Blackburne Library >> Middle School Pathfinders >> 20th Century

8th Grade American History - Library Research
late 20th century

I. As you begin your oral history project, you will need to do some background reading on the events that occurred during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. You can look in several sources, beginning with our general encyclopedias. The following sets are available in print. Be sure to use the general index to the set as a starting point.

Academic American Encyclopedia
Compton's Enyclopedia
Encyclopedia Americana
Encyclopedia Britannica
World Book Encyclopedia

You may also use our online encyclopedias which are available on the Database page.

 II. Special reference books that will be useful are:

The ABC-CLIO Companion to the 1960s Counterculture in America
American Chronicle : Six Decades of American Life: 1920-1980
American Decades: Primary Sources
American Years: A Chronology of U.S. History
The American Heritage Encyclopedia of American History
Annals of America
Bowling, Beatniks, and Bell-Bottoms: Pop Culture of 20th Century America
Chronicle of America
Cold War America
Dictionary of American History
Encyclopedia Latina: History, Culture, and Society in the United States
Encyclopedia of African American Civil Rights
Encyclopedia of Women's History in America
Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear Through the Ages
The Fifties in America
Our Nation's Archive: The History of the U.S. in Documents
The Reader's Companion to American History
The Seventies in America
The Sixties in America

 III. Be sure to check our library catalog for books about your topic. Using the subject approach, look for books under specific headings. Once you find a book related to your subject, you will also see related websites on the book record by looing at "Web path Express" links. Here are some examples of topics and individuals you might choose to research:

Beat Generation
Civil rights movements--United States--History-- 20th Century
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
Feminism
Iran Hostage Crisis
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 1917-1963, Assassination
Kennedy, Robert, F., 1925-1968.
McCarthy, Joseph, 1908-1957
Nixon, Richard Milhous, 1913-1994
School integration
Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Protests, demonstations, etc.-- United States
Watergate affair, 1972-1974

 IV. Look for articles that were written about events in the late twentieth century in the Historical New York Times, The Los Angleles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post in ProQuest's Historical Newspapers. Photographs are available from the Associated Press Image Archive. Search for articles and photographs in the periodical databases.
 

 V. Use NoodleBib to cite your sources in MLA format.. 

Picture sources:

Richard Nixon - www.time.com

Malcolm X - snowhite1815.tripod.com/

John F. Kennedy - www.probertencyclopaedia.com/

Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan) americanhistory.si.edu/.

Middle School Pathfinders