History and Genealogy Resources

It is a little weird finding a multitude of other people with the same first and last name.  I found a record of my birth through the Minnesota Birth Index but could not find anything connected to my marriage license.  I tried refining the search using both my maiden and married name.  I did find my former addresses from Ohio and North Carolina!  I used the hot keys and a more advanced search.  Even checking female, I still came across records for males.

I then searched for my paternal grandmother.  My siblings and I know very little about that side of the family.  I found a 1940 census and opened the scanned document.  An interesting item I found when I looked at this closely is that the highest education attained for both my grandparents was 6^th grade.  I followed one of my dad’s sibling’s birth record and discovered my grandmother’s maiden name is Bundeman.  It is very easy to get lost in this database.  I also found that the paternal last name of Wiese has also at times been spelled, Weise.  It is amazing how common a particular name (first and last) is in a region.

I typed in South Dakota in the location box and then selected pictures.  The first results were of professional baseball players which was followed by U.S. School Yearbooks.  These yearbooks did not have pictures but often had quotes or short pieces of conversation.  I read that some of these, though not linked to ancestry give a glimpse into life at that time.  There were 212,157,910 results.  Wow!  I did like the left side bar that would allow me to narrow into further categories.  It could be fun to show a class the historic catalogs of Sears, Roebuck and Co.  I especially like the catalog page that advertised a set of Encyclopedia Britannica for 19.95.  The historical postcards would also be fun for teachers in social studies and history.  I have an old postcard for 1976 of the Cosmos (which between Rapid City and Hill City), it is hilarious.  I did refine the search for Rapid City as still had many postcards for this region.

In Heritage Quest, I tried a lot of different searches but probably didn’t have the correct search terms.  I did a search of Mahnomen, Minnesota and found articles from the Mahnomen County Historical Society Newletter.  The oldest article they had was from 1987.  Technology in some cases only reach so far back.  I then checked out some of the other blogs who had completed this lesson and was able expand my ideas for search terms.  Coming back on a different day, I did a search of Rapid City and found many items (424) however I was unable to read any of these but I could request a copy of the article.  When I searched Mahnomen this time , I had 91 results.  There was a variety of topics such as discontinue the sale of Oleo in 1930, lists of women employed in stores and government offices.  I had a teacher telling me about the Minnesota Massacre this week so I decided to look this up too.  I had grown up in Minnesota and had never learned or heard of this event.  I was rewarded with 19 results that I will be requesting copies of to share with this teacher.  History books don’t necessarily tell us all about the little nasty parts of history, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.  The more I searched, the more ideas I had for further searches.  It was easy to get sucked into this database.

In Sanborn Maps, I searched the small towns that my husband’s family is from and found Eureka but nothing for Long Lake.  Maybe Long Lake was too small to include or these are lost maps.  Having spent time in Eureka is last summer, I noticed that one of the Lutheran Churches seemed to be in the same location.  Not originally from South Dakota I found the maps interesting but do not really know enough of the history in many of the small towns.  Many of the maps are from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s when looking at the smaller towns. Even Rapid City’s maps only went to 1948 and Sioux Falls went to 1950.  I checked out other towns and found maps for 1960’s Aberdeen.   It would be nice if maps of these towns from each decade were included for comparisons.  I did like that you could print and download the maps.  I could see pairing the historical picture component  from Heritage Quest to Sanborn Maps.  Idea for a great historical mashup?

ArchiveGrid and CAMIO

ArchiveGrid

The moment I saw the directions stating to use quotation marks, I just had to do some searches with and without the quotation marks. The left side panel under the archives and locations of the results was a section for search tips which can be quite helpful if read carefully.  I almost think the search tips should be visible immediately and maybe on the right as a panel. The results in this database vary depending on how you use the quotation marks.  Without the quotation marks I had 18 results with the card being the first result.   Many of the results in this search had very little connection to Sitting Bull.  In this case of the “Sitting Bull autograph card”, the quotation marks allowed me to quickly find the exact item needed for the lesson search.  Sitting Bull was a shaman and the leader of the Hunpapa Sioux.  I guess I had forgotten the reason he was killed was for devotion to his Native American traditions rather than for the battles he had fought.  I did an additional search on the Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, without quotations and came up with 46 results.  As I scanned through the results I found the Sitting Bull autograph Card as number 15 in the list.  Many of the institutions listed in the results were spread out but seemed to be sites with specialized or large collections such as Princeton, Yale, Brigham Young and Texas A&M.  I did like that all the results had contact information available for the institution.  Each result had an abbreviated description.  Once selected, I was presented with the institution’s description which gave more detail but not full text.  I could see teachers of history and social studies utilizing this database.

CAMIO

I did the Paul Revere search and had 35 works for results.  Paul Revere was a silversmith, a skill he possibly learned from his father.  I did not see any items created by his father.  I had already knew this before the search as I had seen an episode of Pawn Stars and a potential seller was trying to verify if he had Revere silver.  This is where I first learned of his father.  I did find that the first result listed Paul Revere Jr. who was born in 1734 and the other Paul Revere works has his birth listed as 1735.  Being familiar with the famous person may be beneficial to some.  The first work however was not silver but a print.  Revere was also the subject of several other results but not the creator.  Most of his works were silver such as spoons, tea urns, platters and bowls.  I did find another painting by him.

