STS 3561 History of Computing and Information Technology Research Session

FREE Citation Management Software

• RefWorks site (Login) can help you manage your footnotes & bibliography on the web. Easy to use, interfaces directly with MS Word to create footnotes & bibliographies
• FAQ and Instructions for various databases

Background Information

• Scientific publication cycle
• For bibliographies: various style guides and the Landmark Citation Machine.
• Academic Integrity & Plagiarism web site.
• Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy — fantastic resource!
• Encyclopedia Britannica — best general resource
• Oxford Reference Online — lots of online dictionaries in science & other fields

My topic: IBM and the Holocaust

• pick a general topic that interests you: World War II
• narrow your topic: holocaust history
• get a angle/perspective: role of big companies such as IBM
• have a plan B: cryptography/AlanTuring

Finding Books & Journals

• Do a search in The York Catalogue:
  • by title: Strategic computing : DARPA and the quest for machine
    intelligence, 1983-1993
  • by author: Ceruzzi Paul
  • by journal title: Scientific American
  • by subject: computers history
  • by keyword: ibm and history
  • by keyword: computers and history
  • by keyword: comput$ and hist$ and canad$
• Two important books in Steacie reference section:
  • Encyclopedia of computer science — QA 76.15 E48 2003
  • Encyclopedia of computers and computer history — QA 76.15
    E53 2001

Finding Articles

These online databases can also be found in the eResources
Quick Links or Search boxes on the library home page.

• all the databases are similar, so try searches like these
  • ibm
  • ibm and germany
  • comput* and canada and history
  • comput* and librar*
  • comput* and history and canada

• JSTOR — full text of various history & history of science journals
  • For JSTOR it is important to use Advanced Search and select “Article” and “History of Science”
• Historical Abstracts — Indexes major journals in history.
• Expanded Academic — good general source
• ABI Inform and Business Source Premier: full text business search engines
  • Remember, it may be handy to add “history” to searches to narrow them down
  • ie: ibm and holocaust and history
  • ie: film and animation and history and revolutionary
• IEEE Annals of the History of Computing plus journal homepage (no access via homepage)

Newspapers

• Canadian Newsstand — good newspaper coverage
• Toronto Star, 1894-2004 (off campus)
• Globe and Mail, 1884-2002 (off campus)
• New York Times deep archives 1851 – 2003.
• London Times Digital archives 1785-1985.
• Factiva: has deep archive for Globe and Mail from late 1970s, may be easier to search
• York Libraries Newspapers page
  • keyword: apple and computer and club
  • keyword: atari and computer and association
  • keyword: atari and (club or association)

Using the Internet Wisely

• Wikipedia — a free,open source encyclopedia. Surprisingly good
  • History of IBM: good case study in how to use Wikipedia
• Some other possiblilities:
  • York University Computer History Museum
  • Computer History Museum in California
    • Core Magazine
  • History of Computing links page
  • Computer.org history site
  • Google directory page
• Google Scholar
  • issues: currency (don’t update often), comprehensiveness (won’t say what isn’t in their database)
  • keywords: ibm history holocaust
• Google Book Search
  • great for searching inside all the books and then checking to see if we have the one you want
  • don’t forget, you can borrow books we don’t have via Racer
• Using Google as a scholarly research tool:
  • strategy: find good portal sites
  • strategy: make sure you know exactly who produced the content

Office: Steacie 102H
Email: jdupuis@yorku.ca
MSN IM: john_dupuis@hotmail.com
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