Researching the Historyof your Structure

-- Introduction --

Welcome to the research component of the 3D Historical Cities Project! The purpose of thistutorial is to provide an overview of the steps you will need to follow to research the history ofyour structure. Stated simply, learning the history of a historical building means performing twotasks:

• Finding Secondary Sources -- A secondary source is a book, article, website, or CDproduced by a historian. Such works conform with what you expect to find in writtenhistory books, a written description of the lives of significant individuals, and ofsignificant events that transpired in the past. Aside from description, historians also try toexplain why an event, or sequence of events occurred. Secondary sources are generallyfound in libraries.

• Finding Primary Sources -- Primary sources are not history books. Primary sources arehistorical documents, and can be anything from a diary or letter to a photograph, map orwill. They are useful for historians because they contain information produced byindividuals who witnessed significant events in the past. They are also useful becausethey often reveal the state of mind of the author. If a historian wants to learn how PrimeMinister William Lyon Mackenzie King felt during the middle of World War II, he or shewould likely start by reading his diary. Or, if the same historian wanted to learn howCanadians felt about life and death during the 18th century, he or she would likely startby reading wills from the period. Primary sources are generally found in archives.

Since there are two separate skill sets to be mastered, this tutorial will be divided into two parts.Because your success in conducting primary research -- looking for primary sources in anarchive -- will depend on your exposure to information located in secondary sources, we'll startin Part A with a description of the steps necessary to find useful articles and books.

The materials we provide will be based on Jules R. Benjamin's excellent tutorial: A Student'sGuide to History. The on-line version is available at:http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/history/research/student/intro.htm, and should be read inconjunction with the materials provided here.

While Benjamin's on-line book is useful, it is not oriented to students such as yourself who havea clearly defined topic. It is addressed to students who have a broad subject -- such as the U.S.Civil War -- and need help refining the focus of their study into something more appropriate fora short history essay, such as a discussion of a particular battle. Benjamin's examples are also

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primarily from American history, not useful for students studying Canadian urban and culturalhistory.

For this reason, we have created a tutorial which follows the steps outlined by Benjamin, butprovides examples that are more closely matched to the concerns you will face with your ownprojects. We will direct you to reference works and bibliographies devoted to Canadian history.More importantly, we will provide an example showing the research steps you will need tofollow to learn the history of your building. The building we will be using in our example is theDey's Hockey Arena, home of the original Ottawa Senators. It was located on Laurier Street inOttawa between 1907-1927:

Figure 1:

Once you have good use of the existing literature devoted to the history of your structure, youwill be in a position to begin archival research. This second component will be based on UsingArchives, a publication produced by the National Archives of Canada. The on-line version can beconsulted at: http://cfml.iit.nrc.ca/3DVirtualBuildings/UsingArchives/Title/Title.html. As with AStudent's Guide to History, you should carefully study the materials located at this web site. Thematerials in this tutorial will provide a specific illustration of the principles outlined in UsingArchives.

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Determing your Research Topic:Generating Keywords

We will begin this tutorial by connecting the on-line version of A Student's Guide to History:

• The unit we are interested in is Part I, "Deciding What to Write About". Place your

selection arrow on the text of the title. When you see the hand icon indicating ahypertext link, click your mouse. After the new page emerges, read Benjamin's materialon selecting a topic, theme, and proper scope for your paper.

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/history/research/student/intro.htm

• After you've read Benjamin's material, note that we face a different problem from the oneusually faced by Benjamin's readers. Ordinarily, students writing a history paper have tostart from a broad topic -- such as the U.S. Civil War -- and narrow their interest down tosomething appropriate for a 5 to 15 page term paper, such as the Battle of Gettysburg.Our situation requires that we follow a different research strategy.

• We already have a clearly defined topic, the history of the Dey's arena. Our challenge isfind as much as we can about the history of the arena, and relate it to a series of broadertopics in the history of Canada, Ontario and Ottawa. It's important to remember that inhistory most events don't occur in isolation. The Dey's Arena played an important part inOttawa's past, but to adequately explain its past you will need to relate it to broader issuessuch as the history of hockey and sport in Canada.

