Selected Sources for Research in History and Social Sciences
HSS4 – Berlin

Contacts

            Claire Gunning, Art and Architecture Librarian
            email: gunning (at) cooper.edu

            Also, any of the other librarians, see Personnel page

Library Web site

            http://www.cooper.edu/facilities/library/library.html (February 2, 2008)
           
            This Research Guide: http://www.cooper.edu/facilities/library/research/guides_frameset.html (February 2, 2008)

Online Catalog: Searching for books and more

The online catalog for our Library consortium is called BobCat, which contains records for books and other materials owned or selected by the consortium libraries (Cooper Union, most NYU libraries and the New School libraries) and several other NYU-affiliated libraries.

            http://www.bobcat.nyu.edu (February 2, 2008)

The library which owns the material is indicated at the bottom of the full record, followed by the call number.

BobCat Tips:

• Use Internet Explorer when possible. BobCat is optimized for IE. Some records, especially journal titles, do not display correctly in other browsers.
• Generally, you will not find specific articles from journals in BobCat. Use one of the article databases to find them.
• Search journal titles to find holdings within the consortium. Make sure you check the date ranges of specific titles at the individual libraries.
• Searches ignore punctuation and are not case sensitive.
• If you try a phrase search and do not get many hits, switch to the keyword search. In a keyword search the order of the words does not matter. In a phrase search the order of the words must be correct and start from the beginning of the phrase to get accurate results.
• The default Boolean combiner is and. In a keyword search, if you list terms, you will get records combining x and y and z.
• In a keyword search, enclose a phrase in quotes to search the phrase anywhere in the record. Example, "Nazi party".
• Web links in the BobCat, the online catalog, may not work unless you are physically at the library that pays for the access to that resource. Many of the links are for proprietary resources; there will be a note in the cataloging record which indicates which library has access.
  

Book Collection (Library of Congress Classification Online)
Browse in these call number areas in any of the consortium libraries to find books on these topics.
  
DD201-257.4                    19th-20th century history of Germany
DD851-900                       Berlin – local history and description
N6868.5 .E9                      Expressionism, Blaue Reiter, Die Brücke, Neue Sachlichkeit, New Objectivity (in Art)
N6888                               German artists alphabetically
      Ex. N6888.M34               Marc, Franz (see ND588.M194 for his paintings specifically)
NA1060-1088                   German architecture
      Ex. NA1088.M65            Mies van der Rohe (although not everything on Mies is in this area)

PT1-4897                           German literature
      Ex. PT1891-2239              Goethe

Journal Articles
  
You will find more recent information and research in periodicals than you will find in books. Periodicals include magazines, journals, newspapers and conference proceedings. To find periodical articles, use an article index. For older articles, you may need to go to the print indexes.
Finding the complete articles takes a little longer. Many of the indexes listed below will find you only the citation, but not the actual text. To find the complete article, search BobCat for the journal title to find out if one of the consortium libraries carries the journal you need. Pay close attention to the date ranges of issues held by each library to find out if the specific issue you need is available.

— At the Cooper Union Library —

Humanities Abstracts
Starting date: 1984 (1994 for abstracts). Location: campuswide via our Web site.
Covers core periodicals in disciplines such as language and literature, archaeology, area studies, classical studies, folklore, history, journalism and communications, religion and theology, and philosophy.

Social Sciences Abstracts
Starting date: 1983 (1994 for abstracts). Location: campuswide via our Web site.
Covers core periodicals in disciplines such as anthropology, economics, geography, law, political science, psychology, and sociology.

H.W. Wilson Select
Starting Date: 1994. Updated weekly. Location: campuswide via our Web site.
Full text articles from a subset of H.W. Wilson's indexes, including Art Index, Humanities Index, Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, and Social Sciences Index.

EBSCOhost MasterFILE Select
Starting Date: 1984. Updated daily. Location: campuswide via our Web site.
Full text articles from almost 800 general periodical titles, with indexing and abstracts for more than 2,000 more titles.

— Off Campus Database Access —

The Cooper Union Library provides off-campus database access from our Web site. Make sure that your Library record is clear – with fines of no more than $5. If you have problems accessing these databases, stop by the Library and the staff will check into your situation. When you log in through the Off Campus link, you will see a list of all the databases to which Cooper's Library subscribes.

— At NYU’s Bobst Library —

Because the Cooper Union Library focuses most of our acquisitions budget on supporting the degree-granting programs of the three Schools at Cooper Union, we depend heavily on the consortial arrangements between The Cooper Union and both New York University and the New School University, which includes Parsons.
To use the consortium libraries, you need to have a Cooper Union ID with a valid sticker. To borrow material, make sure that you don’t owe over $5 in fines or have any other blocks on your record. Stop by the Circulation desk if you are unsure.
The General and Humanities Reference Center is located on the first floor of Bobst Library and houses basic indexes, encyclopedias, dictionaries, bibliographies, directories, and handbooks. You can also find specialized humanities reference materials for fine arts, history, literature, linguistics, performing arts, philosophy, religion, and selected music resources.
See the Bobst Library Web site for a complete listing of databases by subject available at NYU with descriptions: http://library.nyu.edu/collections/find_articles.html (February 2, 2008)
  
NOTE: You will not be able to link directly to these databases unless you are at a computer in the NYU domain. If you are asked to input a NYU NetID, you are not in the NYU domain.
  
