Research guide and resources for new authors

This is the Research Guide and Resources for New Authors. It is intended to offer suggestions and advice for how to perform research on a Columbia-related topic. It's also meant to be an introduction to some of the resources that some of the contributors to WikiCU have found helpful and informative, as well as tips on the limitations of some sources.

Introductory Comments

Since WikiCU got off the ground in the spring of 2007, a great deal of historic material (covering the 19th through early 20th centuries) has been made available via [Google Books] which has scanned a number of Columbia related volumes and periodicals that are archived in other schools' collections. This has made a great deal of 'armchair research', so to speak, possible. The last decade has also seen a fantastic output of Columbia related scholarship. Unfortunately there are a lot of gaps. The online archives for many current publications is limited, and thanks to copyright law, anything printed 1923 or later can't be freely made available by Google. With that in mind we hope the following is helpful.

Using Google and the internet to your advantage

Googling things is a useful exercise in general. But you need to be able to filter. The appropriate use of quotation marks to bracket together phrases might light you to more on point material. Similarly, you can use google to sniff a particular resource by starting off your search with, e.g. "site:www.columbiaspectator.com" (without the quotation marks) followed by a space and then your search term. This is a great way to search other sources that are limited to a particular director, e.g. columbia.edu/cu/record, for The Record. With targeted searches like this, you have your best chance at searching a particular source.

Google Books is a whole 'nother beast unto itself. The frustrating part will be finding sources that google has indexed and can return in the results, but are copyrighted and can't be displayed. You'll have to remedy this by walking to either the University Archives or Microform Reading Room in Butler Library. Fortunately a number of books and periodicals are available in full. The real beauty of Google Books is the ability to run powerful searches on this vast body of literature to find relevant results. Unfortunately for a vast swath of 20th century history, Google will be of little aid to you for performing armchair research.

Another powerful tool is Archive.org. If you find a dead link (other than a spec link, believe me, we've tried it on spec links and it doesn't work) or would like to see how a web page evolved over time, the wayback machine is an incredibly awesome tool.

"Official" Sources

• The Record - Columbia's official periodic campus newspaper. It's the print organ of Columbia's Office of Communications and Public Affairs. The Record has been published since the Fall of 1975, but you can largely intact, though incomplete, archives from Fall of 1994 to present online. These are great for researching bureaucratuc and administrative developments, including fundraising, major campus news, etc. from the last 16 years.
• ColumbiaNews - Columbia's news releases that are direct-to-web are filed under the ColumbiaNews Archives (with some ovelap with the Record). These aren't particularly useful except in covering very recent events.
• Columbia University Bulletin and Columbia University Quarterly - Columbia news magazines, first started as a magazine of faculty activity in 1890 before developing into a quarterly news magazine. Absolutely stellar sources of news of Columbia at the turn of the 20th century, just as it was becoming a University, moving to Morningside, etc. You'll find articles describing in detail the new buildings to be built, as well as historical articles that attempt to piece together narratives about slices of Columbia life - e.g. on King's College, on the History of Student Publications, Student Theatre Productions, etc. The entirety of the Bulletin's 8 year run is available on Google Books, with only sporadic availability of the Quarterly, unfortunately. The Quarterly ceased publication in 1941. ''Columbia'' (magazine) began publication in 1978. It's online archives ostensibly go back to 2000, but they don't look comprehensive for the earlier issues.
• Columbia Alumni News - Another old time publication. A number of early 20th century volumes are available in their entirety on Google Books. It was printed weekly from 1909-1957. Overlaps a little with the Quarterly. Has more day to day news like athletics scores and administrative moves.
• Columbia College Today - CC's alumni magazine, in publication since fall 1954. Website has back issues through Winter 1999, and a pdf of the controversial spring 1968 "Six Weeks That Shook Morningside" issue. The library is missing some back issues. Another source for administrative news, alumni stories, and tidbits of information.
• Columbia.edu - Recently, Columbia changed the search engine on its front page search box to google. Running a search from this box crawls the entire Columbia web-o-sphere. You never know what you might turn up or where information might be hidden on a Columbia server. This is actually a pretty good, though overlooked, resource. In the old days you needed to run a site:columbia.edu search on google. No more!
• Columbia University Statistical Abstract - Published by OPIR, this is the holy grail of pure data. Head counts in every division, admissions info, numbers students in majors, faculty distribution, etc. The Statistical Abstract is a thing of joy. Unfortunately, the website seems to have been scrubbed graduate school admissions data. But as we just explained above, Archive.org is a wonderful thing. See what we mean?

