Home - HST 401 - Senior Seminar: Food in America: A History (Fall 2018) - Research Guides at Syracuse University Libraries

Course Description

HST 401: Senior Seminar: Food in America: A History

M 3:45-6:30 pm

Ms. Branson

Why do we use the phrase "American as apple pie"? How is food part of our national identity? This course explores the role that food has played in American society from the 17th to the 21st century. We will pursue this theme through a variety of readings and sources, including historical accounts of food in immigrant communities.

Library Research Guides, Subject Specialist Librarians, and Citation Help

Directory of Research Guides on the SU Libraries Website
Lists over 200 subject-oriented guides (e.g., History) and general guides (e.g., Newspaper Databases), as well as course guides such as this one.
Citation Guide
Provides quick access to guidelines and examples of APA, MLA, and other often-used citation styles and links to information on citation management tools such as RefWorks, EndNote Web, and Zotero.

Library Search Tools

Summon
"Summon searches most of the journal, magazine, and newspaper resources available through library databases, as well as the Classic Catalog, the Syracuse University Digital Collections, and the SURFACE repository. Other types of materials such as dissertations and theses, and library research guides are also included. Summon also searches the full-text content of the SU Libraries' e-book collections and Google Books."

"While it does contain information from most of the library’s databases, there is some information that is NOT included in Summon. Specialized or comprehensive research should be done in the Library’s subject-specific databases and using the library’s primary catalog."

sample Summon search: Advanced Search for English-language material, excluding newspaper articles and book reviews, on the terms traditional AND american AND cuisine
Classic Catalog
Lists resources available at the Syracuse University Libraries, including print and e-format books and journals, databases and digital collections, maps, sound recordings, films, government documents, and manuscript/archival materials. Searchable by keyword, author, title, subject heading, or call number.
Examples of Library of Congress Subject Headings that can be used in searching:
Food habits--United States--History
Cooking, American--History
Sample Call Number search: TX715
[sample title] American Cake: From Colonial Gingerbread to Classic Layer, the Stories and Recipes Behind More than 125 of Our Best-loved Cakes, by Anne Byrn.
[sample title] The Blue and Gray Almanac: The Civil War in Facts and Figures, Recipes and Slang, by Albert A. Nofi.
[sample title] The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, by Michael W. Twitty.
[sample title] Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, by Sarah Lohman.
[sample title] Sugar: The World Corrupted: from Slavery to Obesity, by James Walvin.
[sample title] Sweets Without Sugar, by Marion White. (WW II-era primary-source material published in 1942)
Journal Locator
Use this tool to find out whether the SU Libraries offer local access to a given journal and, if so, to determine the dates of coverage. Showing both print and electronic holdings of any given title, the Journal Locator can be searched by specific title or by ISSN; browsed alphabetically for journal titles; or browsed by subject categories. The "Citation Linker" / "Look up Article" feature can be used to retrieve articles for which citations are already known.
Databases A-Z menu
The SU Libraries subscribe to almost 600 different databases across an extremely wide range of disciplines and subject areas. This database menu can be searched by Title (e.g., JSTOR); by Subject (e.g., Nutrition and Food Science; Gender, LGBT & Women's Studies); or by Type (e.g., Biography, News & Newspapers).

Classified Resources at the SU Libraries

Browsing Library Collections by Call Numbers

Although some older books are perhaps classified in the Dewey Decimal Classification System, most Syracuse University Libraries print resources are classified in and physically arranged according to the alpha-numeric Library of Congress (LC) Classification System. [NOTE: Although they have no physical presence, e-books are also assigned base LC classification numbers to make them findable via Classic Catalog "Call Number" searches.]

The LC system has allocated Classes E- F to American History. But material on food may be classified in a variety of places within the Social Sciences or Technology, for example:

Class G: Geography. Anthropology. Recreation

GT2400-3390.5 "Customs relative to private life, Including ... eating and drinking ..."

Class T: Technology

TX 642-840 “Home Economics” - “Cooking”

“E,” "F," and "G" call numbers are assigned to titles that are shelved in the Reference Collection on the 2nd floor of Bird Library and in the general and oversize stacks on the 3rd floor of Bird Library. "T" call numbers are assigned to titles that are shelved in the Carnegie Library.

(Note: Bound volumes of print journals / periodicals and less frequently used books are kept at The Facility, a high-density storage space at 1556 Jamesville Avenue. On-line forms can be used to request either scanning and email transmission of articles or next-business-day delivery of print materials for pick-up at a library on campus.)

