Researching Local Topics
Questions Addressed in the History Day Expert's Inbox

I am glad to see all of you History Day Scholars out there are working diligently to prepare your projects! The district contests are about to begin! I am receiving lots of good questions and wanted to share them with the rest of our History Day community out there in cyber space.

First of all, I have had a lot of questions concerning the research on local topics like the Ohio Penitentiary Riot, The Ravenna, Ohio Teacher's Strike, The Cincinnati Courthouse Fire and many more. It is likely that if you have tried to "Google" these topics not much has come up in the way of information. Local topics need local sources! If you are working on something like the teacher's strike it may be useful to try the local school board where the event took place, local newspapers are also a good resource. Local historical societies, local libraries, county libraries, cities and villages are the places where you are most likely to find information on local topics.

Secondly, there have been some questions concerning word count and websites.
The 1200 words only refers to what you write. The rule book states that "Citations, code used to build the website, and alternate text tags on images do not count towards the word limit. The Word limit does not include words found in materials used for illustration such as documents, artifacts or graphs not created by the student, or quotations from primary sources such as oral history interviews, letters, or diaries, photos of artifacts with writing, or other illustrative materials that are used as an integral part of the website. Brief citations crediting the sources of illustrations or quotations included on the website do not count towards the 1200 word limit."
So, your bibliography and text quoted from other text do not count toward your word limit.
You can read more at http://www.nhd.org/Rules.htm

Websites and AV clips
Single media clips are not to "last more than 45 seconds." Keep in mind that you have 100MB of file space for this project. Audio and multimedia can take up a lot of space so choose wisely. Again, if you had a clip from an interview, those words would also not be included in the word limit. The rule book also states that an AV clip should "not include any student composed audio". This means that they don't want mini documentaries within your website. You could post an interview on the site since an interview is considered a primary source, but you may only want to show your interviewee talking rather than you asking the questions. Again, your media clips can only be 45 seconds long, be choosy what you use the time for.

Primary Sources
Some great places to find primary sources on most topics include
The Library of Congress
www.loc.gov

The National Archives
www.archives.gov

American Memory
memory.loc.gov

Ohio Historical Society Library and Archives

Ohio Memory
http://www.ohiomemory.org/

and
Ohio Pix
http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/ohiopix/index.cfm


These are just a few of the questions the History Day Expert has been receiving. I hope these questions answer some questions you may have been asking. If not, remember to e-mail your questions to the History Day Expert at historyday@ohiohistory.org

Good luck finalizing your projects! I can't wait to see them at History Day!

Internet Source Citations
Good Morning Ohio History Day! We had some questions come in via e-mail concerning citing internet sources in your bibliographies. Here are some guidelines and tips.
You can also find more bibliography information at the National History Day Website http://www.nhd.org/AnnotatedBibliography.htm
At the bottom of the page you will find a link to online writing sources and citation help.
If you are citing an internet source in the MLA format you would start with the name of the website if the article or site does not have a direct author. There are several variants for news videos, radio clips, sound clips and photos.
Here is an example for a normal website citation.

Cleveland Memory. 16 July 1999.Cleveland State University Library. "The Annals of Cleveland: A Depression-Era Project of the WPA." Online. 4 January 2008 http://web.ulib.csuohio.edu/SpecColl/annals/.

The first date listed is the date the site was posted, the second date is the date you accessed the site. Be sure to include the description of "Online" before the date accessed.

You can also consult the MLA Style Guide at the Purdue Writing Lab online
http://owl.english.purdue.edu

Once on this page, scroll down almost to the bottom to find the MLA Style Guide and choose the citation you need help with. The examples and directions for websites is #9 on the list.

If you are using Chicago Manual of Style/ Turabian the website citation would look more like this.

Cleveland State University Library, Special Collections Department. "The Annals of Cleveland: A Depression-Era Project of the WPA." Cleveland State University Library. http://web.ulib.csuohio.edu/SpecColl/annals/.

For more tips on Turabian/ Chicago Manual of Style click this link to the Bridgewater State College Library. Scroll down until you see "electronic document" in the left hand column tited "type of source".
http://www.bridgew.edu/Library/turabian.cfm

As long as you are consistent in your bibliographic citations it will not matter too much. Either stick will all MLA or all Turabian/Chicago. These citiation styles have been around long before the internet so if you find an edition of either style manual at your school or local library, they may not be current enough to include internet sources. You can always check with people at the reference help desk and they should be able to help you double check your citations as well.

Good Luck! If you have any more questions just ask.