Professors at Brandeis University are increasingly asking their students to use primary sources when writing their research papers. Finding primary source material, though, can be a challenge for even the most seasoned researcher. Often this material is hidden away in archives and special collections, or it is contained in microform collections, which can be hard to identify and difficult to use. However, the Brandeis University Libraries are taking several steps to make this complicated research process easier.

Detail from "De Maiorica Insula" from Isolario by G. Camcocio (1574)

When one mentions primary sources, one immediately thinks of archives and special collections. The Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections department in the Goldfarb Library has extensive collections for those seeking original primary sources. The University Archives collects materials produced by the faculty, staff, and students of Brandeis University. Special Collections includes rare books, literary manuscripts of European and American authors, the papers of political figures, music collections, photographic collections, and collections of materials on anti-semitism, the Holocaust, and Zionism, among other topics.

One of the best ways to find out if the University Archives or Special Collections has relevant materials for a particular research project is to visit their Web site. Both departments provide detailed descriptions and finding aids for their collections, so that researchers can easily discover from their own computers what is in these collections. Not all of the materials housed in these collections have finding aids, however, so if you don’t see what you need on the Web site, contact the department to find out what else might be available.

Consulting original primary text materials like those housed in archives and special collections is often desirable, but many times this simply is not possible, especially when the sources in question are unique and held in distant libraries. Luckily, many important primary text documents have been reproduced for inclusion in general library collections, so that researchers do not always have to travel to find important materials for their research.

Here at Brandeis, we have a wealth of primary text material available in our general library collection, in microform, print, and electronic formats. Our microform collection nearly "doubles" the holdings of our print collection, and most of the items in this collection can be considered primary sources. Some of our major microform collections include Early English Books, 1475-1700, Records of Ante-bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War, and Early American Newspapers, a collection of over 700 newspapers issued in various states between 1690-1820. Even though microform is unpopular among many library users due to its cumbersome nature, those who persevere can find loads of valuable material in this format.

Many primary texts can also be found in our print collection, either in modern type or in facsimile form. And recently we have made a concerted effort to add to our collection primary text materials in electronic format, like Accessible Archives, a collection of databases focusing on American history, which includes the "Godey's Ladys Book," "The Pennsylvania Gazette," and 19th-century African-American newspapers. Other notable electronic databases we have recently added are the Past Masters collection of philosophy texts, North American Women’s Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950, and Literature Online, a searchable database of over 300,000 works of English and American literature.

The number of primary text sources in our general collection is vast, so the Libraries are taking several steps to help those hunting down primary texts. For one, we have created a Web site entitled, "Primary Text Research in the Humanities," which offers tips for finding primary text materials in the general collection. Second, we are aggressively adding records in our library catalog for individual works that can be found in large microform collections, so that researchers can search LOUIS and find relevant items for their research that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Third, we are continuing to acquire primary texts in electronic format, so that researchers can search and access primary source materials from their computers at home or anywhere on campus. And finally, we soon will be purchasing a digital microform scanner. This new machine makes working with microform materials easier than ever by digitizing the microform images, so that these images can be cleaned up, manipulated, and easily transferred.

The search for primary source materials can often be frustrating. It can also be one of the most rewarding research experiences, especially when one discovers a particular resource that adds solidity to an argument. The Brandeis University Libraries are making it so that people can more easily experience the thrill of primary source research.  

LOUIS, our on-line catalog, now sports a NEW BOOKS button located on both the Basic and Advanced Search screens. Click on this purple button to find a listing of books recently added to the libraries’ collection. The books appearing will remain on this list for a period of one month. You can modify or limit this list just as you can for any book list in LOUIS. Sort the list by author, title, year or call number, or simply browse through the list by using the Previous and Next buttons. You can even send the list or selections from the list to your email address.

We have often been asked if we could provide a list of titles newly added to the collection, and we are happy that our new ExLibris automated system could be customized to provide this service. Please take a minute to check out the purple NEW BOOKS button often, since new titles are added every day.  

There’s no question about it - electronic databases and full-text resources have transformed the library and how we find information. Some of these resources sport logical, discipline-based titles that clearly describe the data they offer, like History of Science and Technology, Literature Resource Center, Music Index, and Sociological Abstracts. But many outstanding electronic resources present an array of confusing, vague, or trendy titles.

THE A-IS-NOT-FOR-APPLE AWARD

In alphabetical lists, mysterious acronyms can cause databases to file far away from the disciplines they represent.

