NHD Tip of the Day #12: Copying Citations into NoodleTools

Click here.

NHD Tip of the Day #11: AP Archives

The Associated Press, a respected news 

agency (founded in 1846) , has launched a 

channel on YouTube which contains over 

500,000 minutes of AP coverage.

Click here.

NHD Tip of the Day #10: Museums and Historic Sites

See if there is a museum or historic site associated with your topic. There could be a lot of information posted such as on the website we found yesterday for the Bethlem Hospital Museum in England.

Emailing these sites with a request for help finding sources can also yield great results.

A few years ago one of our students need a document from the Walt Disney archives that was not available online; they scanned it for here. Don't be shy!

Examples

NHD Tip of the Day #9: Long and Short Term Impact

Remember your topic must have long and short-term consequences to be historically significant.

Some topics could be interesting but not significant. 

Here is an article that caught my eye this morning:

Someone is doing a project related to Mae Jemison (first African-American woman astronaut).

This article could be a source because it documents her continued impact on history.

NHD Tip of the Day #8: Wikipedia Images

Wikipedia is a good source of images.

If you find an image on Wikipedia, click on it to get more info.

Clicking the digital ID link brought me to the image at the Library of Congress. 

Cite the image from the LOC not Wiki!

All images of course are not from the LOC but Wikipedia will often give you lots of metadata that will help you track the image to its origin.

NHD Tip of the Day #7: TLCPL

There is a great search resource right in our backyard that we have been under-using.

Click here.

I did a search for "Belgian Congo".

The library owned 32 resources on the topic.

Then I clicked "Articles"

It found thousands of articles. I refined my search to Peer Reviewed.

The search yielded over 500 full-text scholarly articles.

By unchecking Peer Reviewed the database listed over 2,000 other articles (encyclopedia, popular magazines, etc.).

The TCPL is a great resource - USE IT!

NHD Tip of the Day #6: Focus of Your Sources

Not all of your sources will be focussed like a laser beam on your topic.

For example let's say you were doing 

"Lord Nelson's Encounter with Napoleon's Fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar"

Before you can get into this narrow topic you might need a source that is pretty broad and gives you some context (the "backstory") of the bigger picture. 

Broad - Like the sun shining on your topic.
Maybe something like this:

Then . . .

Narrower - Like a flashlight shining on your topic.
Zoom in a little tighter:

Finally . . .
Zoom in like a laser beam on your topic.

So . . . 

• Every one of your sources may not be exactly focussed on your topic. 
• You need other sources to inform you about the context of your topic and other background information.