Education Studies 240: History of Education in the United States
Background Information
American National Biography
The major national biography covering persons important in the history of the United States. The online version includes biographical information on more 17,400 men and women.
Dictionary of American History. 10 vols.
Ref. [q.] E174 .D52 2003
Encyclopedia of American Political History. 3 vols.
Ref. [q.] E183 .E5 1984
Encyclopedia of American Social History. 3 vols.
Ref. [q.] HN57 .E58 1993
U.S. Educational Policy Interest Groups: Institutional Profiles.
Ref. L901 .B88 1994
Patterson's American Education.
Ref. [q.] L901 .P3
A Critical Dictionary of Educational Concepts: An Appraisal of Selected Ideas and Issues in Educational Theory and Practice.
Ref. LB15 .B29 1990
Encyclopedia of Education. 8 vols.
Ref. [q.] LB15 .E47 2003
The Greenwood Dictionary of Education.
Ref. [q.] LB15 .G68 2003
Learning Theories, A to Z.
Ref. LB15 .L4695 2002
The Language of Learning: A Guide to Education Terms.
Ref. LB15 .M32 1997
Historical Dictionary of Women's Education in the United States.
Ref. LC1752 .H57 1998
Dictionary of Multicultural Education.
Ref. LC1099 .D53 1997
Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education.
Ref. [q.] LC1099.3 .H35 2004
Reader's Guide to American History.
Presents a series of brief essays that describe and evaluate significant
literature on over 600 topics. Be sure to use the general index.
Ref. [q.] Z1236 .R43 1997
Sources for statistics
Statistical Abstract of the United States.
RRef. HA202
Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present. 5 vols.
RRef. [q.] HA202 .H57 2006
Digest of Education Statistics.
Ref. L111 .A6
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Finding Books
To find items owned by the library, search LUCIA. Try a Subject begins with search, for example, education united states. LUCIA will list other subject headings (and subheadings), which may be of interest. For advanced research you should consult the Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH, a guide to the terms commonly used in catalogs like ours. The LCSH can be found on top of the Ready Reference shelves behind the reference desk on the first floor of the library.
To combine terms for a different kind of search, try a Keyword Anywhere search. LUCIA will look for the terms you specify anywhere in the important areas of the cataloging records, and display a list of those records. Try a search for a phrase, like United States, by searching with quotation marks around the phrase, as in "united states". You can search for individual terms connected by logical operators like AND or OR. You might want to try searching for some of the terms you find in the LCSH. Try a search like "united states" and educat* and history The asterisk acts as a truncation symbol and tells LUCIA to search for all words starting with the letters you type before the asterisk, so a search for educat* would find records with the terms educate, educated, educating, education, etc. You can target your keyword search even more by using the Subject Keyword option. This tells LUCIA to look for the terms in the subject area of the records only.
Books are arranged on the library's shelves by Library of Congress Classification. This is a system which organizes materials by general subjects. Once you have a call number from searching LUCIA, see this guide to call number locations at Mudd and the library floor maps to find out where a book might be on the shelves.
Search LUCIA for materials in our library; try WorldCat to find materials beyond the Mudd. Make sure you've thoroughly searched our library before going to WorldCat. See a reference librarian if you need help.
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Finding Articles
The best index to use will depend on your topic. Be sure to check the Electronic Resources page for other options. Two of our resources, JSTOR and Project MUSE provide complete full text. Some of our indexes include the following.
Academic OneFile
Broad coverage of academic periodicals, magazines, and news sources. Includes full text of some articles.
Academic Search Elite.
Contains broad and specialized coverage of academic and general periodicals, and will include articles from major newspapers.
America: History and Life.
The most important index to the scholarly literature of American history, in books and proceedings as well as journals. America: History and Life includes material on the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
ERIC
Journal articles and reports in education.
Lexis/Nexis Academic
Various dates; the Christian Science Monitor and the New York
Times have indexing back to 1980, with full text added at later dates.
Other papers are added dating mostly from the mid 1990's.
New York Times. 1851-current.
The New York Times is on microfilm and on the web.
New York Times Index--Reference Indexes/Microform Area
New York Times (1851-2004)
Current issues available from many sources: see BESS
Newspapers from ProQuest
Indexing and some full text for international English-language, national, and regional newspapers.
