HIST 101: Writers Group

The UC Berkeley History Collection News blog will keep you informed of new digital collections, trials of resources, workshops, events related to History collections, and other news of interest to researchers in History. Options for accessing the blog include:

• Visiting the blog  (I post a few times a week)
• Subscribing to the RSS feed for the blog
• Following me on Twitter at @ucbhistorylib where I tweet links to the blog posts

Click on the image below to see a larger interactive version of the campus library map.

You can also view/download a PDF map of library locations. For library contact information and building addresses, visit our directory.

All libraries on campus are equipped with "bookscan stations," which allow you to scan documents and save them to a USB drive, or to scan documents and then send them to a printer.

In order to scan documents, you must have the following:

1. A Cal 1 Card, with money loaded onto it (go here to make a deposit to your Cal 1 Card account). This is not the same as meal plan points! Your Cal 1 Card debit account is a separate fund on your card.
2. A USB drive (you cannot email a scanned document from a bookscan station; you must save your document to a USB drive)
3. Scanning and saving to a USB drive is 5 cents a page for students.
4. Scanning documents and sending them to the printer is 10 cents a page for students. Color printing is 60 cents a page.

In order to send documents to the printer from any of the public computers in the libraries, you must have the following:

1. A Cal 1 Card, with money loaded onto it (see above)
2. A document that's on the Web or attached to your email (the public computers in the libraries will not open files from a USB or other drive)
3. Printing is 10 cents a page for students (black and white). Color printing is 60 cents a page.

Have more questions? There's more info here.

Looking for a location or call number in Doe, Main Stacks or Moffitt?  Try the floorplans, or ask for assistance!

Before you can access Library resources from off campus make sure you have configured your computer with proxy server settings.

After you make a one-time change in your web browser settings, the proxy server will ask you to log in with a CalNet ID or Library PIN when you click on the link to a licensed resource.

Now that you know the types of articles you need, you can choose a database, also known as a periodical index, to find them. Databases are collections of thousands of articles organized by subject. The Libraries have hundreds of databases covering every academic discipline. Some are multi-disciplinary, covering a broad range of subjects and including popular and scholarly sources, and others are subject-specific, and include scholarly and specialized articles. A complete list is available at Find Articles.

The following multi-disciplinary databases are good places to start your research:

• Academic Search Complete
  A multidisciplinary index to articles in more than 10,900 journals and other publications in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese; full-text is available for over 5300 journals.
  
• Google Scholar
  Lists journal articles, books, preprints, and technical reports in many subject areas (though more specialized article databases may cover any given field more completely). Some listings include links to related articles and to other sources that cite the item. Includes content from free resources (such as ArXiv.org and university websites) as well as subscription resources (such as electronic journals from selected publishers). Use the UC-eLinks option, when available, to find the UCB access to a publication.
  
• JSTOR
  Includes over 1000 scholarly journals with access to more than 2 million articles. JSTOR is an archive which means that current issues (generally the most recent 3-5 years) of the journals are not yet available.
  

• HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index)
  Indexes books, journals, conference proceedings, and official documents on Hispanic America (North, Central, and South), Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States.
  
• Historical Abstracts
  Indexes over 2,000 journals, as well as historical book reviews and dissertations, published worldwide about all aspects of world history (excluding US and Canada) from 1450 to the present. Articles covered were written from 1954 to the present
  
• America: History and Life
  Indexes over 2,000 journals published worldwide on the history of the US and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes all key English-language historical journals; selected historical journals from major countries, state, and local history journals; and a targeted selection of hundreds of journals in the social sciences and humanities.
  

Use OskiCat to locate materials related to your topic, including books, government publications, and  audio and video recordings, in the libraries of UC Berkeley. OskiCat will show you the location and availability of the items that we own.

• Using OskiCat (but not Melvyl) you can also renew your books online, look up course reserve materials by course number or instructor name, and place holds on items that other library users have already checked out.

Use Melvyl to locate materials related to your topic located at other campuses in the UC system, or worldwide. You can use the Request button to request an item from another library, if we don't own it.

• Using Melvyl (but not OskiCat) you can find articles as well as books, easily format a citation for copying into a bibliography, and see images of book covers, when available. Melvyl will also show you the location and availablity of items that we own.

Melvyl has changed as of January 2012, and now includes many more articles.  Detailed Melvyl help.

HathiTrust (Hathi is pronounced hah-tee) is a partnership of libraries that works towards the goal of developing a shared digital access, preservation, and storage solution for the materials held in the member libraries. The contents of HathiTrust are similar to that of GoogleBooks, but the collecting focus is on scholarly materials and the resource includes content and features (such as indexing and manipulation of results) not available in Google Books.

