HIST 367:
Jewish Identities in the Modern World
Fall 2008 · Professor Frances Malino

Contents:

Find background information
Find books
Find scholarly journal articles
Find primary sources
Evaluating what you find

• $300 award for a paper or project of any length from a 100 or 200 level Wellesley College course (2 awards)
• $750 award for a paper or project of any length from a 300 level Wellesley College course, excluding 360s, and 370s (1 award)
• Deadline: April 1, 2008

• Encyclopedia of American Jewish History
• Encyclopedia Judaica
• Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia - Clapp Reference DS 115.2 .J49 1998
• Jewish-American History & Culture: An Encyclopedia - Clapp Reference E184 .J5 J48 1992
• Encyclopedia of Modern Jewish Culture - Clapp Reference D102.8 E56 2005

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles). Try the new Encore interface, or use our "classic" catalog search.

a few tips:

• use a keyword search for simple concepts
  
  - find a book that looks useful, click on the title, then click on the Full Record tab to see the subject terms
  - click on each subject term to find "more like this"
  - for example: keyword search "jewish identity" leads to the following subject terms (and many more books on the topic):
  
  
  • Jews -- Identity
  • Jews -- Cultural assimilation
  • Jews -- [country name] -- Identity
  • Jews -- [country name] -- History [could also add time period]
  
  
• use Advanced Search and combine multiple concepts using AND for best results
• use synonyms to find all the ways your topic is expressed  (streets or avenues or boulevards)
• use truncation to save time (plan* for planning, planner, plans)
• use parentheses to enclose each concept string
  

Some more useful subject headings for this course might be:

• Jews, East European -- United States -- History
• Jews, German -- United States -- History
• Jews, Soviet -- New York State -- New York -- Social Conditions
• Jews, Russian -- United States -- History
• New York (N.Y.) -- Ethnic relations
  

• if our copy of a book is checked out, click on the NExpress button to request a book quickly (2-4 days)
• Search WorldCat to find material we don’t own, click on and request through ILL (interlibrary loan)
• use the same subject terms in WorldCat as you find in our catalog
• In a hurry? Get a BLC card and borrow the book directly from a nearby library

tips:

• to find the full text of an article, click on the title for the full record, then look for the Find It! @ Wellesley button to link to the full text (online if we have it, or in print, or to the Interlibrary loan request if we don't own the journal)
  
  
• do your searching early and place interlibrary loan requests NOW for books and articles we don't have -- then, when you're ready to start reading and writing, you'll have a great selection of materials. If you wait, your choices will be very limited.

the most useful databases

• America: History & Life
        - index to articles on all aspects of American history; limit by the time period of interest
• Historical Abstracts
        - index to articles on world history from prehistory to present; limit by the time period of interest
• ATLA Religion Database with ATLA Serials
        - index to articles on all religions, with full text from over 80 major journals in the field
• RAMBI
        - index to articles on Jewish studies, from the Jewish National and University Library
        - tip: search book and journal titles in our catalog to see if we have them
• MLA International Bibliography
        - index to all things literary - all genres, all cultures, all languages
• Bibliography of Asian Studies Online
  
  
• Periodicals Index Online
        - index to articles published in over 4500 journals in the humanities & social sciences in 40 languages, 1665 to 1995
• Project Muse
        - full text academic journals in the humanities & social sciences, from the past five years - see JSTOR for prior years
  
• JSTOR
        - full text of scholarly articles in all fields, up to 3 to 5 years ago (not recent articles)
  
• Academic Search Complete
        - broad, multidisciplinary database of both popular and scholarly articles, mostly fulltext
        - tip: limit to peer-reviewed articles or select the "Academic Journals" icon above your search results
  

Primary sources are original, uninterpreted information, such as firsthand accounts of events in letters, diaries, interviews, or historical news reportage; original works of fiction, art, or music; research reports or data; testimony, speeches, etc.

How to Read a Primary Source - Patrick Rael, Bowdoin College

• digitized historical newspapers
       - see complete list in our News guide
• autobiographies, memoirs, letters
       - use WorldCat to locate these (contact me if you don't find what you need).
• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries & Oral Histories
       - searchable database of personal narratives, including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories, 1840 to present, with an emphasis on 1920-1980
• EuroDocs
       - huge site of transcribed primary sources and images, some in translation
• Jewish Women's Archive
       - online primary sources, mostly focused on North American Jewish women
  

Criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using soures:

• Accuracy - Does the author cite her/his sources and are they legitimate?
• Authority - Who wrote the source? Is s/he credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias - political, religious, commercial or otherwise?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?

Wellesley College Library · Information Services · Laura Reiner · last modified: October 27, 2008