"Student" Sources

• Columbia Daily Spectator - Yes, the spectator is a source too. Unfortunately their web archives only date back to 2000 and are notoriously unstable. Recently a few very old volumes turned up on google books. If you cite to a spec article, PLEASE PLEASE include the full title and date in the citation in case the link breaks. You will a number of broken spec links throughout this site. When you find them, please try to update them. If you cannot find the current link, LEAVE THE OLD ONE. We may be able to figure out the source at a later date. Spectator's website search function is pretty lousy. Use google and prefix your search with site:columbiaspectator.com to save yourself the headache. Spectator's forerunner, Acta Columbiana isn't available online, unfortunately. You'll have to hit the Archives to read them.
• The Columbian - Columbia yearbooks of old tended to have lots of photos and "class history" type details. If you look at some volumes from the 50s and 60s, you'll be envious of some of the production value details. Via Google Books a few old volumes of the Columbian are scanned. You'll also find a number of volumes of its predecessor, The Columbiad. The Archives has a full run for you to go and look at, but if you want to learn about late 19th century Columbia, these are a google books versions are a good glimpse.

Books About Columbia

There are plenty of Books about Columbia, and a number of the older history books are in the public domain and available on google books. We try to keep track of them on their own page as a Bibliography of sorts. We'll probably add a periodicals section to the page eventually to cover some of the stuff mentioned here.

In particular though we want to focus your attention on a few recent works that are considered 'canonical' among some of the "older" wikicu writers.

• Stand, Columbia, by Prof. Robert McCaughey - A number of history books have been written about Columbia in its 250 year history. You can read some of the turn of the century volumes for an interesting trip back in time. But McCaughey's work is a must-read primer. It's an interpretive history, and McCaughey thus has a narrative and thesis that he weaves. Nevertheless, the work covers a lot of ground and sheds light on a number of aspects of Columbia's history that might get overlooked by focusing just on recent history or early history alone. A number of wikicu writers are products of McCaughey's old "Social History of Columbia University" class, and a number of projects for there class have found there way onto this sight one way or another. It is safe to say that much of the "historical" work on this archive was inspired by his class.
• Morningside Heights, by Prof. Andrew Dolkart - The authority on architecture in and around Columbia, from the neighborhoods beginning, to recent times. While McCaughey's work by necessity touches on the topic of buildings and land, he doesn't go into the loving detail that Dolkart, an architectual historian, does.
• Mastering McKim's Plan, by Prof. Berry Bergdoll - An absolutley gorgeous work that focuses solely on the development of the master plan for Columbia's campus executed by architect Charles McKim, rather than the broader neighborhood history that Dolkart delves into. Check out this book for the pictures if nothing else.

Besides their books, these Professors are persons you can direct questions to in person, as they're all current Columbia faculty.

The Archives

There are books, there are google books, and then there are the University Archives and the Columbiana Collection. We cannot stress enough that the archives should be your second stop after scouring the internet for clues (if not the first stop in some instances) because there's so much material that's simply not on the internet. Either it's under copyright, or they're clippings in subject files, personal notes and correspondences, photographs, etc. There is an amazing amount of material for the perusing here, including full runs of some of the periodicals mentioned here. To top it all off, they're really nice people.