HIST 300: Urban America: Books

We have a several e-book vendors.

Controlled vocabulary legislate the use of predefined, authorised terms that have been preselected by the designer of the vocabulary, in contrast to natural language vocabularies, where there is no restriction on the vocabulary.

Subject headings are a controlled vocabulary. A single term or phrase is determined by an authority (Library Congress or a database vendor) to describe a subject. For example, try searching for the subject "roaring twenties" in West-Cat and see what you get. 

If you are looking for topics, you might try these subject headings for monographs:

• Cities and towns --California --History --20th century.
• Cities and towns --Connecticut --History.
• Cities and towns --Effect of technological innovations on --Massachusetts --Boston --History.
• Cities and towns --Florida --Growth
• Cities and towns --History
• Urban policy --Massachusetts --Boston --History
• Urbanization --West (U.S.) --Case studies

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)

   For this assignment, go to advanced search and change the drop down menus on the right side to "subject words." Use the name and city, such as "Detroit" in one box, and "history" in the other. If need be, add another term, such as "race relations."  Or add the heading "sources" for primary sources.

WestCat

An online catalog of the University Libraries’ books, periodicals and other library materials. Searchable from the library homepage (http://www.wiu.edu/libraries). If WestCat does not have what you need, search I-Share, a catalog of 76 libraries, mostly academic, in Illinois. WestCat, I-Share, and WorldCat all use Library of Congress Subject Headings.

 

I-Share

I-Share has changed. To use I-Share, create an account. Though a pain at first, having an account will make the book borrowing process much easier than in the past.

WorldCat

One of the databases available from FirstSearch. Bibliographic records of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries. Includes manuscripts written as early as the 12th century. Includes 52 million bibliographic records. If you learn how to use this tool, you will be able to tap into a huge amount of bibliographic information, including many historical documents. Use the Library of Congress Subject Headings to refine searches. To find primary sources, use the subject headings "sources." WorldCat has its own ILL function that works in conjuction with ILLiad. Very easy to initiate a request.

Consider using Google Books to find the full text of books published years ago.