National History Fair Project Resources

This year's theme is Breaking Barriers in History.

To do research for your history project this year, you will likely need to use online sources.

• • 1. Don't start with a Google search. Start with a quick, reliable, and recent source: the most reliable sources will be Britannica Online and Gale Resources.

    2. Britannica & Gale are on the library's Symbaloo page (see the bottom of this page) on the second row of icons.

    3. You will need the username and password for Britannica and Gale, which the librarian will give you.

• • • In Britannica, you can simply enter the name of the person you wish to search for, just like you would do in a search engine.

• • 1. In Gale, you need to use different strategies. You'll see a list of resources and a description of what they include. Read the descriptions to decide if you need to search in those resources. The top half is cross-searchable (you can search all at once if you check the box beside the resource). I would not recommend you check every box.

       • The group of resources at the bottom called Additional Products is not cross-searchable. You would search those one at a time.

       • I would recommend you start with Research in Context near the bottom of the list.

       • You may want to explore some of the other ones as well if the description of the resource fits your person. For instance, if you are researching a scientist, you may want to check the science resources in Gale.

    2. Other reliable resources:

       • History.com

       • Biography.com

       • The Library of Congress

       • The Smithsonian

       • The National Archives

The Annotated Bibliography Requirement

Information on the Annotated Bibliography is found here. Examples of how to write entries for the bibliography are found here.

You must cite all sources. If you do not have a cite button or you are using a book, you can use Cite This for Me to help you create the bibliography.

Chicago Manual of Style help from Purdue OWL will help you find examples of how to do bibliographic entries for different kinds of sources like websites, magazines, journals, interviews, documentaries.

If you need help with unusual sources, ask Ms. Ballard how to cite them.

Be sure to cover the 3 requirements of the annotations:

• • • 1. It identifies what type of source this is (song, poem, book, website, journal article, diary entry, newspaper article, etc.)

    • 2. How was the source used?

    • 3. How did the source help you understand your topic and create your project?

Browsing for books in the library

300’s are Social Sciences: civil rights, law, how natural disasters affect society, how crimes affect society, how anything affects society

600’s-700’s: health issues in society from ancient to modern; technological advances including medicine, architecture, robotics, arts

900’s: history and geography

The beginning of 900’s has general topics, geography, then ancient history to modern. Then gets more specific by continents. In the US, it breaks down by region and states. Events that took place across the world, such as WWI and WWII are located early in the 900’s--941.5 for example, and some things that took place in certain countries or states could be found in that location, such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor could be found near Hawaii.

Reference books under the windows: We have some specific topics as well as general print encyclopedias. Ask for help.

Taking Notes

• Write your bibliography entry in proper form first.

  • When writing titles, remember titles of long sources will be underlined (when handwritten) or italicized (when typed); titles of short things are in quotation marks. In other words, titles of books, magazines, or journals are underlined or italicized. Titles of poems or magazine/jounral articles are in quotation marks. Website titles are in quotation marks.

• Be sure to keep good notes with the names of your source and the page number.

• You need to include footnotes in your process paper.

• How to do footnotes are included in the nhd site and in the Purdue OWL site.

Using Images

• All images must have a citation immediately under the image.

• images can be found in other places besides Google. I suggest you start with Library of Congress and Smithsonian sites first. Then try Creative Commons or WikiCommons. There are also sites for photos found on my symbaloo page.

NO CITATIONS SHOULD INCLUDE GOOGLE, YAHOO, BING, OR ANY OTHER SEARCH ENGINE NAME IN THEM.