this is a history course. This is a library assignment. everything is on the word file part by part. i have attach everything for this assignments. If you read the instruction you will understand ever
ASSIGNMENT 2
Library Research Assignment
This assignment is to be submitted in WORD format!
Throughout your studies at the University, one task you will be asked repeatedly to complete both in history courses and in other courses, is the production of a formal research paper. Research papers, as the name implies, require that you spend a certain amount of time doing research on a specific topic. This means going to the library and using printed and online resources to find information about your topic. If you have never written a university level paper before, knowing how to find material, how to sort through it to determine what is appropriate, how to organize it and pull it all together in a paper, and how to cite sources correctly can be challenging.
This assignment is intended to introduce you to the resources and methods of historical research. The idea is to help you to become familiar with the library as a resource for researching various topics. You will also learn how to make effective and responsible use of internet-based resources. In this course, we will, focus on historical topics but the skills you develop for this assignment can be used in other courses and assignments, as well as in the workplace.
This assignment serves multiple purposes, at the end of which you will be able to:
Refine techniques for defining and narrowing research topics.
Become familiar with the U of M’s Library 'Find materials' search tool.
Use a range of library resources at the University of Manitoba, including web based resources.
Use finding aids for historical research.
Find historical monographs and academic journal articles.
Skim large amounts of material for relevant information.
Critically evaluate and summarize material you have located through research.
Cite material in an appropriate CMS bibliographic format.
Avoid plagiarism.
The final product for this assignment will constitute the first stages of a research paper. You will not be required actually to write a paper in this assignment. But, you can use these methods learned now later when you are researching materials for Assignments 5 and 6.
Due date: Consult the table “Assignments due dates” in the course syllabus.
Notes
Start this assignment early to allow time for library materials to be sent to you by UML staff.
If you have any difficulties accessing the materials you need for this or any other assignment, do not hesitate to contact your instructor or the UML staff.
Instructions for library assignment
Read through each section below very carefully and complete the ‘Task’ at the start of each section. You must follow the instructions laid out below exactly. Pay careful attention to detail and fill in any forms as requested. If you have any questions, please contact the instructor immediately.
If you are close to the University of Manitoba campus, try to visit the Dafoe Library where you can make use of the Reference Librarians. They will be able to help you locate reference materials such as indexes, and will also be able to assist you with online searching. If you are away from Winnipeg contact the library for assistance on-line or if you have access to another large academic library in your location contact its librarians for assistance.
Begin by locating the Library Assignment Sheets at the end of this assignment called Worksheets # 1, #2, #3.
Directions
I. Pick a topic
| Task for part I | Select a general topic from the list |
Select one of the following general topics as your starting point:
| The Old Babylonian Empire | Martin Luther | Revolutions of 1830 |
| The Egyptian Empire | The English Reformation | Karl Marx |
| The Persian War | John Knox | Revolutions of 1848 |
| Classical Sparta | Ignatius Loyola | German Unification |
| The Peloponnesian War | The Spanish Inquisition | Victorian England |
| Macedonian Conquests | Witchcraft | The Crimean War |
| Women in Ancient Greece | The Counter-Reformation | Italian Unification |
| Roman Religion | The Revolt of the Netherlands | Imperialism in Africa |
| The Origins of Christianity | The Thirty Year’s War | Imperialism in Asia |
| The Byzantine Empire | Peace of Westphalia | World War I |
| The Origins of Islam | The English Civil War | The Treaty of Versailles |
| The New Barbarian Kingdoms | Louis XIV | The League of Nations |
| Feudalism | The Dutch Republic | The Russian Tsars |
| The Crusades | The Glorious Revolution, 1688 | The Russian Revolution |
| Carolingian Government | Portuguese Voyages to Africa | Vladimir Lenin |
| Medieval Universities | Crime in Early Modern England | The Great Depression |
| The Hundred Years War | Aristocracy in the Old Regime | Fascism in Italy |
| The Black Death | Mercantilism | Benito Mussolini |
| Medieval Italian Cities | Scientific Revolution | Fascism in Interwar Germany |
| The Italian Renaissance | Robert Walpole | Adolph Hitler |
| The Northern Renaissance | The Enlightenment | The Spanish Civil War |
| The Spanish Conquests | Voltaire | World War II |
| Christopher Columbus | The French Revolution | The Holocaust or Shoah |
| Conquistadors | The Napoleonic Wars | The Cold War |
| Christian Humanism | The Agricultural Revolution | The Korean War |
| Calvinism | Romanticism | The Vietnam War |
| Galileo | The Industrial Revolution | The 1970s Energy Crisis |
| Isaac Newton | Liberalism | The Velvet Revolutions of 1989 |
II. Preliminary research
| Task for part II: | Find 10 books on your topic and create precise bibliographic reference sheets in CMS format for the 5 most relevant of them |
Consult the Index in your textbook to find your topic and read the relevant page(s) to get a general sense of it.
