America in the Progressive Era
Spring 1998
4/4/98.
*note: most links available only
to those in Swarthmore College community.
One objective of this class is to introduce you to techniques of
historical research. The following provides a guide to steps you
should follow (to be modified according to your topic), and
bibliographic resources available, both in hard copy and on-line. For
the Progressive era, many primary materials must be located using
hard copy since early bibliographies, periodical guides, etc. are not
available on-line.
This sheet should be turned in with your term paper, with check marks
next to the sources you consulted. We shall also review them at the
final class. You obviously need not consult all but should at least
look at those that appear relevant to your topic.
HISTORIOGRAPHY.
Survey existing work on your topic (monographs, scholarly
articles, doctoral dissertations). In the first instance, you need
not, and probably should not, read this literature in detail, but
rather attempt to get a sense of the boundaries of work in the field,
and of what are the most important works in the field.
On-line. A complete list of journal indices available on-line
to the Swarthmore Community is on the Swarthmore Library
Home
page.See especially:
Books in Print .A database listing titles of books
presently available for purchase or recently out of print.
Enter via Swarthmore Library Index
page:
ContentsFirst Indexes contents page and holdings
information for nearly 12,500 journals in many fields. January 1990
to the present. Updated daily. Enter via Swarthmore Library
Index
page:
FirstSearch. offers access to over 40
databases providing citations to books, journal articles,
dissertations, scores, sound recordings,videos, films, manuscripts,
and other material. It also includes databases containing other types
of information such as corporate financial reports, conference
schedules, a world almanac, and telephone directories. Enter via
Swarthmore Library Index
page.
Lexis-Nexis. Useful mostly for current events. Helpful for
tracing recent discussion of issues that first arose in the
progressive era (e.g. antitrust). Click
here.
Trilogy . includes EconLit, Encyclopedia of
Associations (Gale), ERIC, Life Sciences, MathSci, MEDLINE, MLA,
Bibliography, PAIS, PsycInfo, and Sociofile. Sociofmost useful for
material relating to U.S.history in general, and Progressive Era.
Click
here.
Wilson Search. combines six indexes published by the H.W.
Wilson Co.: Art Index, Essayand General Literature Index, General
Science Index, Humanities Index, Readers' Guide to Periodical
Literature, and Social Sciences Index covering a basic array of
popular and scholarly sources. Via Tripod (telnet) or
WWW
WorldCat. The OCLC On-line Union Catalog. Over 36 million
records of many types of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries
around the world. Updated daily. Enter via Swarthmore Library
Index
page.
*note: useful summaries of literature on different topics appear
frequently in scholarly journals. To locate these try word searches
under "historiography" "topic." Above descriptions adapted with
thanks from the Swarthmore College Library Home page, which contains
listing of additional resources available on-line.
Hard Copy (mostly for titles pre-1985)
(a) Bibliography.
For guides to scholarly articles see International Guide
(1907- ) , later called the Index to Periodicals in the Social
Sciences and the Humanities, and most recently, separately as
Social Science Index and Humanities Index. Since the
mid-1980s these guides are available on TRIPOD on Wilson Search. More
detailed citations may be found in Combined Retrospective Index to
Periodicals in Political Science 1886-1974 [ref. JA1.+.A1.
C74, vols. 1-8]; Combined Retrospective Index to Periodicals
in Sociology 1895-1974 [ref. H1.+.C74, vols. 1-6]; and
Retrospective Index to Periodicals in History 1838-1974
[ref. D1.+.C74, vols. 1-6].. All are shelved reference
Alcove, Level II McCabe. The Reader's Guide to Periodical
Literature (1890-) indexes more popular periodicals. Ore general
guides to historical literature on individual topics see also:
American Historical Association Recently Published Articles. A
quarterly published separately since 1976, and before that at the
back of each issue of the American Historical Review
(available on-line at JSTOR). Groups articles in rather broad
categories, but has a more distinctly historical focus than the
periodical guides noted
above.
American Historical Association, Writings on
American History (1902-), an exhaustive listing until 1960, and
articles after that date.
Burns, Richard D. ed. Guide to American Foreign
Relations since 1780 (1983).
