Environmental History
T. Robertson
Getting Started
Glean keyword and phrases from Wikipedia and web searches but also try:
Great Resources for Environmental History
- Shepard Krech III, J.R. McNeill, Carolyn Merchant, eds., Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (In Gordon library Reference)
- Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (also in Electronic Form)
- J.R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
- John Opie, Nature’s Nation: An Environmental History of the United States
- Samuel P. Hays, A History of Environmental Politics Since 1945
Gordon Library has many other books on environmental history. Try a keyword search for "environmental history" but also whatever your subject is.
Primary Sources
Original texts, photographs, drawings, maps and other primary source materials will improve your place paper dramatically. Notice how Cronon in Changes in the Land integrates original texts of colonial America. For tips on finding primary source materials, see our online resource guide. A few places to search include:
- American Environmental Photographs, 1891-1936
- Library of Congress American Memory Project
- Making of America: 19th century books and magazines
- New York Times Historical Online
Also, the American Antiquarian Society is right down the street, but you need a letter from a faculty member to use their archives so exhaust your other sources first.
Use resources from your place: people, local libraries, local newspapers, local historical societies, state historical societies.
Read the landscape: Walk through and around the place you are researching. Talk to people and take some pictures. What do you see? Are there legacies of earlier periods?
Find Books
Key Sources:
- WPI Library Catalog
- WorldCat to search beyond our library
- Google Books - view snippets, or limited previews of copyrighted books, and full text of public domain books.
Search tips:
- When searching for books, broaden your search. For example, instead of just searching Boston Back Bay AND environmental history you may find useful information in books on the history of Boston.
- Follow up on subject headings within catalog records to either narrow or broaden your search. For Boston’s Back Bay try subjects searches ranging from specific to broad:
- Fills (Earthwork)--Massachusetts--Boston--History
- Landscape--Massachusetts--Boston--History.
- Boston (Mass.)--Historical geography
- Land use--Massachusetts--Boston--History.
- Boston (Mass.)--History.
- What was the natural environment of your place? Finding books on salt marsh ecology may help understand the environmental history of a place like the Back Bay of Boston.
Book suggestions:
Massachusetts History (WPI Gordon Library)
- Yesterday’s Massachusetts / Ivan Sandrof, 1977.
- The History of Massachusetts ... By John Stetson Barry, 1857.
- A Guide to the history of Massachusetts / edited by Martin Kaufman, John W. Ifkovic, and Joseph Carvalho III.
- Massachusetts towns: an 1840 view. [Illustrated with wood engravings of fifty-eight Massachusetts towns, drawn in 1840 by J.W. Barber. Special foreword by Mrs. Endicott Peabody.
Worcester History (WPI Gordon Library)
- Trees at risk : reclaiming an urban forest, a case history of Worcester, Massachusetts / Evelyn Herwitz.
- History of Worcester county, Massachusetts, embracing a comprehensive history of the county from its first settlement to the present time, with a history and description of its cities and towns, 1879.
- Industrial Worcester, by Charles G. Washburn, 1917
- Tymeson, Mildred McClary. Title: Rural retrospect; a parallel history of Worcester and its Rural Cemetery.
- History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men. / Comp. under the supervision of D. Hamilton Hurd, 1882
- Brief history of Worcester; or, "Worcester guide" improved: with a description of the neighboring towns, villages, and seats, that are most worthy of notice., 1802
- History of Worcester, 1674-1848 / Kenneth J. Moynihan., 2007.
- History of Worcester, Massachusetts, from its earliest settlement to September, 1836 : with various notices relating to the history of Worcester County / by William Lincoln., 1862.
See also more books on environmental history at the WPI Gordon Library.
Beyond WPI
Search WorldCat for library materials elsewhere. Use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to obtain items or get an ARC card to visit and borrow directly at other Worcester area college libraries. Remember to place ILL requests early.
Find Academic Articles
- JSTOR: Full text scholarly articles
- America: History & Life: Abstracts with links to full text of articles on historical topics. Use to find the history of places in the united states.
- Gale PowerSearch: Full text articles and some abstracts of newspaper, magazine, and journal articles on all topics.
- EBSCOhost Humanities International Complete: Index and abstracts of humanities and arts literature with some full text. Use to find articles on the history of the place you choose. Try different keyword searches and approaches to finding articles. Are the impacts human, natural or impacted by a combination of both? Use of the place to build a fortification or military use that could have impacted the area?
- LEXIS-NEXIS Academic: Current news articles and magazines useful to understand the current environmental issues and potential human impacts associated with your place.
- More History databases...
Only Finding a Citation? Getting the Full Text
- Is the journal online or here in the library? Use
FullTextFinder to link to full articles or retrieval options within database results or search our Journals, Magazines, & Newspapers list - Visit another library: Search WorldCat to find one.
- Request delivery from another library: Interlibrary Loan.
Useful Web Sites
Below are a few highlights from Colorado's State's guide on environmental history.
- If you are new or not an expert historical researcher quite yet, read through this page: Learning to Do Historical Research: A Primer for Environmental Historians and Others. William Cronon. University of Wisconsin-Madison. The page has key stages of the research process and a survey of different types of documents.
- The Forest History Society Databases. Don’t be mislead by the name. This is a great Environmental History Bibliography Database.
- History. National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior. A number of reports and histories in PDF (not all work and some are actually in other formats).
- The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920 American Memory. Library of Congress. This site "documents the historical formation and cultural foundations of the movement to conserve and protect America's natural heritage, through books, pamphlets, government documents, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and motion picture footage drawn from the collections of the Library of Congress." Primary historical resources.
- American Environmental History Bibliography. Dan Flores. Also Dennis Williams. Not comprehensive, but a large number of entries, divided by: Native Americans and American Nature, European Antecedents, American Exploration and Natural History, the Romantic Age and the Cult of Nature, Environment and the Frontier, Regional Ecological Histories, the Progressive Conservation Movement, Conservation in the 20s and New Deal, Parks and Forests, Urban and Political Issues Since WWII, Ecology (the science) and Environmentalism (the social movement), Biography, Topical Treatments, Environmental Philosophy, and American Nature Writing and Literature.
Last modified: Nov 13, 2009, 16:14 EST
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