With regard to hockey, the following are the kinds of questions you would want to consider inyour search:

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• Since hockey was and remains a popular sport in Canada, what can we find out aboutCanada's cultural past to suggest why it proved so popular?

• How can we explain the rise of a professional sports league such as the NHL?

• Why did residents of Ottawa choose in the late 19th century to watch hockey games?

• Are there technological issues here? Was it possible to create an indoor hockey arenabefore the late 19th century?

• Were financial concerns an issue? Did residents of Ottawa have more disposable income?

• How important was sports as an outlet for popular culture in the 19th century?

The first step to finding answers to these issues involves brainstorming. What topics are there inCanadian history to which can you justifiably relate the Dey's Arena? More specifically, whatkey words can you use to assist you when you begin researching your topic? Figure 2 shows thekeywords we were able to generate:

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Figure 2:

As you'll see from the chart, we decided to structure our research around four basic themes:sport, hockey, popular culture, and history. We also decided to approach our topic along twolevels of inquiry, national history and local history. Accordingly, as we conduct our research wewill be using the keywords shown in Figure 3 in different combinations.

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Figure 3:

The list above does not exhaust the possible ways we could approach our topic:

1. We could also approach our four themes from the point of view of provincialhistory, specifically Ontario.

2. We could also add another topic to our search, namely the role that hockey playedin shaping 19th century codes of male behavior. For the past decade, historians inCanada and abroad have devoted a good deal of attention to this topic. If we wereto add it to our search we would add gender and masculinity to our keywords.

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3. We could also include the name "Dey", and the word "Arena", to see if anypublished material exists for the Dey Brothers, the owners of the hockey arena.

4. For that matter, we could research the history of architecture in Canada.

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Getting Started:General Reference Sources

Once you've generated a list of key words to structure your research, turn to the "Using researchto formulate a theme" section in Part I. As Benjamin indicates, the use of historical dictionaries,encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, and subject bibliographies can be very helpful, both forgetting a general overview of your topic, and for providing references to historical worksdevoted to the topic or series of topics you want to research.

There are a number of excellent reference sources in print and on the internet devoted toCanadian history. A list of print reference works can be obtained from the University of Ottawaat:

http://www.uottawa.ca/library/subjects/hist/cdahist.pdf

On the Internet, there are also a number of web sites which provide useful lists of referenceworks in Canadian history. These include:

• The Yale University Library Web Site

http://www.library.yale.edu/humanities/canabib.html

• Canadian Studies: A Guide to the Sources.

http://www.iccs-ciec.ca/blackwell.html

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Using Reference Materials:The Yale University Library Web Site

The objective of lists cited in the previous page is either to refer you to works which will giveyou a general overview of your topic, or to refer you to books and articles that will provide moredetailed information. We will refer to both lists to show you how to effectively exploit each, inorder to find general information on the history of hockey and sport in Canada, and hopefully tomaterial specficially related to the history of the Dey's Hockey Arena.

• To start, we'll link up with the Yale University Library Web Site.

• In the Table of Contents, select the link titled Guides, Handbooks, Histories,Dictionaries, Encyclopedias and note the items listed in that section.

http://www.library.yale.edu/humanities/canabib.html

• As the list indicates, there are a variety of resources we can search using the keywords.

• We will start with the Canadian Encyclopedia. It should prove helpful in giving us ageneral overview of our topic, and may also provide citations to books with more detailedinformation.

• Bear in mind that while the Yale web site lists the 1988 edition of the encyclopedia.When conducting your own research, try to access the most recent edition, preferablywork published in the 1990s, since the articles therein are likely to contain references torecently published books and articles.

• A general principle when doing research is to find recent literature. Scholars studyingCanadian economic history in 1990, for example, are more likely to know more than theircounterparts did in the 1940s.

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Using theCanadian Encyclopedia

When consulting a reference work such as the Canadian Encyclopedia:

• Use the table of contents and index to see if there are any chapters, portions of chapters,or articles that correspond with the keywords, and topics, that you want to study.

• If you examined a later edition of the Canadian Encyclopedia, as we did, you also havethe option of conducting keyword searches on the 1996 CD version of the referencesource.

• Figure 4 in the next page shows the keywords we used in our searches, and the materialwe were able to find. Note that some research strategies proved extremely useful Alsonote that some were not useful at all.

