Philip Merrill College of Journalism
This page: http://jclass.umd.edu/cars/474-774/Resources.htm
Information about the National Archives:
o Research process:
o Research hours and “pull times” at Archives II
o ARC: NARA's online Archival Research Catalog
o Access to Archival Databases: NARA’s holdings of searchable electronic records
o Guide to citations for archival records
o
JOUR
774 & 474 tip sheet on finding textual records at Archives II in College
Park, following one student’s quest for records of secret military
preparations for the 1963 civil rights march in
Research in secondary sources:
o
U.Md. Libraries - JOUR 474/774
support page: Catalogs, databases,
government documents and other resources useful for researching the background
and context for the subject of your course project.
o
Reference works available at U.Md. libraries.
o
Research and Documentation Online: A useful, streamlined guide to the research
process, to reference sources in libraries and online (with links), and to
commonly used styles for citations and bibliographic references, written by the
late Diana Hacker.
o
Chicago
Manual of Style – Citation Quick Guide
o
“Internet
Resources / Journalism: Resources from advocacy to media watchdogs,” by Bob
Garber of McKeldin Library, in CR&L News (the Association of College &
Research Libraries), March 2006
Other archival resources:
University
of Maryland special collections:
o Directory of U. Md. Special collections
o Library of American Broadcasting
o National Public Broadcasting Archives
ArchivesUSA
o
About ArchivesUSA:
Searchable directory of more than 5,000 repositories and more than
130,000 collections of primary source material. [Note: This is a subscription service formerly
available through the U.Md. libraries’ online site. You may be able to access
it by visiting other libraries (in person), including the Library of Congress]
Library of Congress
o Television in the Library of Congress
o Newspapers in the Library of Congress
Maryland
State Archives
o
Maryland
State Archives home page
o
Search tool for the Maryland State Archives
o
List of databases and
searchable Web sites on the Maryland State Archives site
A sampling of other nearby
archives in Maryland:
o
American Institute of Physics, Center for History of
Physics, Niels
Bohr Library,
o
Jewish
Museum of Maryland,
o
Montgomery
County Historical Society,
o
National Library of
Medicine, History of Medicine Division,
o
United
States Naval Academy, Nimitz Library, Special Collections,
Information about subscription
databases of historical newspapers and magazines:
o Proquest databases:
·
The New York Times Historical and Washington
Post Historical databases are available through the University of Maryland Libraries site (see
· The American Periodical Series is also available through the University of Maryland Libraries site for students, faculty and staff
·
A more extensive list of ProQuest Historical Newspapers is available by
searching on-site at the Library
of Congress in
o America’s Historical Newspapers: [This is a subscription database]
o NewspaperArchive.com: [This is a subscription database]
Issues in the construction of historical narratives
and conduct of historical research:
o David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1970)
o
Making Sense of Evidence,
part of the History Matters site
developed by the American Social History Project/Center for Media &
Learning, City University of New York, and the Center for History and New
Media,
o Gordon S. Wood, The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (Penguin Press, 2008). A Washington Post book review describes this collection of historian Wood’s own reviews of works of history as “a beacon of common sense, sanity and wisdom.”
o Zachary M. Schrag: Guidelines for History Students
Guides to punctuation and word usage in written
assignments:
o
“The Elements of Style,” William Strunk Jr. – the online version
o
“The
Elements of Style, 4th Ed.,” William Strunk
Jr., E.B. White, and Roger Angell (2000) – paperback
o
AP Stylebook – online version
o
Chicago Manual of Style
– online version Q&A
Finding project ideas – food for thought:
o Anniversaries: The Web site “Timelines of History,” maintained by an individual named Algis Ratnikas, may be useful to you if you are looking for major events coming up on a key anniversary. For example, you might want to look at events that took place in 1969 or 1970 (which are at or near a 40th anniversary), events that took place in 1959 or 1960 (which are at or near a 50th anniversary), or maybe even events of 1908 and 1909 and events of 1910 and 1911 (coming up on a 100th anniversary).
o
Here’s a
link
to some promising anniversaries from the timelines listed above: [course
username and password required]
o
Historians and
the news: The
History News Network, from the Center for
History and New Media,
o Links from history to current events: Past Meets Present, part of the History Matters site.
Links with additional notes and readings for class
sessions:
o
[watch this space
during the semester for additional readings]
Student work: Examples
of research projects by students in this course [course username and password required]
Student work leading to published stories:
Patrick Boyle, managing editor of Youth
Today, wrote this piece based on research he did in this course while
pursuing a master’s degree:
o “Youth Work History: How FDR’s New Deal For Youth Got Decked” – Youth Today, December/January 2004 –
[Link to archived copy – requires class username and password]
Editor’s introduction:
The New Deal’s most ambitious youth program
tried to provide jobs, education and lessons in civic engagement, community
service and independent living. But it made powerful enemies. Sixty years after
its demise, archival records tell the NYA [National Youth Administration] story
– with a theme that will sound familiar to many youth workers today.
