History 121B winter 2007

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History 121B: African American History 1877 to Present

Getting Started || Background Information || Databases || Cruzcat || Statistics || Citation Guides

Getting Started

Off Campus Access - To access the library research databases referenced on this guide from off campus, you will need to login to OCA. Click here for information regarding the service.

Make use of the library's How To Guides - particularly useful for this assignment are:

Organize your research results

Keep track of your successful keyword searches and subject headings and make note of the names of authors/scholars that come up related to your topic. The latter strategy will help decrease the number of duplicative searches you run.

The library has a sample research organization sheet available on-line.

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Background Information

Use the resources listed below to get an overview of your topic. Encyclopedias, bibliographies, and scholarly web pages are a good starting point for any research project. See How to Evaluate Information on the Web for help with assessing web pages.
Write down key dates, facts, statistics provided, look for a bibliography and make use of it.
Look up (in cruzcat) the titles of journals and books referenced in the encyclopedias, bibliographies or web pages and see if we own them at UCSC.

McHenry Reference Print Sources

The list below represents a sample of options, use Cruzcat to find more.

Encyclopedia of African American History	McHenry Reference E185 E54 2006 v.1-3
Encyclopedia of Racism	McHenry Reference E184 A1 E773 2005 v. 1-3
African American Social Leaders and Activists	McHenry Reference E185.96 R88 2003
Encyclopedia of African American Society	McHenry Reference E185 E546 2005 v. 1-3
Chronology of African-American History...	McHenry Reference E185. H64 1991
Encyclopedia of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era	McHenry Reference E661 E53 2005 v. 1-3
Encyclopedia of the Harlem Literary Renaissance	McHenry Reference PS153 N5 B675 2006
Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance	McHenry Reference PS153 N5 A24 2003
W. E. B. Du Bois: an Encyclopedia	McHenry Reference E185.97 D73 W164 2001
Notable Black American Women	McHenry Reference E185.96 F2 1997
The Harvard Guide to African American History	McHenry Reference E185 H326 2001

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Selected Web Sites

African American World - PBS website, browse the site, select "reference room" link for people or topic overviews or select "resources" link for paths to other websites of interest.
The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords - a sub-site of the African American World site, includes brief biographies of writers/editors and descriptions, histories of the papers.
In Motion The African American Migration Experience - website produced by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Site includes many images, maps, scans of original texts, timelines, bibliographies, coverage from slave trade through present.
Harlem 1900-1940 Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture - New York Public Library Schomburg Center produced site. Site includes bibliographies, timelines, and brief biographies.
American Memory - Library of Congress site. Contains brief overviews of topics, biographies and links to pamphlet collections (primary source material).
Five Views An Ethnic Historic Site for the State of California - California Department of Parks and Recreation Office of Historic Preservation sponsored site. Overview of history of African Americans in California and a "selected" bibliography.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute - Stanford University affiliate. The institute is pulling together and publishing MLK's papers. Click on the King Papers Project link and browse the individual links listed under each volume. Bibliographies, brief biographies and titles of collections produced by the center, are all available for your perusal.
Documenting the American South - University Library of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill project includes texts, oral histories, interviews and songs that document the history of the American south. Search under collections for links to oral histories of the civil rights era, for example.
Archives of African American Music and Culture - Indiana University (IU) managed archive site. The external resources site provides a nicely organized list of musical genres and IU vetted external internet sites.
MOAD Museum of the African Diaspora - museum based in San Francisco, a repository of information about the diaspora. Click on press releases and news for full text links to information about the museum exhibits.

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Recommended Databases

Project Muse - This searchable database contains online access to the full-text of over 100 scholarly journals in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.
Subject area(s): ['Art and Art History', 'Humanities', 'Science and Engineering', 'Social Sciences']. Coverage varies.

JSTOR - A searchable database containing the full-text of back issues of more than 160 academic journals.
Subject area(s): ['Humanities', 'Science and Engineering', 'Social Sciences']. Coverage: Archival. Latest three years are not available.

