Week 2 Research Assignment – Searching in News Databases

Week 2 Research Assignment

  • First, spend some time exploring the research databases on our Links for Historical Research. I’d like you to get to know the way these work. It may also be helpful to read the Rampolla on “Working With Sources” assigned for Friday. Also, you should have already created a HIST 201 News folder in OneDrive and shared it with me. In that folder you can create a Week 2 Research folder. Then…
  • Your assignment is to complete a short annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources on a news topic.
  • Do some initial research – searching in three separate news databases
    • these could include the following: the London Times Archive, the New York Times Archive, African American Newspapers, the Japan Times, any one of the news archives among the Proquest databases, Chronicling America at the Library of Congress
    • identify one news item in each of three different databases. (How to choose? Pick anything that interests you). Ideally, at least one of your news items will come from before 1900. Maybe find one from the 1700s, one from the 1800s, and one from the 1900s
    • download a pdf of the source to save in your research folder
  • Now write your bibliography
    • Under the heading “Primary Sources”
      • add a citation to the source
      • add a short description of the source – one sentence will do – under each citation
    • Under the heading “Secondary Sources”
      • add a citation to the Kovarik book
      • add a short description of the source – one sentence will do – under the citation
  • Use Chicago style bibliography format. Follow examples in Rampolla – or see the “Chicago Guide” at Purdue OWL.
  • For an example of excellent annotations, see a model Annotated Bibliography – from a Senior IS – linked on our Handouts page
  • See the copyright page for Kovarik – linked here – for the details for the bibliographical citation. Actually, I’ll make this easier for you and provide the correct citation. Note that we allow leaving off the place of publication for contemporary publishers. And note that bibliographical citation looks different from a footnote citation.
    • Kovarik, Bill. Revolutions in Communication: Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital Age. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
  • Due by midnight before class (Thursday night, Friday morning)
  • Upload to Moodle in pdf format