To see an outline of the entire "E-F" Class open the document below. Then click on any Subclasses of interest for outlines of their classification schemes.

Outline of E and F Classes

New York Public Library Archive of Restaurant Menus (1851-2008)

Historical Menu Collection Digtized by the NYPL
2014 article about the New York Public Library menu archive
“To be a New Yorker is to be a gourmand—of food carts, local diners, supermarkets, outer borough mercados, whatever latest upscale restaurant surfaces in a given season…. It is to be as likely to have a menu in hand as a newspaper, er… smartphone … Now you, dear reader, can experience well over one-hundred years of staring at menus, thanks to the New York Public Library’s enormous digitized collection. … You’ll not only find several hundred New York restaurants represented here, but hundreds more from all over the world. With a collection of 17,000 menus and counting, a person could easily get lost.” --Open Culture Website: Archives, Design, Food & Drink, History, September 4th, 2014
2017 article about the Buttolph Collection of Menus at the New York Public Library ("The Woman Who Collected More Than 25,000 Menus")

Cookbooks and Special Collections at the SU Libraries

Guide to the Cookbook Collection
"The cookbook collection, housed at the Carnegie Library, consists of over 3,000 items and continues to grow. ... The collection supports numerous academic programs at the university, but is also available to all SU faculty, staff and students for their personal use and enjoyment. ... In addition to hundreds of standard cookbooks, it also includes cookbooks focusing on international cuisines, specific populations and diets, including vegetarianism, weight loss, and the sick (diabetes, cancer, etc.)."
Potential Primary Source Material Available Locally
"Located on the 6th floor of Syracuse University's Bird Library, the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) advances scholarship and learning by collecting and preserving rare books, manuscripts, and other primary source materials. SCRC's collections span time and format, from cuneiform tables to born digital electronic files. Collecting areas include activism and social reform."
Example of an SCRC finding aid: Kay Shaw Nelson Papers
"The largest single contribution to the library [cookbook holdings] to date is the collection of Kay Shaw Nelson, a 1948 SU graduate. Mrs. Nelson is the author of numerous cookbooks and articles, as well as a newspaper columnist and culinary historian. She spent many years abroad working as an intelligence officer for the CIA and amassed a large collection of unique cookbooks and menus from countries in which she lived and worked. The menu collection and the more rare materials are housed at the Special Collections Research Center ..."

Especially Relevant Databases

America: History & Life
Indexes literature on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to current times, covering material published in thousands of journals from 1964 to the present. English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages.
sample search: restaurants AND chinese
American Periodicals Series Online
"This database contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals."
sample Advanced Search: cookery AND [receipts OR recipes]
Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982
Index to popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States from 1890 to 1982.
sample search: peanuts OR peanut butter; items published 1890-1949 only
ProQuest News and Newspapers
A single portal that enables searching across multiple news and newspaper databases, among them all of the ProQuest Historical Newspapers (including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post). Also covers US Newsstream.
sample Advanced Search: "julia child"; 1935-1990 articles in the LA Times, the NY Times, The Washington Post, and the Wall St. Journal

WorldCat (for locating resources at other libraries and archives)

WorldCat (FirstSearch)
A union catalog that contains records for books and other materials in all formats (including electronic/digital resources, audio recordings, films/video, and maps), of all vintages, and in hundreds of different languages. Provides information on titles cataloged by tens of thousands of OCLC member libraries around the world, offering literally millions of bibliographic records and associated holdings details. NOTE: The preferred way to submit Interlibrary Loan requests is via the "Request document via ILLiad" links in WorldCat records.
sample Advanced Search (Library of Congress Subject Heading): cooking mexican (Purpose is to seek items not held by the SU Libraries, which does have books such as Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America (2012).)

Obtaining Books and Articles from Other Libraries (Interlibrary Loan)

ILLiad, the Automated System for Interlibrary Borrowing

If the SU Library does not hold an item that you need for your research, we will try to borrow it for you from another library. Free interlibrary loan (ILL) service is provided through ILLiad, an automated system. Some publications (e.g. journal articles) may be e-mailed directly to you as PDF files. Books must be picked up at Bird Library.

If you haven't used ILLiad before, you will be prompted to fill out a registration form and you may want to take a look at information provided for "First Time Users."

NOTE: The preferred way to submit Interlibrary Loan requests is via the "Request document via ILLiad" links in WorldCat records.

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