PAO - Formerly titled PCI Full Text. This searchable database contains citations for articles in over 230 periodicals in the humanities and social sciences. Full text is available for all articles. Technical note: Internet Explorer for Macintosh does not properly display full text of PCI articles. Please use Netscape or another browser on Mac computers.
Subject area(s): ['Humanities', 'Social Sciences']. Covers: 1770 - 1995

Expanded Academic - Infotrac - EA ASAP from Infotrac, formerly known as the Magazine and Journal Articles database or MAGS, contains citations for articles in popular magazines and scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and general sciences. Legal, business, and health journals are also included. Many records have abstracts and full text.
Subject area(s): ['Art and Art History', 'General Subjects', 'Humanities', 'Science and Engineering', 'Social Sciences']. Covers: 1980-present.

African American Newspapers : the 19th Century - Searchable database from Accessible Archives consisting of the full-text of the following newspapers: Freedom's Journal, March 1827 - March 1829; The Colored American, January 1837 - December 1841; The North Star, December 1847 - April 1851; The National Era, January 1847 - March 1860; Provincial Freeman, 1854-1857; Frederick Douglass Paper, 1851-1859; and The Christian Recorder,1861 - 1902.
Subject area(s): ['Humanities', 'Social Sciences']. Coverage varies, 1827 - 1902.

America History and Life - Historical coverage of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. Contains citations and abstracts for articles, book and media reviews, and dissertations. The database also includes CLIO Notes, which guides the user through chronologies and brief summaries of significant events and themes in American history.
Subject area(s): ['Humanities', 'Social Sciences']. Covers: Articles written 1964 - present.

Sociological Abstracts - This searchable database citations for articles from journals, books, conference papers, and dissertations in sociology and other social and behavioral sciences. Citations after 1974 contain abstracts. Publisher is Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA).
Subject area(s): Social Sciences. Covers: 1963 - present

MLA - This searchable database contains citations for articles, books, and book chapters in literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Compiled by the Modern Language Association.
Subject area(s): Humanities. Covers: 1963 - present

Ethnic Newswatch - Searchable collection of full-text newspaper and journal articles. Available in English or Spanish. News, culture and history from the ethnic, minority and native press.
Subject area(s): Social Sciences. Covers: 1995 - present, some historical coverage of 1960-1989.

PAIS - The Public Affairs Information Service contains citations and short abstracts for journal articles, books, conference proceedings, government documents, and statistical directories. Subjects include government, international relations, legislation, political science, statistics, and related areas. Publisher is Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA).
Subject area(s): Social Sciences. Covers: 1972 - present, abstracts start at 1985.

Select the Newspaper link from the library research page for a list of on-line newspaper options, historical and current.

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Cruzcat

Start with a keyword search in cruzcat.
Use the keywords you gathered through searching in the encyclopedias and web pages in cruzcat.
Make note of the subjects cruzcat uses to describe your topic; link from the subject headings
If your topic is a person, try searching for your person as a subject in cruzcat, ex. Du Bois, W.E.B.
Use the modify or limit/sort button to focus your search
Send successful searches to your email account - put the keywords you used in the message line to remind yourself of how you found the item

Some sample subject headings:

African Americans (this will net a large number of results, look at sub-headings to narrow the search)
African Americans - Biography
African Americans - Civil Rights
African Americans - History 1877-1964
Black Power
Harlem Renaissance
Race Discrimination

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Statistics

Statistical Record of Black America - McHenry Reference E185.5 S73 (3rd ed.)
Black Americans: A Statistical Source Book - McHenry Reference E185.86 B48 2001
Historical Statistics of Black America - McHenry Reference E185 H543 1995

For additional help with statistics, try the library's How to find Statistics web page.

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Citation Guides

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Contact Kerry Scott (scottk@ucsc.edu). Updated 10 January 2007.

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