Check the ‘Recommended Reading’ section at the end of the chapter in your textbook where your topic is covered for any suggested books that may deal with your topic (Note: the textbook provides annotated bibliographies at the end of each chapter—important for later).
Using the U of M 'Find materials' search 10 books on your topic, then retrieve them from the shelves or fill out the Off-Campus Services request form. If you go to the library in person, and you find that any books you need are signed out to someone else, put a reserve on them to have them recalled for you. If you fill out the Library Request Form, the UML staff will attempt to provide the material you need.
Skim read your 10 books to make sure they really are relevant to your topic. View the PowerPoint presentation in your Tool Box package called: “Reading for Success with SQ3R 2016A” to assist your skimming techniques and for the type of reading needed for the rest of this assignment.
Create a reference sheet for what you consider the best 5 books following this format:
1. Author’s Last Name, First Name. 2. Location code (e.g. JS 3051 E29 1997)
3. Title of the Book (Italicized). 4. Library Name.
5. Place of Publication: 6. Name of Publisher.
7. Year of Publication
Example reference sheet:
| Eastwood, David JS 3051 E29 1997 Government and Community in the English Provinces, 1700–1870 Dafoe Library London: Macmillan 1997 --------------- Write a page of notes below the Bibliographic reference in point form or in paragraphs. Do this for each of the 5 selected books.
|
III. Narrowing your topic
| Task for part III | Complete "Sheet #1"by narrowing your general topic to a research topic and question |
The topics given in the list in Part I are far too big to be covered in one essay. You need to narrow down your topic from the very broad and general to something narrow and specific. The way to do this is to come up with a research question. That is, a question that deals with an aspect or sub- section of your big topic, and that can be answered by doing some research.
Example:
Large topic: World War II
Narrower topic: Germany’s invasion of Russia.
Research question: Why did Germany’s invasion of Russia fail?
Now go back to the library to do research on your narrow, more manageable topic. But more importantly, you can now read your sources with a purpose in mind. Read the books to find out what they say in answer to your research question. Suddenly, you do not need to read the whole book cover to cover. Use the book’s table of contents and the index at the back of the book (if there is one) to find the specific pages that might be of help. Skim read other parts of the books that might be relevant. As you do so, make notes of relevant points. You may find that some of your books have nothing to say to help answer your newly revised research question; so, find others.
IV. Using academic journals
Expand your search from just books (also called “monographs”) to include academic journals. Most students rely on books alone to write their research essays. But there is much to be found in shorter, more detailed, types of writing such as essays or articles in academic journals.
Academic journals are published in many different fields of history. They are places where historians publish their latest research papers. The articles in journals are often very specific, dealing with a particular person, problem, event, theme, institution, war, movement, strike, and so on. They are very useful for giving a detailed account of the past, often in more detail than can be found in books.
Journal articles are also heavily footnoted. These footnotes give references to both the primary and secondary sources that the author has used for his or her research.1 Sometimes footnotes are used to say something that does not really flow in the text, as in footnote 1 below. But most often, footnotes are a way of saying “if you don’t believe me, look here” or “this document or this book is the source of this quote or opinion I’m citing.” Footnotes allow scholars to draw information and interpretations from each other’s work, while giving due credit for the ideas or information or interpretations they borrow. Footnotes help avoid a charge of plagiarism.