January Payne was an undergraduate intern at USA Today when she coauthored this piece that incorporated research from her research project in this course:
Excerpts:
When U.S. Rep. John Lewis faces the crowd
Saturday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1963 March on
More than 250,000 people heard Martin Luther
King Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream"
speech, which called for racial equality, on Aug. 28, 1963...
A review of the government's preparations
reveals much about the nation's misconceptions about black America four decades
ago...
The Army put nearly 25,000 troops on standby
as part of a riot-control plan known as Operation Steep Hill. The military
forces were poised to quickly move at the first sign of trouble, according to
Department of the Army documents at the National Archives.
The documents were declassified in 1995 but
have not been widely publicized...
Melanie Lidman published her class project on the Web after graduation:
Excerpt:
One of the most successful aspects of
PBSUCCESS was Operation Sherwood.
Sherwood was a clandestine radio station which spread anti-communist
propaganda to dishearten the Guatemalan population and convince them to support
the anti-communist, anti-Arbenz rebels. The radio station, which claimed to be
operating “deep in the Guatemalan jungle,” was actually partly recorded in
southern
But the radio broadcasts were so
convincing that the international press consistently quoted the station as a
credible source, and Guatemalan citizens fled the capital as the radio
announced the troops were getting closer…Despite repeated efforts to draw
international attention to the growing military pressure from the United
States, Arbenz was forced to step down on June 27,
1954.
Jamie McIntyre, former senior Pentagon correspondent for CNN, did a documentary for his final course project and published it on YouTube and on his blog, Line of Departure:
Examples of stories using or dealing with archival
materials:
[Note: A more complete list with links to published
materials is available for students in JOUR 774 & 474 at this Web page with
the course username and password: http://jclass.umd.edu/cars/Archives/PublishedWorks/archives_readings.htm]
World War II and Holocaust-related news
stories and accounts of research:
o NARA resources and research on Nazi-era activities
o
“Keystone Kommandos” --
Atlantic Monthly article on the
military tribunal for Nazi saboteurs arrested in the
o
Saboteurs : The Nazi Raid on America – Book by
Michael Dobbs about the Nazi saboteurs, using archival resources in the
o Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble – 2005 by journalist and author Roger Cohen exposing the fate of several hundred American soldiers, most of them Jewish or Jewish-looking, who were enslaved in a German work camp near the end of the war, with fatal outcomes for many.
o
Boston Globe’s nine-part series on the hidden history of World
War II – Mark Fritz wrote this series based on documents that had recently been
declassified, including a piece titled “The Perfect Spy” about a little-known
German civil servant who made a large contribution to American intelligence
about the Nazis. Fritz also wrote an
article for the Los Angeles Times
about the role of the secret Insurance
Intelligence Unit within the Office of Strategic Services, which used
insurance records in fixing on targets to be destroyed in World War II. This article, too, was based on freshly
declassified records at the National Archives.
o
“A
Covert Chapter Opens For Fort Hunt Veterans; As Files on Nazi POWs Are Declassified,
Their Interrogators Break Their Silence,” a Washington Post story by
Petula Dvorak (Aug. 20, 2006, Page A-1) about work of
World War II interrogation unit that was revealed, in part, through
declassified documents at the National Archives. Other copies here: (1). MSNBC.com copy; (2). copy
available with class password.
o
“Her
Happy Discovery, the Find of His Career:
Archivist Confirmed That U-Boat Captain Learned of Daughter's Birth Just
Before His Death,” a Washington Post story by Michael Ruane (January 3, 2007, Page B-1), about an archivist’s
work to answer a Virginia woman’s question about whether her father, a German
submarine captain, learned of her birth before his boat was sunk in 1943.
o
“Concentration
camp doctor heads list of top 10 wanted Nazis,” by David Rising of the
Associated Press, with contributions from AP investigative researcher Randy Herschaft, April 29, 2008.
Records at the National Archives in College Park helped the Associated
Press tell the story of a fugitive SS doctor who heads a “most wanted” list of
suspected Nazi war criminals for his gruesome and deadly experiments on
concentration-camp inmates during World War II.
Korean War:
o Associated Press investigative reporting on the alleged massacre of Korean civilians by American troops at No Gun Ri: “The story behind the story”
The Cold War:
o
“Archive
catalogs use of Cold War refugees,” by Arthur Max,Randy Herschaft,
Associated Press, in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, January 4, 2009: Associated Press reporters ventured into the
attic of a recently opened archive of the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen,
o Blighted Homeland, a Los Angeles Times investigative series uranium mining during the Cold War that contaminated Navaho lands and compromised the health of the people who lived there.
“From 1944 to 1986, 3.9 million tons of uranium ore were dug and
blasted from Navajo soil, nearly all of it for
Kennedy:
o
NPR report
using behind-the-scenes government transmissions on Kennedy assassination: An NPR producer found government recordings at the
National Archives in
o
John Newman, a historian and former military
intelligence analyst who teaches at the University of Maryland, has used the
National Archives to research his investigative books JFK
and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power and Oswald
and the CIA.
