Senior Seminar - Public Opinion in American Newsprint (HIST 4500 - Goodlett) 

Go to the Advanced Search in FSC's catalog, and try these Subject searches:

• American newspapers
• Journalism - United States
• Press - United States
• Public Opinion - United States

Still not sure where to start? James May of the Bibilographic Society of America has compiled a comprehensive bibiliography of books and articles:

Bibliography of Studies of Eighteenth-Century Journalism and the Periodical Press, 1986-2008

This book is noted by Professor Goodlett in your syllabus as a seminal work in this field. This preview view from Google Books will give you an idea of its content.

It is critical that you cite your sources! These guides will show you how.

• Chicago Citation Guide
  
• MLA Citation Guide
• APA Citation Guide
  

Much of the research you will need to do for this course revolves around the Early American Newspaper Collection in microfilm. This collection is located on the 3rd floor of the library, in the microfilm drawers with bright pink labels; all 18th-century microfilm reels in this collection have orange labels on the individual cartons (inside the drawers).

The best machines for viewing microfilm are on the 2nd floor, as these are also hooked up directly to printers. Keep in mind that many newspapers were larger than the 8.5x11 viewing screen, so you may need to print sections "piecemeal" to view an entire page, still keeping the type large enough to be readable.

If you have trouble with the machines don't hesitate to ask a librarian for help! Though we demonstrated use of the viewers in our class, most are older and can be temperamental. We're always happy to help if you're running into problems.

FirstSearch Worldcat is a comprehensive database administered by OCLC, containing the combined library holdings of thousands of libraries. It is an extrememly useful tool for researching the iterations and editions of a particular publication, since it displays detailed information related to an item.

FirstSearch Worldcat

When you are searching for a particular item or publication for your newspaper assignment, pay close attention to the information under the main Title section. Here you will find other titles (succeeding and preceding; i.e. if a publication changed its name at any point), its frequency, place of publication, run dates, and other descriptive information.

You can find a helpful primer on search strategies in FirstSearch here.

A more comprehensive tutorial is available through this Powerpoint presentation created by the Rochester Regional Library Council.