Downloading PDFs

Creating Collections

1. On the Collections page, click on login.
   
2. Choose the University of California, Berkeley from the drop down list and click on login.
3. Enter your CalNet ID and passphrase.
4. Click on Create a New Collection and name your collection (the description is optional).
5. Indicate whether it is a "Private" or "Public" collection.
6. Click on Add.

In the future if you want to edit, change the private/public setting, or delete the collection, your collections will always be listed in the "My Collections" tab whenever you are logged in to HathiTrust.

• Search for author's name using the author search: Auster, Paul
• Search for topics using a keyword search: labyrinth and borges
• Use an asterisk as a wildcard: author* finds authority, authorship, etc.
• Limit results by language (Modify search)
• You can browse topics using the Subject links. To find secondary literature on a particular author, look for "criticism and interpretation" subject links such as these:
  • Auster, Paul, 1947- -- Criticism and interpretation.
  • Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986 -- Criticism and interpretation.

Google Books contains millions of scanned books, from libraries and publishers worldwide. You can search the entire text of the books, view previews or "snippets" from books that are still in copyright, and read the full text of out-of-copyright (pre-1923) books.  Want to read the entire text of an in-copyright book?  Use Google Books' Find in a Library link to locate the book in a UC Berkeley library, or search OskiCat to see if UC Berkeley owns the book.

Why use Google Books?

Library catalogs (like OskiCat) don't search inside books; using a library catalog, you can search only information about the book (title, author, Library of Congress subject headings, etc.).  Google Books will let you search inside books, which can be very useful for hard-to-find information.  Try it now:

Find Dissertations by searching Dissertations and Theses (Dissertation Abstracts) Full Text, which indexes graduate dissertations from over 1,000 North American, and selected European, graduate schools and universities from 1861 to the present. Dissertations published since 1980 include brief abstracts written by the authors and some feature 24-page excerpts. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and some full text coverage for older graduate works.

Also see Find Dissertations and Theses for other specialized sources. Dissertations completed at UC Berkeley can be found in OskiCat, using the feature allowing you to limit to dissertations/theses:

Older dissertations not available full text may be obtained through Interlibrary Loan or using the "Request" option in Melvyl.

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

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

Before you go:

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

2.  Search OskiCat so you can bring call numbers with you. Use the Entire Collection pull-down menu in OskiCat to limit your search to the Bancroft Library only. (Remember that there are primary sources in many other campus libraries as well.)

• If the item you want is in storage (the location is NRLF) and it's 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 Bancroft materials that are 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. The finding aids that are not online are near the Registration Desk at the Bancroft Library.

3.  Learn about the Bancroft's policies: read about Access (bring a quarter for lockers) and Registration (bring two pieces of ID).  You may want to read about the new camera policy ($10/day, no flash) or about getting photocopies.

During your visit:

1. Store your belongings in the lockers provided, located on the right-hand side of the east entrance. Pass the security guard station and proceed up one level by stairs or elevator to the Reading Room and Seminar Rooms (3rd floor).
2. Check in at the Registration Desk, located on the left-hand side of the entrance to the Reference Center.
3. Go to the Circulation Desk, where you will fill out a form for the items you need. The items will be paged and brought to you. (Remember to bring call numbers, titles, etc. with you!)
4. For research-related questions, ask for assistance at the Reference Desk.

How to Get to the Bancroft Library

The Bancroft is open from 10am to 5pm Monday-Friday (closed on weekends and holidays; shorter hours during Intersession).  Paging ends 30 minutes before closing; this means that if you want to use Bancroft materials until 5pm, you need to arrive and request your materials at the circulation desk before 4:30pm.

The Bancroft Library is on the second floor of Doe, on the east side (the side closest to the Campanile). See a floor plan of Doe Library 2nd floor (pdf).

Want to find scanned articles from major U.S. newspapers, going back to the mid-19th century?  You can do this through an easy-to-use online database: ProQuest Historical Newspapers.  This database includes articles from the Chicago Defender (1905-1975), the Chicago Tribune (1849-1987), Los Angeles Times (1881-1987), the New York Times (1851-2007), the San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922), the Wall Street Journal (1889-1993), and the Washington Post (1877-1994).

Trying to use Historical Newspapers from off-campus? Be sure to set up off-campus access. Use of this resource is restricted to UC Berkeley students, faculty and staff.

• CQ Congress Collection
  Provides an historical analysis of members of Congress, their legislative voting behavior, interest group ratings, public policy legislation, current committees, background information and definitions, and chronology related to US Congress. Part of the CQ Electronic Library collection.
  
