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History (General)

Rose's Assignment #1: Library Website and Periodicals

+This assignment must be typed. You will need to use online resources (http://library.csus.edu) AND visit the library in person.

+DO NOT ask reference librarians for help with these questions. They have been instructed not to help, which goes against the very core of their being. Instead, you can ask me, or, Ben Amata has developed a webpage to help you if you get stuck on something.

  • In the library, please return all materials to their original and upright position as a courtesy for students who will follow in your footsteps.
  • Sloppiness in citations—misspellings, incorrect titles and punctuation, lack of capitalization, and failure to underscore or italicize book, journal, and newspaper titles—will be marked down. 
  • When asked to make a Xerox, it must be readable for research purposes or it will not count

1. A) From the library’s homepage, click on EUREKA: Library Catalogue. Searching in the entire collection, do separate keyword, title, author, and subject searches for “United States Steel Corporation.” How many individual entries(do not confuse with subjects, authors, etc.) come up for each of the four searches? B) Now do the same searches with the term “Smithsonian Institution” (don’t use quotation marks in the search). How many individual entries come up for each of the four searches?

2. On the library’s homepage, click the search menu to “Journal Titles.”  Search for the magazine, Journal of Negro History.  When the title appears on a fresh page, click on “Find It.”  From this page, and with some clicking around, answer the following questions.  A) What years of the journal (under this name) are available online?  B) What years of the journal (under this name) are available in paper form at our library?  C) What is the earliest year it is available on microfilm in the library?  D) In what year did the journal change its name and what is its current name?  E) Under this new title, which is the latest edition that the library has received?

3. On the “Database and Article Searching,” page of the library’s website, click on “History” in the “Search By Subject” section.  Now click on “History Multisearch.”  This will search through five different databases that are used by historians.  Do an author search for Vaught, David.  From the results, find his article on the legendary San Francisco Giants pitcher, Gaylord Perry.  A) Do some clicking and tell me the first five words of the third paragraph of his article.  B) Now do a search for “American Liberty League” (use quotation marks).  From the results, first find Clement E. Vose’s article and tell me the first five words of its abstract. Now for Sheldon Richman’s article, what are the volume numbers that our library has of the journal that his article is in?

4. I want Phillip Bonosky’s book, Brother Bill McKie, but CSUS does not have a copy of it.  From the “Database and Article Searching” page, click on W and then click on WorldCat.  Once in WorldCat, do an author search for Bonosky, Phillip. A) How many libraries worldwide have copies of it?  B) How many libraries in California have it?  C) If I want that copy of the book, which CSUS Library department or service will help me get it?

5. Now you must walk through the dusty library stacks.  A) On which two floors does one find most all the bound academic journals and popular magazines?  B) On which floor would I find a bound copy of Nation from the 1970s?  C) Which of the following bound journals or magazines from the 1980s-2000s would I find closest to room 3520:  American Music, American Journal of Political Science, Civil War History, Historian, Journal of Sport History, Radical History Review, Reviews in American History, or Variety?  D) Which is closest to room T3001?

6. In a thorough and grammatically correct sentence, explain what is a “refereed journal.”  It is also known as a “peer-reviewed journal.”

HINT: Consult your book: BENJAMIN (A STUDENT’S GUIDE TO HISTORY), chapter 5, under the section:  "Using print and electronic periodical databases. "

7. A) Go to the lower level of the library and Xerox the table of contents page of any issue of the journal, Agricultural History, from the 1960s (only use issue numbers 2 or 3 from the volume, and NOT 1 or 4).  B) In both bibliographic and footnote formats, cite that article as it would appear in a bibliography and footnote (see Turabian 17.2 for guidance).  C) Now locate an issue of the magazine, Ebony, from the 1960s and Xerox its index.  D) In both bibliographic and footnote format, cite that article as it would appear in a bibliography and footnote (see Turabian 17.3 for guidance)

8. Name an American (or North American) academic journal, that our library has in hard copy, devoted to A) the history of labor; B) the history of Pennsylvania; C) the history of ethnics in America; D) urban or city history; E) the history of a particular geographic region (NOT city or state in the title) in the United States that is NOT the West (or Southwest, Northwest, etc.  NOTE:  make sure these are history journals, and NOT from ethnic studies, American studies, sociology, etc. and make sure they are American or North American.  If it is helpful, journals are considered periodicals.

HINT: Diplomatic History is an example of a journal that focuses specifically on certain area of history rather than looking at history generally. Do a SUBJECT search in EUREKA, (for example: HISTORY PERIODICALS) and limit to the Periodicals Collection to retrieve a good list of CSUS history periodicals.

You can search the Periodical Collection using Library of Congress Subject Headings. For example, using the subject heading: United States Foreign Relations Periodicalswill find the journal Diplomatic History. If you don't know the subject heading, you can do a keyword search and again limit by "Location" to find journal titles.

Last Updated: Jan 17, 2024 11:43 AM