ATLA Religion Database

Look under "A" for religion to find the most important online religion resource that indexes journal articles, books, and dissertations on all aspects of world religions. (ATLA = American Theological Library Association)

RILM Abstracts of Musical Literature

No, "R" is for music: RILM indexes and abstracts articles, conference proceedings, Festschrifts, books, and dissertations on music. (RILM = Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale)

ABI/INFORM

And "A" is for business. This database indexes and abstracts U.S. and international journals and trade magazines covering business and management topics. (ABI = Abstracted Business Information)

THE NOT-WHAT-YOU-THINK AWARD

Some databases titles seem to go out of their way to mislead those who might want to use them.

ARTFL Project (University of Chicago)

Not an art database! But a full-text resource (from the University of Chicago) for French and Italian literature, pamphlets and periodicals of the 1848 French Revolution, French and French-English dictionaries, and French Bibles. (ARTFL = American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language).

Web of Science (multidisciplinary)

Not just for science, but a combination of the Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index, and Science Citation Index into one huge interdisciplinary database that covers over 11,000 scholarly journals.

Academic Universe

Astronomy has nothing to do with this database. Provides access to full-text news, business, industry and legal information.

THE WHAT-IS-IT AWARD

These databases leave few clues as to what can be found in them.

JSTOR

Pronounced "Jay-Store" (short for Journal Storage). Not a Kmart rival, but rather the on-going scholarly journal archive that indexes and provides cover-to-cover, full-text complete runs (up to the recent 2-5 years) of over 100 scholarly journals.

ProQuest

Professional hunters? The next reality-based television show? No, our best path to full-texts and images of almost 1,000 journals, along with indexing of 1,000 additional titles, in all academic fields.

CogNet

This database hails from MIT and provides an electronic community for the cognitive and brain sciences, including a searchable full-text library.

THE IT’S-GREEK-TO-ME AWARD

Titles invoking the classics can hide the materials and disciplines covered by the resource.

Project Muse

Not the muses but a current-issue counterpart to JSTOR with complete full-text access to recent issues of over 160 journal titles.

Perseus Digital Library

An evolving library initially concerned with Greco-Roman materials but is now also rich in resources on Shakespeare and Marlowe, 19th-century London, and Pioneer Upper Midwest materials from the Library of Congress.

Agricola

Latin for "farmer." Appropriately indexes journals, books, theses, patents, software, and audio-visual materials on all aspects of agriculture.

THE AREN’T-WE-CLEVER AWARD

These resources have trendy monikers - market-driven morphs that elide words or syllables to create clever, but not always clear, passageways to the information they contain.

groveart.com and grovemusic.com

Not databases on citrus culture but the two stalwart encyclopedias of music and art - The New Grove Dictionary of Music and The [Grove] Dictionary of Art - as full-text electronic resources.

AccessScience

The "access" is to the online version of the newly updated 8th edition of the McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science.

PubMed

(The Database Formally Known as Grateful Med.) Your taxes at work as the National Library of Medicine provides free access to over 11 million medical citations via MEDLINE and links to many sites that provide full text articles and other related resources. But doesn’t this title remind you of a London tavern?

Find these titles confusing? Need more help? We now have a remedy for overcoming these difficult titles: new subject-specific database pages with database resources arranged by topic. And remember, a reference librarian can also help you identify appropriate databases for your research.

Alvin Lucier was the Director of the Studio in the mid 1960s. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Brandeis Electronic Music Studio represented one of the central American Locations for creating, composing, and performing in the dynamic new field of electro-acoustic music. Brandeis Faculty invited the most prominent musicians to campus to compose and perform. These composers included John Cage, Ernst Krenek, Fred Rzewski, Luciano Berio and others. Since many of the pieces were composed, performed or recorded in the Brandeis Studios, often the only recorded copies of the music exist at Brandeis. And since much of electronic music is not notated like traditional music, recorded versions become the only evidence of the music. The Archives, with funding from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, recently preserved several of the original recordings made or collected by the Electronic Music Studio. You may access information about this collection at this Archives Web Page:

http://www.library.brandeis.edu/specialcollections/collections/soundrecordings.html  

Essay and General Literature Index
Annually indexes 300+ volumes and 20 serial publications in a variety of subject areas, including, folklore, architecture, history, art, linguistics, music, classical studies, poetry, drama, political science, economics, religion, fiction, women’s studies and film.

