I. REFERENCE RESOURCES
The Library Reference Collection has a number of print reference works that give introductions to the topics of immigration and ethnicity in United States history.
ETHNICITY & IMMIGRATION
Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups Atlas of American Diversity This Remarkable Continent Historical Statistics of the United States In addition, there are a number of reference works dealing with specific ethnic groups. These tools will give you overviews of ethnic experience in the United States, as well as refer you to other, more detailed studies.
SPECIFIC ETHNIC GROUPS
African American Atlas The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia Japanese American History Dictionary of Asian American History Latino Encyclopedia II. SEARCHING FOR BOOKS
The use of SUBJECT heading searches in the Library Catalog infoLINK (rather than relying on KEYWORD searching) will give you the most productive results when searching for books on your topic.
Books dealing with the topic of U.S. immigration in general will be found by entering the terms "United States Emigration and Immigration" (in this order) into the SUBJECT search box. Under this heading you will find a number of useful subheadings such as "Government Policy", "History", "Public Opinion" and "Statistics".
Books dealing with individual ethnic groups can be found one of two SUBJECT heading formats:
"Korean Americans"
"Koreans - United States"The difference between these two is that the first specifically refers to Koreans who have come to this country to settle permanently, while the second refers to Korean nationals who are living in the United States.
Books on the topic of ethnicity as a sociological/anthropological concept can be found under the SUBJECT heading "Ethnicity". You may also want to search under the following related terms:
"Acculturation"
"Assimilation"Also, look for the subheading "Ethnic Identity" under the heading for specific ethnic groups. For example:
"Italian Americans - Ethnic Identity"
III. SEARCHING FOR JOURNAL ARTICLES.
MetaLINK is the Library's gateway to finding journal articles and electronic resources.
Searching for journal articles will also be more efficient if you use the subject headings specific to the database you are in. These may or may not be the same subject headings used in the Library Catalog.
The main full-text periodical database for English-language, U.S. publications is Academic Search Premier. The database includes full text for more than 3,600 peer-reviewed publications and indexing and abstracting for more than 8,200 journals in nearly every academic field of study. Coverage varies by titles with the earliest back to 1975.
Subject headings in Academic Search Premier may differ slightly from those in infoLINK; others are identical. If the SUBJECT heading you searched for in infoLINK does not retrieve articles, try using the same words (or synonyms) as a KEYWORD search.
To limit your search to scholarly articles only, click the box marked " ".
If an article is not available full-text in the Academic Search Premier database, it may be available in another BU full-text database. If so, there will be a
icon that you can click on to take you to the full-text in the appropriate database. This routing program works in most of our journal article databases. If it is not available full-text,
If you wish (or need) to extend your search for articles beyond those available in Academic Search Premier , you should use the AMERICA: HISTORY & LIFE database. This is the most comprehensive database for United States history. It indexes all articles dealing with U.S. history, and also includes book reviews and dissertations.
Again, this database uses subject headings that may or may not be similar to ones used in the Library Catalog.
You may limit your search to journal articles only by entering "article" in the Document Type box on the Advanced Search screen.
Another unique feature of AMERICA: HISTORY & LIFE is the ability to search by time period on the Advanced Search screen.
V. INTERNET RESOURCES
Internet resources in American history may be found on the History. United States. database and the History Subject Resources page. In addition to the resources discussed above, you will also find:
AMERICAN PERIODICALS SERIES ONLINE 1740-1900 - Over 1,100 periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals. Actual coverage may go through 1940.
AMERICAN MEMORY PROJECT
On the Library of Congress website you will find the "American Memory" project. It is a collection of historical resources in the National Digital Library. You can search the collections by topic. The Library of Congress website also has many excellent guides to genealogical research, but no actual genealogical data. Also see the National Archives and Records Administration website for information on family history records at the National Archives.THE MAKING OF AMERICA - a joint project of Cornell University and the University of Michigan making available digitized print materials from the 19th century, which are full-text searchable. Holdings at the University of Michigan's website are at http://www.umdl.umich.edu/moa.
19TH CENTURY MASTERFILE - a citation-only database to 19th and early 20th century English-language periodical literature. Citations must be searched in infoLINK to see if we have access to the item; if not, then Interlibrary Loan may be used.
PERIODICAL CONTENTS INDEX - a citation-only database to periodical literature in Western European languages back to the late 18th century. Citations must be searched in infoLINK to see if we have access to the item; if not, then Interlibrary Loan may be used.
NEW YORK TIMES HISTORICAL BACKFILE - Full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue, 1851-2001.
These databases are primarily for finding secondary literature and do not generally provide access to primary source material (except newspapers) in the strict sense. However, since the materials were produced during the 19th or early 20th centuries, they may be considered to be primary sources in a broader sense, in that they are documents from these time periods.
There are a number of excellent collections of scholarly internet web pages linked from the History Subject Guide page, which is linked at the top of the History Subject Resources page. These include:
WWW-VIRTUAL LIBRARY - An excellent compilation of scholarly websites in history. Click on "United States" under "By Country and Region", then on "Ethnic Studies" under "By Historical Topics".
VOICE OF THE SHUTTLE - Another scholarly compilation of websites in all branches of humanities research. The two most relevant sections are "History", and especially "Minority Studies".
Genealogy-oriented Internet sites you may find useful (or just interesting!):
USGENWEB
A project to collect U.S. genealogical data on the Internet, organized by state and county. You may find something useful from your home county.FAMILY SEARCH INTERNET GENEALOGY SERVICE
THE internet site for doing genealogical research, not just in the United States but worldwide. This site is probably beyond the scope of your roots paper, but you may have fun searching for your own ancestors. If you don't already have forms with which to fill out your own family history, you can print them off this website. From the main page, click on "Search for Ancestors", then on the button for "Research Helps". Then, on the left, click on "Sorted by Document Type". The two forms you might find most useful are the "Family Group Record Form" and the "Pedigree Chart Form".
Ed Shephard, History Bibliographer, 777-2493