Historical Abstracts
Starting date: 1954. Location: Any computer on the NYU domain.
Covering world history, excluding the United States and Canada, from 1450 to the present, Historical Abstracts covers over 2,000 journals published throughout the world, approximately 3,000 citations to useful historical books as reviewed by the most prestigious journals in the field, and citations to abstracts of dissertations completed worldwide of particular interest for historical research.

There are digital archives, which contain the full-text of journals contents that are not subdivided by subject area. The full-text of these articles is searchable. The capacity for searching across disciplines opens up vast possibilities for scholarship and research. One of the drawbacks is that the contents in theses archives may not be current.

— JSTOR —

The JSTOR archive holds the digitized back runs of core scholarly journals, starting with the very first issues, some dating as far back as the 1600s. New titles and disciplines are being added regularly.

JSTOR’s Arts & Sciences III package is available at the Cooper Union Library. A list of titles is available at http://www.jstor.org/action/showJournals?browseType=collectionInfoPage&selectCollection=asiii. (April 17, 2008)

The complete JSTOR is available at Bobst Library at NYU. You must be at a computer in the NYU domain to be able to access it.

Beware the Moving Wall: There is a gap of 1 to 10 years before a journal issue shows up in JSTOR.

— Project Muse —

Project MUSE provides online, full-text access to over 380 high quality humanities and social sciences journals from over 60 scholarly publishers. For these titles, the content is current. 

Other Libraries in the City
  
Humanities & Social Sciences Library Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
http://catnyp.nypl.org (February 2, 2008)
The Humanities & Social Sciences Library is open to the public, but you need an Access Card to use their books. All materials there may only be used at the Library. Most of the books are in closed stacks. You submit a call slip to the Information Desk and wait for them to retrieve the item. For information about the Access Card, see http://www.nypl.org/research/general/access.html (February 2, 2008)

Mid-Manhattan History Collection Fifth Ave and 40th Street
http://leopac.nypl.org/ (February 2, 2008)
Located on the 5th floor of Mid-Manhattan, the largest circulating and reference collections in the Branch Libraries. The History Collection has books, DVDs and videos as well as over 300 specialized periodicals. The collections of the Mid-Manhattan Library are geared to meet the needs of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as serious adult users. To borrow material you need a Branch Library card. You can apply for a Library card at http://www.nypl.org/books/cards.html (February 2, 2008)

The World Wide Web and other Internet sources
To learn more about getting good results from Web search engines, visit our Web site. Follow the link to General Research Information.
For more information on finding information on the Internet, try the following tutorial: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html (February 2, 2008)
For something a little less dry, try the Internet Detective:
http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/ (February 2, 2008)

Evaluating Web Sites

Schlein, Alan M., Find it online: the complete guide to online research, 3rd ed., 2002.
Cooper / ZA4375 .S35 2002

Engel, Michael, “Evaluating web sites: criteria and tools,” http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/webeval.html (February 2, 2008)

Barker, Joe, “Evaluating web pages: techniques to apply & questions to ask,”
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html (February 2, 2008)

Beyond Google

Google is a wonderful thing. However, general Internet search engines are not always the best tools for research. For instance, when looking for an overview of a topic, searching Google will probably produce an overwhelming number of hits.

• For information on the Invisible Web, which is sources that can not be found in the traditional manners that Google and other search engine crawlers use.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/InvisibleWeb.html (February 2, 2008)

• Specialized subject directories, like the Librarians’ Internet Index can often point you to vetted Web sites that can be of help.

http://www.lii.org/ (February 2, 2008)

• Databases That are Not Free
  All information is not freely available. Many databases are available only for subscription fees (such as those mentioned above in the Article Databases section). Most libraries subscribe to many fee-based databases.

• Experts
  Sometimes the best sources of information are actual people -- individuals you go to school with, work with, your teachers, or experts you identify in the media or on the Internet. Talk to them (or email them, or use Internet chat).

Search Techniques

• Boolean searching

http://adam.ac.uk/info/boolean.html (February 2, 2008)

• Phrase searching

Be specific. If you aren’t finding what you need, try a different approach. Use wildcard characters and quotations. Know the rules for each individual Web search source. They all have slightly different needs.

• Recommended Search Strategy: Analyze your topic & search with peripheral vision. U.C. Berkeley Library.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Strategies.html  (February 2, 2008) 

Seneca, Tracy Jo. A Style sheet for citing Internet resources.
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Style.html (February 2, 2008)
For more options, check out our Web site under General Research Information.  

Interlibrary Loan and Referral Services

If the item you want is not available either at one of the consortium libraries or New York Public Library, we can usually locate a copy of the item. We may refer you to another local library or get the material via Interlibrary Loan.

In most cases the Library will pay the cost of the loan. In the case of exorbitant fees, we will discuss the request with you before going forward.

Remember: You can not use the Bobst Library Interlibrary Loan Office either directly or through their Web form. Your request will be cancelled.

last updated April 17, 2008