Question : I need help getting started on my history paper, the Sinking of the Lusitania.
Research: One of the first things to focus on is the dates your paper will cover. If you’re unsure of the specific dates of an event a good place to find out is an encyclopedia, an almanac, or a biography.
You know that the Lusitania sank in World War I, but you don’t know the specific date. Check in the World Book Encyclopedia at your local library or online Funk & Wagnall’s New World Encyclopedia (available from home or in your local library) and you’ll find that the Lusitania sank on May 7, 1915. A couple of good web sites for basic history information are The History Channel and the BBC History Section.
With the exact date of the sinking in hand, your next step is to find primary and secondary sources for your paper. If you’re not sure what is and what isn’t considered primary sources read the library’s Primary & Secondary Sources for History Projects guide.
The library has a lot of primary source periodicals for the time covering the sinking of the Lusitania, as well as other major events so visiting and using resources in the Central Library’s Periodicals Department will provide you some good materials.
The New York Times (NYT) has a bound index to its newspaper, and the library has the newspaper on microfilm back to 1851. The index will give you the date, page number, and column where the article appears in the newspaper. Here’s an example of what a citation in the NYT Index looks like: “…attack described by E. Cowper; comment of Sen. Stone; Washington full of rumors; State Dept. orders Amer. Embassy to report on fate of Americans, May 8, 1:1; nationalities of passengers, May 8 2:7….”
Another source you should use is the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature (RGPL), which the Periodical’s Department has back to 1900. The Readers’ Guide lists articles by subject, giving the article title, the name of the magazine, volume number, issue number, page number and date. Here’s an example of what a citation in the Readers’ Guide looks like: “ Lusitania massacre. Outlook 110: 103-17 My 19 ’15.”
***HINT***If you’re searching the NYT Index and the RGPL and don’t come across anything for your subject try searching those sources by keywords relating to your subject, such as where the event took place or a person who was involved in it. If you look for the subject “World War I” in the RGPL (V.4 1915-1918), you won’t find any entries; World War I was known as the “European War” while it was fought, so information about the Lusitania would be found under that subject. Another example is if you’re looking for something on “Jack the Ripper” in the NYT Index, 1888-1889 – you’d have to look under “Whitechapel Murders,” since the murders took place in the Whitechapel area of London.
Once you’ve found your primary sources you can easily find secondary sources in the Library Catalog. A Subject search of Lusitania provides several entries such as Lusitania: Saga and Myth and Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy.
If TCCL doesn’t have books and other materials you need for your history paper or project you can interlibrary loan them, which means we borrow them from another library system for you. If you choose to do this, request the materials as soon as possible because it sometimes can take several weeks for them to come in.
Once you have all materials for your paper or project, it’s time to start writing. If you need some help the library has many writing manuals; the Primary Source Page lists a few of them and there are several Writing pathfinders you might find useful as well.
If you have any questions, contact your local library or ask a librarian!