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How to get to this page on the Internet  

Books -- In today's digitized, electronic world, there are various pathways to finding books on your topic.

Might as well start with Cabrillo College Library

Look for books on your topic. Often a keyword search works best. What did you find?

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Background information to get yourself oriented to your topic.  The library has many reference books on key research areas.

For your Greek project, here are some areas you'll want to browse:
C -- for example ref CB 351.M565 The Middle Ages: A Concise Encyclopaedia
D -- for example ref DE5.O94 The Oxford Classical Dictionary and ref DE59.C55 Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean:
Greece and Rome
G -- for example, ref GT513.H36 1962 Costumes Cavalcade
N -- for example, ref N31.D5 1996 The Dictionary of Art
PA -- for example, ref PA31.F4 Greek and Latin Authors, 800 B.C. -A.D. 1000
PN -- for example, ref PN50.L574 Literature and Its Time, and ref PN1701.D73 Drama for Students

In addition, for your Elizabethan England project, here are some areas you'll want to browse:
D -- for example, ref DA34.O93 1997The Oxford Companion to British History
G -- for example, ref GT507.C8 A Dictionary of English Costume
PR -- for example, ref PR2892.B69 Shakespeare A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Plays, His Poems, His
Life and Times

Another idea for researching elements of Greek Life -- look for books with the subject heading GREECE -- SOCIAL
LIFE AND CUSTOMS. For researching elements of life in England during the Elizabethan era, use this subject
heading: GREAT BRITAIN -- SOCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMS.

CREDO Reference is an online database of 415 major reference books -- From the Cabrillo College Library
homepage, click on Full Text Articles, then on CREDO Reference (in center column under Encyclopedias/Background
information). If you are coming in from off campus, you'll need to type in your library card number.

Electronic books The library has over 18,000 electronic books (eBooks). The amazing thing is that you search for
words used inside those books!

Suppose I were interested in how the printing press influenced the Protestant reformation. I could search the electronic
books with this search inquiry (the quotation marks hold the words together):

Your turn!

Look for a book on a topic of interest to you. What did you find?

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How do you find out what is in libraries in this area?

WorldCat.org   Suppose I had read this:

Luther wrote to the Pope: "'It is a mystery to me how my theses...were spread to so many places.' Printing had
changed all that, providing the means by which an obscure theologian could shake St. Peter's throne."

The passage comes from this book: Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001). That book is not in Cabrillo's library. Does any library in this area have it? I use
worldcat.org to find out!

It's at Santa Cruz Public Library! What if a book you need is at UCSC? You can get limited borrowing privileges at UCSC
-- but only if you first work with a Cabrillo College librarian to exhaust what we can help you find here. Your borrowing
privileges will end when your paper is due.

Use call numbers to browse!

Call numbers do two things: 1) They represent what the subject matter of the book is -- books on similar topics are thus
shelved near each other; 2) They uniquely identify every specific book -- no two books have exactly the same call number.

Suppose I were interested the brochures that were used in the Reformation to spread ideas. Robert Scribner's book For
the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation has the call number BR307.S464 1994 and
is shelved in the Main Stacks in this library.

I could go to the shelves and browse, using that call number as a place to start.

Academic libraries use the Library of Congress Classification system (affectionately known as LC) to give call numbers
to their books.

Many books in history are given call numbers beginning with the letter D. Click to go to Library of Congress Classification
Outline and look at the D section. Note that call numbers for books about Great Britain begin with DA, books about the
history of Spain begin with DP. Even Switzerland gets a whole subclass: DQ. Then all of Asia (which includes the Middle
East) is DS, all of Africa is DT.

The reason that it is like that is this: the LC Classification Schedules were devised to provide order to the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C. beginning in 1897. The library of 1.5 million volumes was moving to new quarters.
Dewey (of the Dewey Decimal System) refused to allow any alterations to his Classification Schedule. So, a new
system was created and letters were used as the first defining element. Classification was based on "literary warrant" --
if Library of Congress had books on a topic, a place in the classification schedule was created. The LC Schedule was
devised to represent the collection in the Library of Congress in the late 1890s. There weren't many books about Africa
and those other places.

Google Books

Google is wildly digitizing books. They have just passed the 12 million mark!   You get to them by going to
books.google.com. Currently, there is a publishers' lawsuit -- but it's being settled. Many books you can read cover to
cover. Some you can only read chapters of, and some just sentences. I can't wait till all the books are free!! Video of
a book scanner.

Books you can hold in your hands are wonderful! But, sometimes it is useful to know that you can search inside lots of
books to find something pretty specialized. For example, what if I were interested in seeing the text of that letter to the
Pope that Luther wrote, that was mentioned in the quote out of Wide as the Waters.

Suppose I wanted to read some more about the letter to the Pope that Luther wrote, that was mentioned above. I could
go to http://books.google.com and do a search for Luther "letter to the Pope" and nearly instantly, I get to parts of books
that discuss it, for example:

Still can't find books on your topic? Identify some titles that you would like, and we will try to borrow them for you on
interlibrary loan. May take a week or two, so plan ahead!