The Vietnam War and the secret war in
o Lingering issues from the Vietnam War – revisiting archived data about mines and toxins dropped from the air:
†
“New
Study Finds Agent Orange Use Was Underestimated” (
† Finding landmines dropped decades ago
over
o “Civilian Killings Went Unpunished; Declassified papers show U.S. atrocities went far beyond My Lai,” by Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2006
† Example of documents located and used in the Los Angeles Times report:
“Summary fact sheet for the final report of investigation on the ‘Henry Allegation’”
Watergate and the Nixon tapes:
o
“Nixon’s
Tapes, Still Rolling” – Washington
Post,
o “More Nixon Tapes: A selection from recordings in the National Archives” – Atlantic Monthly article (September 2004) by James Warren, deputy managing editor of The Chicago Tribune
o Donald Rumsfeld heard on Nixon tapes:
·
“Nixon
Looked Out For Ambitious Rumsfeld, Tape Reveals,” James Warren,
· Follow up: “Bush team denies Rumsfeld made disparaging comments on Nixon tapes,” Major Garrett, CNN, Jan. 7, 2001. [link to archived copy]
o Listen to the Nixon tapes – sound files posted at WashingtonPost.com
o
History of the
Nixon tapes –
Henry Kissinger’s “telcon”
files (telephone conversation transcripts):
o “Kissinger Declassified” – Vanity Fair article by Christopher Hitchens (December 2004): “As Chile and Argentina finally seek justice for those who were tortured, raped, and "disappeared" under the right-wing dictatorships of the 70s, the declassification process in Washington is revealing the horrifying complicity of then U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger.”
o
“A
Plot Thickens: Three Decades After
o Read the National Archives description of the Kissinger telecon files
o “The Kissinger Telcon’s” – A resources page prepared by the National Security Archive, a non-profit, independent research institute and library.
Terror threats in the 1970s:
o
“Documents detail
Nixon-era terrorism task force; 'Dirty bombs,' planes used as missiles cited as
threats in reports,” by Frank Bass and Randy Herschaft,
Associated Press, published in The Boston Globe, Jan. 24, 2005. The story describes preparations made in the
1970s for terror attacks in the
Intelligence services
programs and secret military planning:
o
“Enemies
in the mind's eye” — U.S. News & World Report article on
CIA-funded psychic experiments
o “Raiding the Icebox: Behind Its Warm Front, the United States Made Cold Calculations to Subdue Canada,” a Washington Post story by Peter Carlson (Friday, December 30, 2005, Page C-1), about contingency plans in the 1930s for the invasion of Canada in case a foreign power ever threatened to use Canada as a base for attacking the United States.
Race and history:
o Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America, by Elliot Jaspin (Basic Books, 2007)
o Named an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times Sunday Book Review
· Earlier newspaper series, which ran in some papers of the Cox chain (see dispute, below), including:
o Austin American-Statesman (multimedia package, including documents, video, photos);
· Public speaking about the research
v
“Misremembering America’s
Racial Cleansings” – a talk at
· Dispute over publication of the newspaper series and book:
o “Atlanta Paper Accused” – Richard Prince, The Maynard Institute; see also earlier account of newspaper series:
o “A dispute over why the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wouldn't run a series on 'racial cleansing,' ” - Nieman Watchdog.
o “Whitewashed! Elliot Jaspin’s book is the last thing the AJC’s editors want you to read” – CreativeLoafing.com
o “History Still Hidden; Reporter of Statesman racial-cleansing series disowns published version” – Austin Chronicle
Eugenics:
o
“Against their Will” – In a five-part series, Kevin Begos of the
Winston-Salem Journal unearthed the story of a
· Excerpts from Part One: “Lifting the Curtain On a Shameful Era”
They were
wives and daughters. Sisters. Unwed mothers. Children. Even a 10-year-old boy.
Some were blind or mentally retarded. Toward the end they were mostly black and
poor. North Carolina sterilized them all, more than 7,600 people.
For more than
40 years North Carolina ran one of the nation's largest and most aggressive
sterilization programs. It expanded after World War II, even as most other
states pulled back in light of the horrors of Hitler's Germany.
Contrary to
common belief, many of the thousands marked for sterilization were ordinary
citizens, many of them young women guilty of nothing worse than engaging in
premarital sex.
. . .
The state
program was run by the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, a panel of five
bureaucrats who usually decided cases in a few minutes. It was inspired by the
eugenics movement, which made exaggerated claims that mental illness, genetic
defects and social ills could be eliminated by sterilization...
. . .
North Carolina
sealed most records of the eugenics board and until recently few details were
known about how the board operated, or the nature of cases it handled.
The
Winston-Salem Journal obtained and examined thousands of these documents…
. . .
The eugenics
board's files provide [one] answer to what happened in North Carolina, said
Johanna Schoen, an assistant professor of women's history at the University of Iowa
who gave the Journal access to a set of 7,000 records that she was allowed to
copy more than 10 years ago. Since that time, the N.C. State Archives has declined other requests, and the records
are officially closed to the public. The Journal has honored the medical
confidentiality of the records.