Library Blog

Remembering Harold Washington

November 25 marks the twenty-year anniversary of former Chicago mayor Harold Washington's death in office.  The mayor graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Roosevelt University, then known as Roosevelt College, in 1949. 

To honor his legacy, we have created a photo album comprised of pictures of the mayor taken from the university's archives.  It includes pictures from his time as a Roosevelt student, while campaigning for the mayor's office, and receiving a number of honors as a distinguished alumnus.

View the Harold Washington photo album

The library also has a number of books on Harold Washington's life, career, and legacy:

• Bashing Chicago traditions: Harold Washington’s last campaign, Chicago, 1987 by Melvin G. Holli and Paul M. Green.  Chicago Circulating Books and Schaumburg Campus Library: F548.54.W36 H65 1989
• Chicago divided: the making of a Black mayor by Paul Kleppner.  Chicago Circulating Books: F548.52.W36 K541985
• Climbing a great mountain: selected speeches of Mayor Harold Washington.  Chicago Circulating Books: F548.52.W36 A51988
• Fire on the prairie: Chicago’s Harold Washington and the politics of race by Gary Rivlin.  Chicago Circulating Books:  F548.54.W36 R581992
• "Harold," the peoples mayor: an authorized biography of Mayor Harold Washington by Dempsey J. Travis.  Chicago Circulating Books: F548.54.W36 T731989
• Harold Washington: a political biography by Florence Hamlish Levinsohn.  Chicago Circulating Books: F548.52.W36 L481983
• The Making of the mayor, Chicago, 1983 edited by Melvin G. Holli and Paul M. Green.  Chicago Circulating Books: JS718.3 .M34 1984
• The Mayors: the Chicago political tradition edited by Paul M. Green and Melvin G. Holli.  Chicago Circulating Books and Schaumburg Campus Library: F548.25 .M39 2005

For additional information about Harold Washington, Chicago Public Radio and the NPR program This American Life are offering radio programs about the mayor, which you can listen to for free on their websites:

• Harold: Then and Now; a series of stories about Harold Washington by Chicago Public Radio
• This American Life episode 84: Harold; an hour-long program covering Washington's election and his legacy in Chicago politics

Fair Use

Every now and then I bump up against copyright law. It’s just a professional hazard. Currently, I’m trying to decide if I have a right to upload recordings of university music ensembles to a local area network for the listening enjoyment of all the RU campus community. Ugh. The set of federal regulations that comprise copyright law is very complex, and many of us shy away from really getting into it. But, I think every organization that deals with the creation and dissemination if information, like a university, should have a few things well understood. One thing in particular is fair use.

Fair use essentially asserts that even though a “work” (book, article, musical score, etc.) is protected from copying under copyright law, you might have a right to make a copy for certain purposes. Normally, you have to pay or ask permission to make copies of protected works. Fair use says you don’t have to pay or get permission to make a copy – if you can meet a set of conditions. Theses conditions are called tenets, and get at the purpose of the copying. There are four tenets of fair use:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

To make a fair use argument (an argument that says “under fair use I can make a copy without payment or permission”), all tenets must be considered. It’s a great balancing act. One can’t simply say that the copying is for educational purposes, for instance, and be done with it. There are three remaining tenets to look at. You have to look at them all. To make it little easier, when considering the tenets ask yourself these questions:

I need primary sources from the 1950s (or 1890s or 1920s...). Help!

Ms. Information answers your questions

Many students come to the library seeking help in finding this older material, and we're always glad when they do because it can be very difficult to find.  Although it doesn't have to be so hard - and I'd like to share with you my tips for finding older material. (Click here for a pdf document that explains Primary Sources)

One of the best resources we have is The New York Times going back to the 1850s in microfilm.  This is one of our oldest resources, and we can combine the old technology of microfilm with the new technology of the Internet to use this source effectively by searching for articles at the New York Times Archives website.  When you do this you'll get lists of articles based on your key words and years, and many of these have a small preview of the article - but BEWARE - they want you to pay for the article, but don't do that! Instead, write down all the information (date, page, title..) and bring it in to the library, where we can get the microfilm for you and you can print it up for only 10 cents per page.