a. Finding journals and articles
| Task for part IVa: | Search 3 or more of the online databases to find 3 journal articles related to your research question. You may have to try various key words in the search boxes to find something. Some journals are available directly on line and you can search them individually for articles concerning your topic. Do not choose a book review by mistake. Enter the names of the indexes or databases you consulted on Sheet #2 following the examples below. Record the keywords you used to search for articles on your topic. Record the detailed reference to a relevant article (author, name of article, journal name, volume & number, year, pages,). |
Example: (Note the title of the Journal is in italics)
| Database used | Keyword(s) searched | Selected result |
| JSTOR | ‘Coal, energy, world war’ | “The Importance of Energy in the First and Second World Wars” W.G. Jensen Historical Journal v.11 no.3 (1968):538-54. |
| Project Muse | ‘Stalin AND children’ | “Communist Custodial Contests: Adoption Rulings in the USSR after the Second World War” Bernstein, Laurie. Journal of Social History 34:4 (Summer 2001), pp. 843-861. |
| Historical Abstracts On Line | ‘John Knox’ | “The Rhetoric of Biblical Authority: John Knox and the Question of Women Author(s)”, S. Felch Sixteenth Century Journal 26:4 (1996): 805-22. |
1 Remember that primary sources are the original evidence of the events created at the time, like letters, diaries, newspapers, government papers, and so on; secondary sources are other books or articles written by historians about the topic.
To find articles of relevance to your research question, you must consult a list or catalogue of all articles listed by topic. You should learn how to use online searchable databases listed under Databases A-Z.
You will be asked to enter your Library ID number (on your library card) and your PIN. Follow the instructions on the User Authentication page to get or change your PIN number.
Five good online databases for history that we can access on E-Library are:
JSTOR (Select “Advanced Search”, then tick the “Article” box after “These Types: “then scroll down and tick the relevant boxes after “These Discipline(s) and/or journals:” In most cases you will only need to check the “History” box.)
Project Muse
EBSCOhost (tick Academic Search)
Historical Abstracts/ America: History and Life
Humanities Full Text
The electronic indexes replace the older, printed catalogues which are still available in the reference section of the library. These are good for finding material published before about 1995. Two useful ones for historians are:
Historical Abstracts
Social Sciences Citation Index
b. Deconstructing an article
| Task for part IVb: | Select and download the most helpful article and save it in WORD format. Using the highlighting feature in your WORD programme, identify the authors’ thesis statement, that is, the sentence or two where they explain what they will try to point out in the article. Write/Type ‘Thesis Statement’ in the margin. Some authors are explicit: “In this article, I will show that…”. Others are less direct in their writing so you might have to read it a number of times to figure out what the main point, argument or thesis of the article is. Usually, authors make their intentions clear within the first few pages of the article. If they haven’t done so by then, it’s a good sign that, perhaps, this is not an article worth reading. |
Skim read the text and carefully examine the footnotes or endnotes of the articles to select the one that is most relevant to your research question, and contains references to both primary and secondary sources. Make sure you have found research articles and not book reviews. Contact the course instructor if you are not sure. Save the article with your highlighted and marked comments.
c. Primary sources
| Task for part IVc: | In the same article, highlight one example of a footnote reference to a primary source and one example of a footnote to a secondary source from the pages of the article. Indicate each example by writing ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ in the margin. |
Besides relying on what other historians have said about the topic in books or articles (secondary sources) historians like to look at the actual evidence—the records or documents—from the period in question, the so-called “primary sources.” You should be able to distinguish between primary and secondary sources when you read books and articles. Usually this is quite clear from the text itself. The footnotes also play a role in identifying the primary documents by giving the title and other information about where the primary sources may be found.
d. Mining the footnotes
| Task for part IVd: | Identify 2 more secondary sources in the footnotes of your chosen article. Then create 2 more reference note sheets from these two items as you did with your initial top five books in Part II. Put a full bibliographic reference of the source at the top of the page and a full page of notes below in point form or paragraphs. Do this for each source. Note: When citing journal articles, the title of the article should be enclosed in quotation marks, while the title of the journal should be italicized. |
Now that you can identify examples of both primary and secondary sources in the footnotes of an article, look through all of the footnotes in your chosen article and find two more secondary sources that you have not yet seen (either books or articles) and add them to your working bibliography.
Underline or highlight these two new secondary sources in the footnotes or endnotes of your selected article. Look these two items up in One Stop Search. If the University of Manitoba Libraries do not hold one or both of these items, select other items from the article’s footnotes that we do hold.