Taking Notes

• Before consulting Figure 4, note that it provides three examples of notes we took fromthe articles we found in the Canadian Encyclopedia.

• You will need to take similar notes while conducting your own research, with entriesindicating:

1. Author and Title of your source.

2. Brief entries summarizing the information of interest in the article. If your sourceprovides an answer to one of your questions, such as the reason for the rise of theNHL, note it down.

3. If your reference source cites a book that may prove helpful to you, note its title,the name of the author, and its publication date.

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While taking notes, remember that it's better to take down too much information than notenough. If you run across information that might even be remotely interesting to you, note itdown. You may find it turns out to be extremely important down the line.

Results of Search:Canadian Encyclopedia

Figure 4:

-- Example 1 --

KeyWords

Article(s) Value

Sports +Canada

(1) "Arenas andStadiums" inCanadianEncylcopedia.(Author: J.Thomas West.)

• Our search produced 157 hits, too large for an effectivesearch, but it did list "Arenas and Stadiums" at the top.

• Article indicates three items of interest: (1.) The firstcovered arena built to enclose an ice rink was built inQuebec City in 1852; (2.) The most famous early arenawas Montreal's Victoria Rink, built in 1862 it played aprominent role in the development of hockey; (3.)Ottawa produced one of the first arenas builtspecifically for hockey, in 1895. The article does notmention if one of those arenas was the Dey's Arena.

• No Suggested Readings Listed.

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-- Example 2 --

KeyWords

Article(s) Value

Sports +History+ Canada

(1) "CanadianAmateur HockeyAssociation" inCanadianEncylcopedia.(Author: JamesMarsh)

(2) "Hockey (Ice)"in CanadianEncyclopedia.(Author: JamesMarsh)

Article 1 -- Devoted to the history of amateur hockey inCanada. Nothing of interest.

Article 2 -- Article devoted to history of hockey inCanada. Points of interest:

• General history of the game in Canada,development of game rules.

• Suggests the rise of professionalism animportant stage in the history of the thesport. Hockey's popular appeal leads toorganization of sport along business lines.

• Rise of professional leagues, including theOntario Professional league in 1908, thefirst in Canada, and the National HockeyAssociation (NHA) in 1909. The NHAreorganized as the NHL in 1917.

• Professional sports leads to rise of indoorstadiums and artificial ice. Heavy costslead to concentration of teams in largercities.

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(3) "Sports History"in CanadianEncyclopedia.(Authors: Peter L.Lindsay and J.Thomas West)

• Ottawa Senators one of the first teams inthe NHL. Ottawa Senators dominatedleague plays in the 1920s, with 4 StanleyCup Victories. Team folds in 1934. Noreason is specified.

• Suggested Reading: Dan Diamond, ed, TheOfficial National Hockey League StanleyCup Centennial Book (1992); PeterGzowski, The Game of Our Lives (1981).

Article 3 -- Article devoted to the history of sport in Canada.Points of Interest:

• Rise of sports as source of popularentertainment, due to reduction in workhours. Sunday not an option for playingsports after 1845 due to passage of Lord'sDay Act.

• Impact of technology in rise of sports.Innovations in transportation -- such assteam engine -- allows teams and fans totravel from one locale to another. Rise ofmass media and telegraph spurs popularinterest in sport.

• Role of urbanization -- growing populationin cities -- in stimulating civic leaders toencourage sport in cities as diversion forpopulation.

• Role of sport in fostering Canadianidentity.

• Role of Montreal in fostering rise of sportsleagues, including hockey.

• Social tensions associated with sport.Dominance of sports from middle class.

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Exclusion of men of colour and workingclass. Women's participation in sportminimal in 19th century.

• Rise of hockey over lacross as dominantsport in Canada.

-- Example 3 --

KeyWords

Article(s) Value

PopularCulture+ Ottawa

(none) (none)

Using Reference Materials:Using Canadian Studies: A Guide to the Sources

Our purpose for using the bibliographic essay by John D. Blackwell and Laura C.C. Stanley-Blackwell will be somewhat different than the Yale University Guide. At that web site, we weresearching for a resource that would give us a general overview of the subjects we areresearching. Here we want to find book or articles that will provide more detailed information.That is one purpose of bibliographic essays, to provide references to books published on a topic,as opposed to providing a general description of a historical event.

