Each student will visit one facility and be prepared to report back to the group briefly on the manner and style of the presentation of history through tangible site, object, or structure. A written report will be submitted to address site presentation issues. Reference libraries contain a wide variety of electronic data bases and printed reference tools useful to all historians. Through a series of exercises students will familiarize themselves with a cluster of such tools and describe their value and function to the group. Their values and limitations will discussed.
Law libraries contain reference tools unfamiliar to most historians.
Rutgers Camden Law School has an excellent collection which is extremely useful in rapidly yielding access to vast amounts of printed primary material. Through a series of exercises students will work with a cluster of the research tools and describe their use to the rest of the group. Through a series of exercises of escalating sophistication and difficulty, students will use the resources of the college library reference section, the law library, and the Internet to prepare brief reports on previously set research questions. Many of the questions will reflect the sorts of information required by docents and tour guides to enrich their presentations of material culture. As each student explains the pathway he or she used to gather information, other students will be able to add new methods and pathways to their own repertoires.