Outline and Annotated Bibliography, Due March 29
At this step of the process, you are to outline the structure of your argument and provide a detailed bibliography of the primary and secondary sources that you are using. Your outline and annotated bibliography should be about three pages, typed and double-spaced, and should include the following:
1) A short working title for the project.
2) A rough draft of a possible
introduction, in which you describe the central research question that you are
examining.
3) A possible thesis statement. This may be a revision or a repetition of the hypothesis that you stated in your second proposal.
4) An outline of at least three major sections of the argument. You do not have to come up with some artificial and complicated structure of numbering all your various points. Your outline may consist simply of three or more paragraphs, each discussing some element of your argument.
5) An annotated bibliography
of the major primary
sources on which you hope to rely, prepared in Turabian (a.k.a. Chicago)
style. After each entry, write one or more sentences in which you describe the
source and say why it will be useful. The bibliography may be single-spaced
6) An annotated bibliography of the major secondary sources that you are using. After each entry, write one or more sentences in which you describe the source and say why it will be useful. The bibliography may be single-spaced
Click here to see the library's guide to Turabian (Chicago style) citations.
In evaluating your outline and annotated bibliography, I will consider all questions that I asked when evaluating your second proposal. In addition, I will consider the following:
Notes:
What kinds of primary sources should you look for?
Here is a list of the main types of primary sources that we will be examining this semester, with links to more information. This is not an exhaustive list of primary sources
Studies of Urban Conditions by Contemporary Observers
City Directories and Census Schedules
Census Data Compilations (click here, go to page 2)
How do you find secondary source material?
Students have traditionally relied mainly on books, locating appropriate titles with the help of the Homer online catalog. Although this is a fine method, it is not the only one.
A particularly valuable search method is to use the "America: History and Life" database, which is available through the library's website. This database lists virtually all the history articles published in significant scholarly journals; it also lists book reviews, and thus will direct you to relevant books. Click here: http://norman.lib.uconn.edu/NewSpirit/Databases/DatabaseInfo.cfm?ID=506
Journal articles are often more useful than books, partly because they tend to be more tightly focused on a single topic and partly because they are a lot shorter. Some journal articles are available electronically through JStor or other electronic services available at UConn. In addition, most leading journals are available in paper form at the Babbidge Library. They are shelved alphabetically on the third floor.
Three of the most prestigious journals that publish articles on American urban history are the following:
Increasingly, some students have used web pages as secondary sources. This is usually a mistake. Secondary source material that is available only the Internet is often of very poor quality. Since anyone can put anything on the Internet, history web pages are often incompetently researched and written by hobbyists, cranks, and other amateurs. For the purposes of this assignment, DO NOT USE ANY SECONDARY SOURCES FROM THE INTERNET, unless you first discuss the matter with me in person and explain why this is necessary.