• To start, connect to the web site which hosts the essay.

• Open the "Edit" menu of your browser, and select "Find in Page" if you are using

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Netscape, or "Find (On this Page)" if you are using Explorer.

• Place one of the keywords from Figure 3 in the text entry field of the "Find" table. Press"Find Next". Keep pressing the "Find Next" button until your browser indicates nofurther examples of your word are to be found in the text.

• Each time the "Find in Page" command produces a hit, read the the paragraphsurrounding it to see if there are any books or articles of interest.

• Perform this task with all six of the keywords. If you find a word such as "Canada" isproducing too many hits that are not of interest, move onto your next keyword.

• If you have time, scan the entire essay after you've used the "Find in Page" tool to see ifyou can independently find material of interest.

http://www.iccs-ciec.ca/blackwell.html

• Figure 5 indicates what we were able to find.

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Results of Search:Canadian Studies: A Guide to the Sources

Figure 5:

KeyWord

References

Canada No references -- too many hits

History This search led to a paragraph describing several general surveys ofCanadian history. It would be useful to examine two or three, to see if theyhave any sections devoted to the history of sport in Canada. Generalsurveys are also useful because they generally include lists of furtherreadings. If the history of sport is referred to in one of these surveys, youshould find a list of sources.

• The Illustrated History of Canada. Ed. Craig Brown. (Ed. is anabbreviation for editor)

• Desmond Morton. A Short History of Canada.

• Canadian History: A Reader's Guide. Eds. Brook Taylor and DougOwram. (This volume may prove the most useful, since it isdevoted to various topics in Canadian history.)

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Ottawa No references -- no useful hits

SportThis search led to two useful hits:

• Don Morrow et al. A Concise History of Sport in Canada

• Bruce Kidd. The Struggle for Canadian Sport.

PopularCulture

No useful hits. Search led to the same paragraph in which references tohistory of sport cited above were located.

Hockey No references -- no useful hits

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Getting Started:Using the Historical Literature

Before moving onto the next step of your research strategy, you should take stock of what weaccomplished by consulting the general reference sources in Part B:

• We were able to identify key elements in the history of the Dey's Hockey Arena, not theleast being that Ottawa had winning hockey teams during the first two decades of the20th century. (See the notes in Section B)

• We were also able to generate a list of books that may serve as useful sources. SeeFigure 3.

Figure 3:

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-- Generating Bibliographies and Footnotes --

As you conduct your search, make it a point to list all materials that you believe will be usefulwhen you begin your actual research. The best way to do this is to make a bibliography, a listwhich records the author, title, publisher, and time and place of publication for all the works thatinterest you.

There are two reasons why it's a good idea to begin constructing an organized bibliography now:

1. It's in your interest to be as organized as possible while conducting research. One way todo this is by generating a list which itemizes all the information you may need, from theauthor's name to the date of publication.

• Don't just list the book's call number in your bibliography. The sequenceof numbers and letters will not mean anything to you a day or two afteryou've noted it down.

• Note everything down so that in a week's time you can differentiate thebooks in your list that have the greatest likelihood of being helpful fromthose that are not.

• Also, a detailed list will help you to distinguish books devoted specificallyto hockey from those devoted to the history of sport, popular culture, orOttawa.

• As you generate your bibliography, you should keep two points in mind:(1) List your works alphabetically by author; (2) If your list is longer thanhalf a page, divide your bibliography into different sections. In our case,we'll want to divide the list into sections devoted to "Hockey", "PopularCulture", "Sport", etc.

2. You will need to provide a completed bibliography when you hand in your written work,so you might as well begin constructing it now.

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-- The Proper Method for Generating Bibliographies and Footnotes --

There are specific formats that you should follow while constructing your bibliography, one styleapplies to books, another for articles and encyclopedias. The University of Southern Mississippihas placed a style guide entitled "Turabian Style Guide" which will show you how to write theentries for your bibliography. Read it carefully.

http://www.lib.usm.edu/~instruct/guides/turabian.html

-- Proper Documentation is Important! --

Temple University has produced a similar guide, one which also explains how to constructendnotes and footnotes. It's important that you learn this skill since it's the established methodhistorians use to document their texts.

