Day 3
JSTOR is probably the best history database that UMUC offers, but it is also one of the most complicated. Don't let me scare you with these words. Once you figure out the formula for concluding successful searches, you will find navigating through JSTOR is rather easy.
1. When the JSTOR opening page appears, click on "Search."
2. The JSTOR Search menu appears and you see a search engine and three links
next to that search engine.
3. Click on the first of those three links. It is entitled "Advanced Search."
a. You need to scroll down to the check list options.
b. Be sure to check "Articles."
c. Now scroll down further and check "History."
d. Those doing research on Russian history should also check "Slavic Studies."
e. Those researching ancient history should check "Ancient Studies."
f. Other potential categories "African American studies" and "American Indian Studies."
Finding a topic:
Let us say you are looking for information on farm life during the American colonial period. After scrolling down and placing a check by the history option, you do the following:
a. Scroll back to the top of the page.
b. In the top search bar type in colonial farmers. Be sure the box on the right displays the full-text option.
c. Now click search. You will find three or four useful articles popping up.
Refining the topic
Sometimes a search brings up too many articles. If I used "Hitler" in the search engine, I would get thousands of articles. Many of these articles are of no value to me since authors writing about current foreign affairs, or even art and literature, occasionally have Hitler's name embedded somewhere in the text. I can change the search a bit, though, by looking for Hitler in an article title, citation or abstract. This technique would weed out the thousands of articles where Hitler's name appears as an aside. How is this new search conducted?
a. Enter Hitler in the first Search engine block. Change the full-text option on the right to "title."
b. Enter Hitler again in the second Search engine block. Be sure to change the option block on the left to "OR." Now go to the right and change the full-option text to "abstract."
c. Follow the same strategy in the third block. Be sure to change the left block to OR and the right block to "caption."
You are set. You can vary the above formula. If, for instance, you
wanted only articles with Hitler's name in the title, you would follow the
directions for "a" above and leave the other search engine blocks
empty.
One last Note:
JSTOR focuses on articles written by professional historians
and is probably the best database for students to use. Sometimes JSTOR puts students off. The reason is that the authors
usually begin their articles with a rundown on previous scholarship. If
an author discusses, for instance, George Patton's 1944 offensive in Northern
France, the author normally presents earlier historical interpretations
of Patton's march. Only then does the author give his or her newer thesis
or interpretation. This form of presentation, as I said, bothers some students.
The thing to do is read through the rest of the work in order to get to
the thesis of the article. JSTOR presents the
cutting edge of historical scholarship and it is a database that students
cannot afford to bypass. (Go back to preceding page:
Topic)