Friedel, Frank et al., The Harvard Guide to American History
(rev edn. 2 vols. 1974) [Ref.1236.F86];
United States Library of Congress, Guide to the Study of the
United States (1960, 1976) [Ref. Z1215.U7]
(b) Historiographical reviews
American Historical Association. AHA Pamphlets for Teachers of
History. These separate publications contains a summary of recent
scholarship in general areas such as American Labor. Most are now
outdated, but may b useful for older pre-1960s scholarship.They are
listed in our catalogue under "American Historical Association"
Pamphlets, and shelved together under D5.
Cartwright, William and Watson, Richard, eds. The Reinterpretation
of American History and Culture (1973). Individual scholars
review interpretations after 1960.
Foner, Eric , ed. The New American History (1990) the same for
the scholarship of the 1970s-80s.
Higham, John ed., The Reconstruction of American History
(1962) in effect summarizes the "consensus" historians' assault on
progressive historiography.
Kammen, Michael, ed. The Past Before Us (1980). A survey of
recent scholarship in American, European, and non-western history,
with emphasis on the scholarship of the 1970s.
PRIMARY SOURCES
For the purposes of this course, the following
are the most promising types of primary sources. The examples are
illustrative, not exhaustive. A limited number of primary sources
relevant to the progressive era are available on
line.
Autobiographies/collections of
letters. See American Autobiography
Bibliography: 1945-80 [Ref.CT220.+A43]; and Lee Ash,
Subject Collections (5th edn. Rev. 1978)
[Ref.Z688.A2A8], a guide to special book collections and
special subject emphases in Library
Government
documents (a) U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to
1970 (1975)
Manuscript
Collections (if applicable). See the Library
of Congress, Union List of Card Catalogues (1959). Includes
periodic subject indexes so you need not go through each
volume.[Ref.Z6620.U5N3]. Since some libraries and historical
societies, in the area and elsewhere, do not admit undergraduates to
their collections, you should phone before traveling to the
collection.
Newspapers.
For a relatively complete guide that includes library locations see
Union List of Serials (5 vols).
Periodicals.
For periodicals in McCabe arranged by chronological period see
Classes Server History 44 or WWW
(1860-1920) Complete text of several
historical-literary journals relevant to the progressive era are
on-line at Project
Muse or JSTOR
[Tricollege community only].
REVIEWS AND CITATIONS
. In connection with your reading, , you are
also encouraged to consult book reviews, as well as subsequent
citations of work. For guides to reviews see:
An Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities
(1960-) [ref. Z1002.I4. v 1-29]
Book Review Digest (1904-); Book Review
Index 1969-80, 1983-current [ref. z1002.B8].
Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in
Scholarly Journals 1886-1974 vols. 1-16 [Ref. z1035.+ A1.
C64]
Current Book Review Citations 1976-82.
[ref. 1035.A1C86]
National Library Service Book Reviews
1905-1974 [Ref. Z1035.A1N35x, vols. 1-6]
Humanities Index and the Social Science
Index. (cited above).
*For "citations" see Arts & humanities
citation index.( Philadelphia, Pa., Institute for Scientific
Information.) [ S McCabe Ref Z5579 .A75x :1976-1989] ; and
Social sciences citation index., (Philadelphia, Institute for
Scientific Information[ McCabe Ref Alc Z7163 .S8 : 1971- present
1993].
BIOGRAPHICAL
. To identify individuals see:
Dictionary of American Biography, ed. D.
Malone (20 vols, plus supp. Ref. E176.D56 (see Concise DAB for
brief listing of all entries)
Who Was Who (7 vols.) Ref.
E747.W579
Notable Americans (10 vols.) ed. R. Johnson
Ref. E 176.T9
National Cyclopedia of Am. Biog. , Ref.
176.N27 (see three part index for all entries).
Who's Who (current)
Biographical Dict. American Congress. Ref.
JK1010.A5 1961;
Notable American Women (3 vols.), Edward T.
James,. ed.
GENERAL
REFERENCE. Richard B. Morris,
Encyclopedia of American History (5th edn. 1976), puts it all
in chronological order and also has "topical" summaries. T. H.
Johnson, Oxford Companion to American History 1966 is
organized alphabetically..