Undergraduate, Junior History Major

Name: William

Age: 20

Year: Junior

Major: United States History
 

Background

William is in the early stages of planning his senior essay. While he has not completely narrowed his topic, he is interested in writing about the Black Panther trials held in New Haven in 1970. Material he would like to find include first-hand accounts written by the accused, and news reports of unrest in New Haven during the trials. He has used archival material before, and is familiar with using finding aids and how archival collections are arranged. In the past he has learned that it is helpful to do a lot of work on the phone with an archive before visiting. He is hoping that there is material available at Yale that he will be able to use for this paper. He does not expect a lot of digitized material to be available. 

Library Activities         

• Looks for practical information about the library (hours, study locations).
• Checks on the availability of a book in the Orbis catalog.
• Makes extensive use of Borrow Direct.
• Uses Google Scholar for research.
• Mines bibliographies and citation lists for articles and books he wants to read. When he knows the title of an article he often uses Google so that he can quickly link to JSTOR, his favorite online resource.
• He uses print for longer reading (entire books). He does like to check an online chapter to see if the book looks appropriate.
• Renews books.