to look for.

If you want to use Google for research, use Google Books or Google Scholar.

Use the Advanced Search for more searching options.

Please note that Google Books search results do not necessarily include the full text of the book; some include no text at all, some include a limited preview (only some pages of the book).

When you use Google Scholar, make sure to update your Scholar Preferences (see below) so you'll be able to use UC e-links to find the UC Berkeley library locations/online availability of the articles.

Step 1: If you haven't already done this, set up your proxy server access by following the directions at http://proxy.lib.berkeley.edu/. When you get to a point where you are accessing resources that the Library pays for, you will be prompted for your CalNet ID and password. For more help see: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/doemoff/tutorials/proxy.html

Step 2: Change your “Scholar Preferences.” Access these by clicking on the small icon in the upper right of the screen.

Step 3: In search box next to "Library Links," type in University of California Berkeley and click on “Find Library”

Step 4: Check all the boxes next to "University of California Berkeley"

Step 5: Click on "Save Preferences" at bottom of page

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Other ways to get help:  in person, by e-mail, using specialized chat services

And of course:  e-mail Corliss or email Theresa (Bancroft Library)

Research Advisory Service for Cal Undergraduates

Book a 30-minute appointment with a librarian who will help refine and focus research inquiries, identify useful online and print sources, and develop search strategies for humanities and social sciences topics (examples of research topics).

Schedule, view, edit or cancel your appointment online (CalNetID required)

This service is for Cal undergraduates only. Graduate students and faculty should contact the library liaison to their department or program for specialized reference consultations.

• American Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• Library Subject Guides
• Library Course Guides