Once you have a citation for an article on your topic, try the 
button to see if that particular article is available. You can also try Citation Linker, LUCIA, and
BESS, an
automated search of the library's full text databases, for electronic copies of articles.
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Finding U.S. Government Documents
Although documents from the state government of Wisconsin are listed in LUCIA, most United States Government Documents are not. There are several ways to search for government documents, but those listed below will be the most direct. You might also want to take a look at the library's Guide to Understanding the Government Document Numbering System before you head to the Documents shelves on the second floor. Many sources for government information are on the Web; be sure to look at the library's United States Government Documents page.
Congressional Universe
CIS: Congressional Information Service.
Contains the CIS Index, legislative histories, Congressional publications,
Congressional Record [from 1985 to present], testimony transcripts, bills,
US Code [laws], and the CFR: Code of Federal Regulations
[from 1981 to present]. Also includes information on committees and committee
members, links to hot topics, the National Journal [from January 1, 1977 to present],
Congress Daily [from January 1, 1991 to present], help links, committee
markups and votes, and more.
Google for Government
The popular and helpful Google search applied specifically to finding government information. Searches local, state, military, and national government Web pages.
GPO Monthly Catalog
Catalog of US government publications, covering 1976 - current. Searchable in many ways, via FirstSearch.
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Web Resources
Related research guides from the library:
Writing an Annotated Bibliography
Biographical Information
History: research guides for History courses at Lawrence
Internet Resources for Education
Selected links from the librarians of Seeley G. Mudd.
Lawrence University Government Documents
From the librarians at the Seeley G. Mudd Library, Lawrence University. Includes information on documents in the Seeley G. Mudd Library and on the World Wide Web.
Bibliography of the History of American Education
Created and maintained by Jurgen Herbst, Professor Emeritus at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. You may also be interested in Herbst's Higher Education in the United States.
ed.gov
The website of the United States Department of Education.
GODORT Frequently Used Sites Related to U.S. Federal Government Information
From the Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of the American Library Association. See the section on Education.
GPO Access Resources by Topic: Education
A variety of resources from the Government Printing Office.
History of Education Society
Based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, this website provides information about the society and a list of related resources.
National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education
"The goal of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education is to provide an independent, non-partisan source of analysis and information on privatization in education." Supported by the Teachers College, Columbia University.
Teachers College, Columbia University
An important center for the study of education. See their list of research centers and institutes for more.
Of course, there are many more web resources available that might be useful in your research. You might want to try looking at sources that select the best of the Web, like these:
It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources. The library's Web Wise Guide to Searching give some helpful inside tips. You can often learn a lot about a page (and a site) by parsing the URL.
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Style Manuals
Academic Citation and Writing
Style manuals of the humanities, physical sciences, and the social sciences in the Seeley G. Mudd Library.
Citing Electronic Documents
This page provides guidance on citing electronic documents and links to
other guides, some on specific styles of documentation.
The Chicago Manual of Style.
A standard source for bibliographic format.
RRef. Z253 .U69 2003
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About Research in American Education
In addition to consulting library catalogs and indexes, be sure to look at bibliographies supplied at the end of relevant articles, chapters, and books, and to search library catalogs for book-length bibliographies.
Your sources must be fully documented in any written work you produce. It may help to look at the information on style before you start your research, so that you will have all the required documentation at hand when you need it. Then as you write, go back to the resources on style for details on the exact format of your citations.
The sources listed in this guide were chosen for the broad coverage they provide. Direct links are provided to Web resources and searchable databases, as well as links to LUCIA, the library's online catalog. Be sure to check the library's Electronic Resources page regularly to see new databases and indexes; some of these will only be available to users on the Lawrence campus. Also, you may want to take a look at guides on related topics from the Library Research Guides page.
Evaluating the resources you find is an essential part of the research process. See this guide to hints on evaluation of books and articles and this guide to evaluating Internet resources.
As always, if you have any questions be sure to ask a Reference Librarian.
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Definitions of terms and abbreviations:
Ref. = Reference collection, first floor
RRef.= Ready Reference, shelves behind the reference desk
Periodicals = Level A
GovDoc = U.S. Government Documents, second floor
Reference Indexes = Alphabetically arranged at the end of the reference collection
Microform Area = Reading room east of the reference desk, near microform drawers
q. = Oversized books: interfiled in reference and scores; at end of classes in other collections
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