The search term “Sioux” resulted in 63 works.  As I scrolled through these I find many of these items to be from books/paintings, bead work on clothing or other items and carvings.  I really like the heading above the items such as image, title, creator, date, type and museum.  By looking under creator, I was able to sort which items were depicting the Sioux and which were actually created by the Sioux.  The left side bar allows a person to refine their search by format, creator, date and subject and the number of items connected to each subcategory.  I decided to select Sioux, North American, Native American, and narrowed down my results to 37 items. 

I have to admit I know very little about artists, so when asked to search for one I didn’t know who to select.  So I used the home page of CAMIO which had searches for paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture, decorative arts & utilitarian objects, drawings and watercolors, costume & jewelry, textiles, architecture and more.  I selected paintings and then used the left side to further narrow to something I was interested in exploring.  I chose George Catlin who was an American artist and lived from 1796-1872 as he had the top number of results under paintings (oil on canvas), then creator.  Catlin created many, many portraits of Native Americans, as well as other portraits and a few landscapes.  There were 444 items for Catlin under this format.

I am excited to show this database to our school art teacher.  She currently brings in some of her art students once a month to show how the students can explore art within the library walls and beyond on the internet.  This will be a great database to share with them.  The social studies/history teachers may also find items in CAMIO as an extension of their studies. 

The ability to personalize and present items is amazing.  I searched Greek and selected an item under each format.  Then I went to view favorites and was able to look at the items I had selected.  The sidebar was fun to play with as it would let me compare two items I had selected side by side.  Other options included viewing as a slideshow, moving the works around (reordering for presentation), removal of items from favorites and saving the selection as a web page.  I think the saving as a web page could be useful as many teachers now have their own teacher webpage or website and could link this information for students to access on their own.  I just wish I knew more about art to do a better organized search. 

WorldCat & OAIster

I started looking at WorldCat at school and of course had to pause to help some patrons.  When I went back, my session had expired.  In order to get back in I had to enter the school’s barcode and password to open WorldCat again.  I’ve never had that issue before.  Once I was back in, I decided to look up a book that I could not find a marc record for.  This will help me create the record for Destiny so this very excited student can get her hands on the book.  The book I searched for was Lullaby by Amanda Hocking.  The first result is in 472 libraries worldwide.  When I click on the link for worldwide libraries I find that Alexander Mitchell Library is at the top, followed by Siouxland Library.  I like how the libraries are organized by those of the surrounding states; Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and Wyoming.  The class descriptors are LC: PZ7.H65828; Dewey: [Fic]   .  Amanda Hocking has written the series called The Trylle Series and Lullaby is the second book in the Watersong Novel series.  I selected sirens from the subjects and was shown a result list with 35 book results and 15 each of sound and internet links.  Finding books with a related subject is something I show my students in our own library system.  I like to use this in WorldCat to search out books on subjects that either my teachers or students are heavily using.  There are the usual useful tools such as sorting, related subjects, limit results, related authors, email bibliography, print, export and help.  It is always very helpful to be able to limit/focus my searches.  I found the WorldCat Hot Topics fun to explore as well.

I used OAIster to search South Dakota and selected “Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, May 15, 1942” because it sounded intriguing.  Selecting the access link under the title brought me to the Minnesota Digital Library.  This was a typed letter that was fun to read, understanding that people communicated differently in 1942.  The letter is copyrighted and permission is not given for reproduction.  Lower down on the page there is a transcript of the letter for easier reading.  I could get lost searching items in OAIster.

EBooks on EbscoHost

I searched for ebooks on mythology as I have a staff member teaching this class.  There were many useful ebooks for this search term that the students could reference as well.  I tried the same search term with all the search modes and basically received the same results.  I did like the hint for the SmartText Searching that allowed you to search a phrase, paragraph and even whole pages.  I had 106 results for mythology but when I typed in Greek mythology, 16 results were presented.  I have always liked the option of previewing the table of contents to decide if the book will be useful for my projects.  There are many tools with ebooks that I personally like such as dictionary, search within the ebook and the bookmark and annotate (which I would think teachers would find extremely useful).  Citation is available again.  I also liked how you could add your article findings into a folder.  I had to create an account.  I thought maybe my World Book or Learning Express accounts would work here but they didn’t.

Looking for items for Constitution Day lead me to multiple items I am sure a particular social studies teacher will find useful.

Foner, Eric, and John Arthur Garraty. Reader's Companion To American History. n.p.: Houghton-Mifflin, 1991. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 4 Mar. 2013.

Stewart, James Brewer, and Warren E. Burger. The Constitution, The Law, And Freedom Of Expression, 1787-1987. n.p.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 4 Mar. 2013.

The Articles Of Confederation. n.p.: BiblioBytes, n.d. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 4 Mar. 2013.

Hough, Franklin Benjamin. The Articles Of Confederation. n.p.: Project Gutenberg, n.d. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 4 Mar. 2013.

I did note that the last book I listed is from Project Gutenberg.  And Constitution Day is September 17, 2013.

The advanced search, selecting PB (publisher) and then Nebraska brought me many (56) results in which was published by the University of Nebraska.  This makes sense that local state publishers would focus on their own state “western” history.  I did like the breakdown of my search in the left sidebar under subject and category.  I find relevance in my searches important but found some different and interesting findings by going to the last page of results.  I get why the search was for Nebraska or Oklahoma.  There was nothing when I searched South Dakota but there were results that covered our state with the searches given.