• CQ Historic Documents Series
  A collection of historic documents covering significant events of the year, going back to 1972. Documents include presidential speeches, international agreements, Supreme Court decisions, US government reports, scientific findings and cultural discussions. Contains more than 32,000 print pages. Part of the CQ Electronic Library collection.
  
• ProQuest Congressional
  One stop shopping for U.S. congressional publications. Provides index and abstracts of congressional publications back to 1789, including full text of published Congressional Hearings from 1824-present (unpublished until 1979), full text Committee Prints from 1830-present, full text Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports from 1916-present, full text United States Congressional Serial Set (and its various former titles) from 1789-present, and legislative histories from 1970-present. For more information on how to find hearings, consult the Congressional Tutorials homepage
  
• Online Archive of California (OAC)
  A searchable and browseable resource that brings together historical materials from a variety of California institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. Contains over 120,000 images; 50,000 pages of documents, letters, and oral histories; and 8,000 guides to collections. Images are organized into thematic and institutional collections, such as historical topics, nature, places, and technology.
  
• ArchiveGrid
  Searchable descriptions of nearly a million historical documents, personal papers, and family histories kept in libraries, museums, and archives worldwide. Includes information on how to examine and order copies.
  
• Archive Finder (including ArchivesUSA and NIDS UK/Ireland)
  Directory which describes tens of thousands of collections of primary source material housed in thousands of repositories across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
  
• Latin American Newspapers Series 2 (from the World Newspaper Archive)
  This archive of Latin American newspapers contains thousands of pages of content. Included in the collection are: Critica from Argentina; Diario de la Marina from Cuba; Universal from Caracas, Venezuela; and more. For more Latin American newspapers, see Latin American Newspapers Series 2. Both series are part of the World News Archive project from Readex/Newsbank.
  
• Latin American Newspapers Series 1 (from the World Newspaper Archive)
  This growing archive of Latin American newspapers contains more than 150,000 pages of content. New content is being added regularly and will eventually contain more than 1.5 million pages. Included in the collection are: Comercio from Peru; El Dictamen, Mexican Herald and Excelsior from Mexico; Prensa and Razon from Argentina; and more. For more Latin American newspapers, search the newly released Latin American Newspapers Series 2. Both series are part of the World News Archive project from Readex/Newsbank.
  
• World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean
  Include a comprehensive range of contemporary and historical documents for the region, providing research across the humanities, both for current Latin America and the Caribbean and as a historical perspective back through the colonial period.
  

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

1. Zotero: A free plug-in for 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. Zotero is also available as a stand-alone application that syncs with Chrome and Safari, or as a bookmarklet for mobile browsers.
   • Zotero help from the UCB Libraries
   • Zotero help from zotero.org
2. RefWorks - web-based and free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies, then works with Word to help you format references and a bibliography for your paper. Use theRefWorks New User Form to sign up.
   • RefWorks help from the UCB Libraries
   • RefWorks help from RefWorks
3. EndNote: Desktop software for managing your references and formatting bibliographies. You can purchase EndNote from the Cal Student Store. 

Tip: After creating a bibliography with a citation management tool, it's always good to double check the formatting; sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.

The Chicago Manual of Style includes two slightly different documentation systems: (1) notes and bibliography (NB) and (2) author-date. The notes and bibliography style is preferred by many in literature, history, and the arts.

In the NB system, you mark within your paper where you have cited something by adding a number, which refers to a detailed reference either at the bottom of the page (footnote) or at the end of the paper (endnote). These notes indicate the specific place in your source you are referencing.

The bibliography includes complete information for each item, with the items arranged in alphabetical order by author's last name.

Purdue's Writing Lab provides an example of a paper formatted using Chicago NB style.

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).

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.

Fill out this quick survey to finish up the class. thanks!

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

And of course:  e-mail Corliss!

Some reference questions can't be easily answered over e-mail and I am happy to talk with you in person or over the phone if your question is more complex or if you'd like a more in-depth consultation. Trying to schedule appointments via email is time-consuming. Here are some alternatives:

1. Call me at 510-768-7059

2. Use bCal to find my calendar (dorner@berkeley.edu) and locate a free slot between 9-5, Mon-Fri. You can propose an appointment in bCal or contact me by email asking me to reserve that slot for you.

3. If you don't use bCal yet and you have a gmail address, you can send that to me and I'll grant you access to my calendar.

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You can type your question directly into this chat window to chat with a librarian. Your question may be answered by a reference librarian from Berkeley, from another UC campus, or another academic library elsewhere in the US.  We share information about our libraries to make sure you get good answers.

If the librarian can't answer you well enough, your question will be referred to a Berkeley librarian for follow-up.

Have fun chatting!

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).

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.

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