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SUNY Geneseo Fraser Hall Library Subject Guides


HIST 302 Urban History -- Professor Babovic: Library Session, September 9, 2019

Start with this activity

Examine the book given to you in class, then evaluate it using the criteria below (and jot down some notes for later).

Is the book a primary source? Is the author writing about a personal experience (it is a "first person" account)? What date was it written and what date was it published? Are there reproduced documents or letters? Is there data? Does the book have both primary source material AND secondary source material?

Is this book scholarly or aimed at a popular audience? Is the author (or editor) a scholar? Who is the intended audience for the book? Is the tone chatty & friendly or scholarly & filled with jargon unique to a field? Is the book a collection of essays/chapters written by many different scholars? Are there footnotes or some other documentation?

Database Demo

Questions to answer on the google doc above:

What kinds of information does this resource contain?

What types of questions do you think that the resources in this database could answer?

How easy is it to use?

How easy is it to get to the full text of the materials?

Group 1----19th Century US Newspapers Digital Archive

Group 2----Google Newspaper Archive

Group 3----New York Times Article Archive

Group 4----Readers' Guide Retrospective

Group 5----Hathi Trust Digital Library

Group 6----Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

Group 7----Chicago Tribune

Group 8----Sabin Americana

Group 9----WorldCat Search in Glocat

Group 10---America: History & Life

Evaluating Books

Examine the book given to you in class.

Is the book a primary source? Is the author writing about a personal experience (it is a "first person" account)? What date was it written and what date was it published? Are there reproduced documents or letters? Is there data? Does the book have both primary source material AND secondary source material?

Is this book scholarly or aimed at a popular audience? Is the author (or editor) a scholar? Who is the intended audience for the book? Is the tone chatty & friendly or scholarly & filled with jargon unique to a field? Is the book a collection of essays/chapters written by many different scholars? Are there footnotes or some other documentation?

The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System
Challenging the Daley Machine: A Chicago Alderman's Memoir
The City in Late Imperial Russia
The Culture of Cities
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
A Documentary History of the Italian Americans
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape
Growing up in New City, New York, in the Early 1920's
Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir
How We Lived : A Documentary History of Immigrant Jews in America, 1880-1930
The Letters of Lewis Mumford and Frederic J. Osborn: A Transatlantic Dialogue
Letters of Louis D. Brandeis: 1870-1907 Urban Reformer
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Queer Sites: Gay Urban Histories Since 1600
The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover From Disaster
Sand Against the Wind: The Memoirs of John C. Dancy
Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities
When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor
Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder

Now use the library search bar to look up the title of the book assigned to you in class. Look at the subject headings, description, and table of contents, if available. Search for reviews of the book in the following resources: 

Assignment

By the end of class, complete Library assignment #1  using the link directly above this. Using Milne's research tools, identify and locate sources of the types listed below that address the meat-packing industry in late 19th and early 20th century Chicago.

Secondary sources

  • 1 scholarly monograph (books written by a single author)
  • 1 scholarly journal article

Primary Sources

  • 1 potential database (i.e., newspapers, collections, etc.)
  • 1 specific sources (i.e., a newspaper article, a novel, etc.)