V. Analyzing and summarizing the article
| Task for part V: | In a very brief essay (400–500 words or two double-spaced pages maximum), explain what your chosen article is about, what the main evidence is, and what the author tries to prove. You can also say whether or not you think the author makes a good or convincing argument. Be sure to give full identification of the article at the top of the page and centre the words Article Summary below the Article’s ID. |
So that you do not have to go back and re-read it from beginning to end at some later point, it is helpful to write a brief synopsis of the article you have been working with. It is also necessary to note what the author is arguing and how she or he has tried to prove the case.
Congratulations! You have now done a serious amount of research for your topic.
VI. Create an annotated bibliography
| Task for part VI: | Following a full and proper citation of each work, using the style for bibliographies set out immediately below, create three annotated bibliographic entries: one for the article you have been working on, and two more for two of your top five books on your topic. |
An annotated bibliography is a list of books or articles that includes a brief description or summary of the item at the end.
For example,
Porter, Roy. The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.
Traces impact of major British intellectuals in the eighteenth century. Names the great thinkers and what they advocated. Useful for Enlightenment background.
Elliott, Dyan. “Seeing Double: John Gerson, the Discernment of Spirits, and Joan of Arc.” American Historical Review 107:1 (February, 2002): 26–54.
Theoretical examination of discourse of spiritual discernment—the ability to discern between divine and diabolical inspiration—for late Medieval women. Helps understand the climate of belief at the time.
VII. Create a regular bibliography
| Task for part VII: | List all 10 of the books and journal articles you used in the course of this assignment in a formal bibliography, using the CMS format set out in Storey and Jones, Writing History: A Guide for Canadian Students, 4th Ed., OUP, 2016, pp.158-170. |
Now that you are familiar with the proper form of a bibliography, your task is to create one from the materials you have consulted for this assignment. Re-read relevant pages in Storey and Jones, Writing History: A Guide for Canadian Students, 4th Ed., OUP, 2016, if you are unsure how to document correctly your sources in a Chicago Manual Style (CMS) bibliography.
There should be 10 items in your bibliography: the initial top 5 books, 3 journal articles, and 2 items (books or articles) from the footnotes of one of the articles.
Your bibliography should follow the exact order, form, and punctuation set out in the examples in Storey and Jones, Writing History: A Guide for Canadian Students, 4th Ed., OUP, 2016 .
Be sure to proofread and double check this section against the models in Storey and Jones very carefully.
You will lose ½ mark for each error, no matter how minor, in this section.
VIII. Complete Sheet #3: Assignment Checklist
| Task for part VIII: | Complete the checklist on Sheet #3 for this assignment. Proofread your assignment. Answer yes or no in the correct column. Include this completed sheet at the end of assignment #2 submission. Your instructor will grade it and return it to you in your UMLearn dropbox. |
Read through the items on the checklist on Sheet #3 and double check that you have fulfilled each ‘Task’ exactly as specified.
Final hints and reminders:
Run through the checklist for assignments.
It is possible to earn full marks for this assignment if you are careful and follow the directions.
Be sure to use one merged document with page breaks for each part of the assignment, and place each part in order of the checklist sheet. Submit the whole merged document including the journal article in WORD format so it can be marked and returned to you in your dropbox.
If you have any questions, please contact the course instructor as soon as possible.
Due date: Consult the table “Assignments due dates” in the course syllabus.
Tips for Assignment #2
Assignment #2, a Library Research Assignment, is designed to develop your skills in collecting appropriate sources to use in writing an academic essay. It is recommended that you complete it as your second assignment and not later in the course. The methods it gets you to follow will be useful in all your subsequent assignments.
Regarding completing Sheet #3 - Checklist, pay attention to the number of marks allocated for each part. More marks require more material from you.
An example of this idea would concern Part II. As it is worth 25 possible marks, Part II requires more than just listing 5 bibliography references for 5 books. You need to offer a page of summary notes for each book headed by its bibliographic reference.
By following this step-by-step process it is hoped that you will get in the habit of using it for all your research essays. When later writing the two longer papers in this course you will be able to keep organized your notes made on each of your 8-10 sources both primary & secondary, both books & articles you have found & determined will be most useful to help write your essays.