1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library
2. Click on Full text Articles  [If you are coming in from off campus, your user ID is your library card number] 
3. On the next screen, click on Academic Search Premier 
4. On the next screen, click to switch to Advanced Search
   
   
   
   
5. Click in the small box next to Full Text. This will limit your search to articles that are fulltext in the database. You
   might also want to click on Peer Reviewed; this will limit your search to more scholarly journals.
   
   
   
   
6. Type in your search terms.  Then click on Search 
   
   Here, for example, is a search for scholarly journal articles about the reformation and the printing press:
   
   

   
   Click an article title to get to the screen with full information about it. Note how you can click to print, to email, even to cite the article!
   
   
   
   Use Academic Search Premier to search for articles on your topic. What did you find?
   
   

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Getting to primary sources  
Historians distinguish between primary and secondary sources.  Primary sources are materials produced at the time
the events that you are studying took place, or materials generated by the historical actors themselves. They are first-hand
accounts in their original form, without having been arranged or interpreted by anyone else. Examples include speeches,
diaries, autobiographies, newspaper accounts written at the time, government records, and eyewitness reporting.

Secondary sources are accounts of the past written by non-participants. Examples include textbooks, most other books,
biographies, encyclopedias, interpretive journal articles. 

Sources of primary documents useful for this course -- online

Explore these sources. What did you find?

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Major Web resources

Finding Web Resources on Your Own

Since anyone can publish on the Web (and since it seems as though everyone does), it's important to
critically evaluate the Web resources you run across. Here are some hints for doing that:

Some useful criteria to use for evaluative purposes are:

Accuracy

Authority

Objectivity

Currency

Coverage

Some "tricks" to use in evaluating Web sites

1. Frequently, authors of Web pages include a date to indicate when the page was last updated. Look towards
the bottom of the Web page to see if there's a date. If there isn't a date, type this into the address bar and hit Enter
javascript:alert(document.lastModified)

2. Examine the domain name carefully. Usually, but not always, domain names in the U.S. that end in .com are
commercial, those that end in .gov are governmental, .edu is for educational institutions, and .org is for nonprofits
and other organizations.

3. Frequently, but not always, a tilde (the symbol ~) prior to a file name indicates that it is someone's personal
Web page. Some places on the Web are in the business of hosting personal Web pages. When a domain name
has geocities, angelfire, tripod, or aol in it, the Web page is probably a personal one.

4. If a site has a long file name, try taking off the last part of the URL to see the Web page or site to which it is
hooked.

5. If you're curious as to who owns a Web site, go to register.com and find out!

When using a search engine

• Use quotation marks (" ") to keep words in phrases together
• If you want the search engine to recognize a letter as a capital, capitalize it. Otherwise, use lower case
• Most search engines have an Advanced search mode which can help you do better, more precise
  searches

Getting to a list of Internet Search Engines

• Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage
• Click on Search the Internet
• Click on Search Engines

Explore the Web using Google. You might want to try Google's Advanced Search mode. What did you find?

 

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Some thoughts about finding the perfect research topic Research is an iterative process -- you search, and then
you re-search. Oftentimes, you know what you want to write a paper on, at least in a general way. But then, as you get into
it, you soon realize that topics have to be the "right size." If a topic is too broad, you get lost in generalizations. If a topic is
too narrow, sufficient information isn't available.

Or, think about different questions you could ask. In general, there are several kinds of questions of the who, what, where,
when, how and why variety. The who, what, where, and when are usually pretty easy; the how and why questions are the
tough, juicy ones.

Fact questions For example: When was the printing press invented, and by whom?

Probing questions For example, Richard Tarnas in his book The Passion of the Western Mind has written:
"Making the issue [of the Reformation] all the more threatening were the new power of the printing press and the
lucid persuasiveness of Galileo's vernacular Italian, undermining the Church's attempts to control the beliefs of
the faithful." What is meant by "Galileo's vernacular Italian" and how did that affect the spread of Protestantism?

Contrasting questions For example: The reformation played out differently in Germany as compared to Italy.
Why was that?

Citing your resources  

For information about citation styles use Style Guides. Remember that when you are using full text databases like
Academic Search Premier, you can click to get an already formatted citation.

You should be familiar with how to write citations for books, but you can also get already formatted citations for books at
WorldCat.org. You search for your book, and then bring up the record for it. This record will also tell you which libraries
have the book in relation to a Zip code. But the really cool think about WorldCat.org is that you can click to have the book
cited!! Sweet!

Resources generally about researching and writing academic papers:

You can use Google Books to look up chapters in books about researching and writing papers. Here are some
suggestions:

Transfer an image   The Web is rich in images. You'll want to know how to copy an image from the Web and insert
it into a Word document. If you can't do that in your sleep yet, this will tell you how. First, use one of the image databases
to find an image (any topic):

• To insert an image into a Word document:

Your image is there. Word is not PhotoShop (an expensive software program for altering images) -- you can't really
"doctor up" your image, but you can do some manipulations.

You can write next to and below the image. To put text around the image -- click on the image, go to Format -> Picture.
Click on Layout tab, and select the wrapping format you want. You can also, you'll note, change the size and do some
other minor alterations

How to get to this page on the Internet

M. Mangin and T. N. Smalley - updated 8/10 (gr)