Worldwide Political Sciences Abstracts
Provides references and abstracts from public affairs magazines, major newspapers, professional journals, and books, devoted to politics and political analysis.

Alternative Press Index
Comprehensive guide to alternative sources of information with international and interdisciplinary coverage. Provides coverage of alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines that report and analyze the practices and theories of cultural, economic, political and social change.

EIU CountryData
An analytical database of worldwide economic indicators and forecasts. Access to 278 series on 117 countries and 40 regional aggregates.

Philosophers Index
Provides indexing and abstracting in the areas of ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysic logic as well as material on the philosophy of law, religion, science, history, education and language.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial to 1950
The collection includes a comprehensive bibliography of women’s diaries and letters, listing over 2,000 published and unpublished items from a variety of sources, including online resources and microform.

AgeLine
Published by AARP, it provides coverage of social gerontology and the delivery of health care for the older population. It also covers public policy, employment, and consumer issues.  

GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Services, part of the Brandeis University Libraries, and located in the Science Library, will be offering another round of GIS Skills classes in the coming semester. Sixteen students and faculty, representing a wide range of academic levels and disciplines in the sciences and social sciences, participated in classes given this past fall. For more information about classes and/or the schedule for this semester, contact Sally Wyman, GIS Librarian, at Ext. 6-4722.

Also, for the first time, GIS will be fully incorporated into a newly re-designed class being offered by American Studies, AMST 104b. "Brandeis and Its Environs: The Geographic Analysis of Your Community", will be taught by Brian Donahue, Chair, Environmental Studies, with the GIS Services staff, Ryan Arp and Sally Wyman. GIS technology will be used to investigate ecological, historical, and other cultural aspects of Brandeis, Waltham, and the surrounding environment.  

• Iain Gately. Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization. Grove Press, 2001.

From the gods of the ancient Maya to the Marlboro Man, from pipe-smoking Sir Francis Drake to cigar aficionado Bill Clinton, Gately examines the cast of characters responsible for the changing perceptions of tobacco throughout history. Gately argues that tobacco provided the driving force behind the development of global trade, the fulcrum of the African slave trade, and the financial basis for victory in the American Revolution.

• Gerald W. McFarland. Inside Greenwich Village: A New York City Neighborhood, 1898-1918. U of Massachusetts P, 2001.

Before it came known as a center of bohemianism, Greenwich Village was a mixed-class, multiethnic neighborhood where Villagers often clashed on their differing expectations about what constituted proper behavior in public spaces. McFarland describes the major groups living in the Village between 1898 and 1918 - Italians, African Americans, Irish, well-to-do Protestants, among others - and connects the changes that took place in the neighborhood to transformations taking place in American society at large.

• Charlotte A. Twight. Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control Over the Lives of Ordinary Americans. Palgrave, 2002.

Twight, a professor of economics and a lawyer, set out to prove that the growth of dependence on government has not been accidental, that its creation has been bipartisan, and that it is accelerating. She demonstrates the growth in federal power and how it has eroded the rule of law in our nation. Her book is a striking indictment on how Americans are dependent upon the federal government as it questions the future of individual liberty in a country long committed to the ideal of personal freedom.

• Sally G. McMillen. To Raise Up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865-1915. Louisiana State UP, 2001.

McMillen looks at how evangelical southerners increasingly turned to Sunday Schools during the half century after the Civil War. In her examination of Sunday schools in seven black and white denominations, McMillen discovers that white southerners rarely raised the race issue in the classroom, whereas Black evangelicals used Sunday schools to criticize Jim Crow laws, rising violence, and widespread unjustices. By the early twentieth century, both black and white Sunday schools had grown more commercial and competitive as they turned to publishing to expand their influence and profits.

• Richard N. Cooper and Richard Layard, eds. What the Future Holds: Insights from Social Science. MIT Press, 2002.

The book considers how we might think intelligently about the future, and Cooper and Layard have included a number of writings by well-known specialists who take different methodological approaches to forecasting likely future developments and trends in human life. The questions the authors address include: how many humans will there be, will there be enough energy, how will climate change affect our lives, what patterns of work will exist, will inflation remain under control, and how will government work at the local, national and world level?  

Reference librarian Leslie Stebbins will offer relief for those teachers who are tired of reading student research papers loaded with citations for less-than-scholarly web sites. She will provide tips, including the use of bogus web sites, for teaching students to evaluate web pages critically.