You can employ this same technology with the Atlantic Monthly's archives website. We have the actual copies of The Atlantic Monthly from 1857 just sitting on our shelves so you can read the article for free after locating it on the website.

JSTOR,(click on jstor after following the link) one of the many databases we subscribe to at Roosevelt houses a lot of old information. JSTOR tends to have more science information than anything else, but they do house material from a wide variety of disciplines as well. (Click here for a pdf guide to JSTOR)

Another good option for older material is to find out if a city or town relevant to your search has a digital archives online, if their newspaper has online access to old articles, or if the public library or a historical society in the area has any online content.  Many of these places are putting more and more content online, which is great for you but do be careful to check what website you're getting this from to be sure that the information is reliable.  And, as always - ask a librarian when you're perplexed.

 

These are just a few ways of finding older material, for more comprehensive information on how to research using older sources, please see this post.

 

Do you have a question for Ms. Information? Ms. Information welcomes your questions about research, libraries, and how to find all kinds of information.  Submit your question to mhaller [at] roosevelt [dot] edu.

Before there were databases, there were indexes...

For this installment of Database Tips, we'll be going back to a time well before databases, before computers, before the Auditorium Building was even built.

Before we used databases to index and collect articles from journals, magazines and newspapers, these kinds of materials were thoroughly indexed in printed indexes.  These indexes kept track of what was published in numerous periodicals by sorting citations by major subjects, authors, and people, much like an index one would find at the end of a book, only in these books, the entire book is an index, and rather than pointing the reader to another page in the book, they point one to an article in a periodical.

The disadvantage of these print indexes compared to their database offspring is rather obvious: the databases are able to provide quick access to the actual articles they index.  The advantage of print indexes are that they often go back farther than even the most comprehensive databases, in some cases back to the 19th century.  Some purists might even say that they are easier to use in that they provide a single source for citations, and citations for numerous articles are easily found and listed under definitive subject headings.

The most well-known of these print indexes is

A Code for Finding Journal Articles

One of the most frustrating aspects of searching for articles in a database is not knowing which keywords to use to find information.  This can especially be hard when researching a type of business or an industry. The business type you are researching can seem so specific that it gets frustrating weeding through irrelevant articles, or it can be so obscure that you find little or no articles. Well, here's a tip that will help you find journal articles about businesses and industries, no matter how specific or obscure: find out how the government classifies your business or industry. 

How do you do that?  The government uses a system called NAICS (pronounced "nakes"), which stands for North American Industry Classification System.  It was developed along with the governments of Canada and Mexico as a way to classify businesses in order to collect statistical data about the business economies of those nations.  Industries are given a code, usually 6 digits long, which identifies their primary type of business. 

In library article databases provided by EBSCO, including Academic Search Premier and Business Source Premier, you have the ability to search for articles using a NAICS code, because articles in these databases are indexed with the NAICS codes that are relevant to that article.  So if you find the NAICS code for the industry you are researching, you can enter that code in those databases and get of set of articles that are indexed with that code. 

Finding the correct NAICS code can be a little tricky.  There is a NAICS website which includes a code search (http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html).  The search is very strict, so it is best to search using a single keyword here; for instance, rather than searching "floral arrangements" search "floral," "flower," or "florist."  What may work a little better is to go to Google and search "NAICS" along with the industry you are looking for.  For instance, if you go to the NAICS site and search "event planning" you won't get results, but if you Google "NAICS event planning," the first result you get is an announcement from the Census bureau explaining that NAICS code 561920 covers the activities done on a daily basis by event planners.

With that code in hand, you can now go to Academic Search Premier or Business Source Premier and find articles indexed with this code.  In one of the keyword boxes type IC along with your NAICS code in quotes (for example: IC "561920").  Click the Search button, and you will get a list of articles indexed with that code.  Since NAICS codes often cover a number of different industries, you may want to narrow the results down by entering in keywords in the additional keyword boxes. 

If you need additional assistance with NAICS, or with researching businesses and industries, contact a reference librarian at our Downtown, Schaumburg, or CPA library.