Library Day!

Monday September 17, 2012

Today was a library day.  I finally got some time to work on my paper!  I went to the Aurora Historical Society earlier today and I was looking up some information from my paper and I discovered that I am not really interested in the business/economic side of how the Great Depression effected Aurora.  Instead, I think I am going to focus on the cultural aspects of the Great Depression, such as music, education, family status, population, suicides/deaths, civilian programs, and programs that the state or federal government started (like the CCC of WPA).  I think, for me anyway, that it would be more interesting and that I could look at diaries and newspapers articles to kind of get the "feel" of how the depression personally effected people.  Since we had time in class today, I found a nice list of books about Illinois and the Great Depression on the Aurora University Library website, then I went and hunted a lot of them down.  I wanted to see if the librarians could hold the books for me so then I don't have to pull the books each time I want to look something up.  This brought up an interesting idea/conversation between the librarian and I:  Why doesn't the library hold books for students like the do for teachers? (especially those students in senior seminar!?)  The librarian told me that she was going to talk to her superior in order to see what they could do for me.  I was very relieved that, finally, someone was willing to help me with my paper!  The historical society has not been that helpful, or friendly, with me, but I am just going to start going there whenever I know they are open because I really need to put a dent in my paper/research!  I know what kinds of sources that I want to use and I have a good list started, but I want to actually start acquiring information this week.  I have a meeting with Lizzie tomorrow and I hope that I can get more sources!  I just hope that she doesn't tell me to go to the Aurora Library or the historical society because I already know that I need to do that.  Our bibliographies are due Wednesday, so I hope I can get more primary sources (I only have about three, but I don't even know if I am going to use them in my paper).  I don't know what else we are supposed to blog about for today's class, so I am going to end here....