Library Assignments

Prior to our meeting on September 30, please take the tutorials entitled “Choosing a Database” and “Choosing Search Terms.” If you unfamiliar with the library’s catalog, you should also review the three modules under “Finding Books in the Waidner-Spahr Library.”

All tutorials under 5 minutes.

They are available here: http://libguides.dickinson.edu/tutorials

1 Comment

  1. Christine Bombaro

    Secondary Source Assignment
    Due Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2015
    Send to: bombaroc@dickinson.edu in Word

    In a few paragraphs, describe the document or documents you examined in the archives. Go to the Archives and review the collection if you need to. Who wrote the documents, when, and why? What topics/events are addressed in the documents? What is the significance of this collection?

    Add some context to the document(s) you examined in the Archives by creating an annotated bibliography of 5 secondary sources in the Chicago style of citation. Your bibliography should consist of the following types of secondary sources:

    • 1 book owned by Dickinson
    • 1 book you discover through WorldCat
    • 1 secondary journal article from either America: History & Life or Historical Abstracts
    • 1 scholarly journal article from any other database
    • 1 additional source of any type

    Note: This assignment is about finding secondary sources. Therefore, at this stage you may not include the following: items from the archives, autobiographies/personal memoirs, newspaper articles written at the time of events related to your archives document(s), book reviews, encyclopedia entries, or any other primary or tertiary/encyclopedic sources.

    Annotate each source you find, except the one from WorldCat. Your annotations must answer the following questions in complete sentences beneath each citation:

    • What is the author’s thesis or purpose for creating this source?
    • What evidence does the author use to support his/her thesis? How is the evidence used?
    • What are the author’s conclusions?
    • Why did you include this item? How specifically does it relate to and add context to your Archives document(s)? What did you learn from this source?

    Create footnote entries in the Chicago style for each item except the item from WorldCat. Choose specific pages to cite as an example for each entry. You should include a quote from the source in your annotation and use that as the basis for the footnote.

    Reflect upon this exercise. Consider all the sources you found and answer the following questions in essay style.

    • In what ways have these sources influenced your thinking or changed your original perception and understanding about your archives document(s)?
    • What questions did you consider about your topic as you created your bibliography?
    • What did you learn from this research experience?
    • What challenges did you encounter while creating the bibliography? How did you resolve them?

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