• Obviously, historians can't invent what they write. They have to look at source materialgenerated by individuals in the past, and then reconstruct a story which describes whatevents occurred, and when. It's the historians responsibility to tell readers what sourcematerial they used.

• Historians also use materials produced by their colleagues. And here they also usefootnotes and endnotes to show their intellectual debt to their colleagues.

• In sum, footnotes and endnotes are used to establish what you know, and how youobtained the information you have. See the Temple University site for information onconstructing footnotes and endnotes:

http://www.temple.edu/histdept/uhandbook.html#SOURCES

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When you write the history of your structure, it'simportant that you properly cite the materials used inresearching the past of your structure. Failing toproperly report your sources of information is anaction called plagiarism. If you plagiarize, you arecommitting an act of theft, by representing the workof others as your own.

Universities have been known to expel students for engaging in this type of behaviour. It's not ahabit you want to develop. If you're caught, you risk paying a price that you'll regret. Don't do it.

-- Effective Use of Source Material --

With a preliminary bibliography, we're now in a position to conduct research, which meansreading the books in our list. However, as you read your book there are a number of other stepsyou should take to get the maximum value out of your resource. We will use the book A ConciseHistory of Sport in Canada to illustrate what you should do.

Step 1: Examine the Table of Contents

When you begin reading a book, remember that your aim is not to read it in its entirety. Yourobjective is to quickly find information that will help you write your essay, and then move on.The first step is to examine the table of contents, to see if any of the chapter's listed headingsmatch the key words identified in Part B. As it happens, Chapter 8 by Wayne Simpson isdevoted to the history of hockey. We will want to read it.

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Step 2: Examine the Book's Publication Datafor LOC Subject Headings

Most books list their publication data in the page immediately following the title page. This pagelists the publisher, the publisher's address, the book's library call number: GV585.C66 1989, andits Library of Congress (LOC) subject heading:Sports -- Canada -- History.

The LOC subject heading is the item that you will find most useful here. Libraries use theseheadings to classify the holdings in their collection. If you want to find more books devoted tothe same subject matter, most library catalogues will allow you to conduct searches using LOCsubject headings.

To show you how you can use LOC subject headings to find material, connect to the NationalLibrary of Canada's catalogue at:

http://amicus.nlc-bnc.ca/resanet/reslogine.htm

Click the "Search" image with your selection arrow . Your screen would look like Figure 4.

Figure 4:

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The library's "Basic Search" page has two fields to facilitate your search.

The left field -- -- determines the type of search that you will conduct.Since you aren't searching for the title of a particular book, we'll change the selection criteria:

1. First by activating the selection button with the selection arrow .

2. Second by selecting "Subject browse" in the list that appears in your screen

3. The left field should now look like this: .

The right text entry field --

-- enables you to specify the author, book title, or subject you wish to search for in the library'scatalogue. Enter "Sports -- Canada -- History" into the text entry field:

Figure 5 indicates what you should see in your screen, once you've pressed the "Submit" button.

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Figure 5:

Select the second entry of the list -- "Sports Canada History" -- which the catalogue indicatescontains 24 records. Once you've done so, your screen should look like Figure 6:

Figure 6:

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When you conduct your own searches, you will need to proceed systematically through the listsgenerated by your own library catalogue. For the moment, note in Figure 7 we added three textsfrom the library catalogue to our bibliography.

Figure 7:

Note also that the library lists entries for each book in two forms. The entries you see in your listare the short form.

To retrieve the full entry for a book of interest, click the title with your selection arrow . It'sworth your time to explore the comprehensive listing for a book since libraries generally list theLOC subject headings for the book in this file. There may be more than one heading, as there isfor the book in Figure 8. If the words in the new LOC subject headings match the key words yougenerated in Part A, you should use the new LOC heading to conduct a second search of thelibrary catalogue.

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Figure 8:

Finally, note that you in a library catalogue such as this you have the option of using otherkeywords such as "Hockey", "History" and "Canada". Our search of the NLC catalogue retrieved27 records.

Step 3: Use the Index

Aside from the book's table of contents, which indicates the subject of each chapter, and itspublication data, which is useful for continuing your research, you will also want to examine theindex. The index is a useful resource for two reasons:

• While the Concise History of Sport has a chapter devoted to hockey, theremay be other useful material in neighbouring sections of the book whichyou not locate using the table of contents. The index indicates where suchmaterial is located. Using our key words, we found two useful headings --"Hockey" and "Ottawa Senators". The index provides the page numberswhere the information for each subject is located.

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• If you are pressed for time, and would prefer not to read the entire chapterdevoted to hockey, the index will help you locate the portions of thechapter covering the history of hockey in Ottawa.

Step 4: Use the Endnotes

As we indicated earlier, historians have to obtain their information either from historicalmanuscripts, or from books and articles written by colleagues. The point to remember here is thatif that information proved useful to the authors of A Concise History of Sport, it might proveuseful to you. While reading the chapter devoted to hockey, we found a number of sectionsdevoted to the history of hockey in Ottawa.

When you find material of interest, make a note of the endnote or footnote number which islisted in superscript format at the end of the sentence. For example, an endnote is listed at the endof this section from A Concise History of Sport:

With less than two minutes remaining, the score was tied. Then,with less than a minute remaining, Frank McGee, Ottawa'soutstanding centre, scored the winning goal for the Silver Seven.When the final bell sounded, 'Old fans and young, wild with thejoys of victory, leaped from bleachers, boxes and beams, andjammed the ice surface.' 75 (p. 184)

To find the source that the author used to provide a description of the Stanley Cup match of1903, and the history of the 'Silver Seven', we went to the Endnotes section located at the back ofthe book. In the area devoted to "Chapter 8: Hockey", we found the following reference inendnote 75:

75Roxborough, The Stanley Cup Story, p. 32.

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This is a shortened form of a footnote. Authors generally only provide the complete publicationdata of a work the first time they cite it in an endnote. Thereafter, they provide a shortened formsuch as you see above. To find the complete publication data, you would need to look for areference to the Roxborough book in an endnote preceding number 75. A complete referencewould look like this:

75 Henry Roxborough, The Stanley Cup Story (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1971), p. 32.

We urge you to exploit this resource. Continuous reference to the endnote sections of your booksand articles will help you to find the information you need quickly. As well, if the authorprovides a bibliography at the end of the book, consult it to see if any items of interest are listed.

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Getting Started:Using Databases

While history books such as A Concise History of Sport are a useful source of information, theyare not the only resource at your disposal. Historians also write articles which they publish inscholarly journals such as the Canadian Historical Review, The Journal of Canadian Studies,L'Histoire Sociale/Social History, and National History. You can access these journals either atyour city library, or at the nearest university library. Bring money with you in order to makephotocopies.

One of the quickest and most efficient ways to locate useful articles in scholarly journals is viause of a database. For historians, the most comprehensive databases are America History andLife, which also provides references to Canadian topics and journals, and Historical Abstracts,which places a greater emphasis on topics in European and Global history.

Unfortunately, these databases cannot be accessed via the Internet unless your institution pays asubscription to the company which produces them. If your search requires that you use eitherdatabase, call your nearest university library to see if it has a subscription. If it does, you willneed to go to the library and use the terminals provided to access the database.

There is, however, a free database available on the Internet which provides a good overview ofthe material available in most scholarly journals. You can access the UnCover database at:

http://www.carl.org/

Once you connect to the CARL corporation web site, you should see the menu bar indicated inFigure 9 on the left side of your screen:

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Figure 9:

Select the second link from the bottom, the one which says "Search UnCover". After you'veselected the link to the UnCover database, a welcome page should appear in your screen. Toaccess the database, select this icon, located on the left side of your screen:

Once you've done so, your screen should look like Figure 10.

Figure 10:

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Ignore the request for a profile number, profile password, and access password located next tothe text entry fields in your screen. You don't need them to use UnCover. Simply click the iconshown shown in Figure 11, which is located on the right side of your screen.

Figure 11:

Once you've done so your screen should look like Figure 12.

Figure 12:

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Enter your keywords into the text entry field in your screen and press "Search". The databasewill generate a list of articles in your screen. To retrieve the complete citation, click the title withyour selection arrow.

Good luck with your search!