H-Soz-u-Kult

After an initial search of American History ‘1600-1800’ I have some results at least which is better than with the H-net page. The problem is I have references to the Vietnam War among the results :(
More hopeful it the Journal of Economic History ( I haven’t considered that perspective on the American Revolution yet). I am encouraged to see a journal article by Nicolas Canny in the results of the search ‘ American Revolution’. His name is one I remember from the America VO.  A have a few results for ‘Thomas Paine’ including the English Historical Review.  I didn’t find anything relevant for ‘American Constitution’ though.
Yeah, not the best blog entry ever!

H-Net Search- Fail!

I had problems with the search function on H-net. I couldn’t perform a simple search at all without an error occurring. The Book Review search function did work and provided me with 200 results when I typed in ‘American Revolution’ certainly not all of these were very relevant however.
American History 1600-1800 proved to be more fruitful but still nothing really useful.
But overall I am not looking for book reviews however…so want to spend my time trying the h-soz-u-kult page.

Comparison

I have to say that since I have been studying here in Vienna, I have never successfully managed to open a journal article online before....until today! I am really impressed and inspired by the Historical Abstracts page and will definitely be using this in the future. From the Google sources...ok you have to careful and suspicious I think. Again the initial first results which came up have been good, I will certainly use some of the timelines I have found. To conclude, on the academic databases sometimes there was nothing relevant or it was difficult to search with the same key words I would use with Google. Google, however of course does not insure the same academic standards which the other databases do...I would recommend therefore a combination of the usage of both.

Non-Google Sources

Non-Google Sources
I have found the following relevant sources using the Historical Abstracts Database:
‘American Revolution’
The SPCK and the American Revolution: The Limits of International Protestantism, Church History, March 2012.
Waves of Revolution, History Today, April 2011.
The Gain from Paine, History Today, June 2009.
On the Österreichische Historische Bibliographie page I found the following:
1991/ 3498: Sylvers, Malcolm: Democracy and the American Revolution. 1991
On the Historische Bibliographie Online Page I had no success, maybe I did something wrong but it ‘couldn’t connect to host’.
Finally, through the search for Zeitschriftenfreihandmagazin I found the American Historical review and also in connection with this search I would recommend History Today again, which also has a monthly publication

Google.com

After typing in ‘American History 1600-1800’ the results just after a quick scan through are very hopeful. I will be curious to see what the results from the other search will produce. Key Google results include:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=09&region=na
http://faculty.washington.edu/qtaylor/a_us_history/1800_1900_timeline.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0902417.html
These initial sites all offer great tools to use for revision such as timelines and extensive explanations of how the events of the American Revolution unfolded.
Quiz Time! http://www.quizmoz.com/quizzes/US-History-Quizzes/u/US-History-Quiz-(1600-1800).asp
This will be another, great, informal way to revise.
Video Media http://vimeo.com/1254525 I think we always remember more when we have visual sources to consult.

Historical Abstracts- Bingo I'm in!

Nachdem ich Hilfe vom Herr Wimmer gekriegt habe, funktionert es die Seite ‘Historical Abstracts’. Nach einem ersten Blick, bin ich schon sehr begeistert von der Seite. Mein erste Schlagwort war ‚American Revolution‘ und ich hab sofort ein Artikel über Thomas Paine gefunden, der ‚The Gain from Paine‘ heißt.  Die Quelle von diesem Artikel, History Today verwende ich schon. Die Website www.historytoday.com kann ich nur weiter empfehlen.
Laut dem Artikel war Thomas Paine eine sehr wichtige Figur. Nicht nur in Amerika, sondern in Frankreich und auch in England. Außerdem zitiert Barack Obama aus dem Flugblatt Paines ,Common Sense, in seiner estern Rede als President 2009.  Was ich sehr erstaunlich finde ist, dass die Wörter von Paine heutzutage noch immer relevant sind.
Diese Woche auf der VO über die Geschichte Amerikas hab ich viel über John Adams gelernt. Auf der Suche nach John Adams auf der Historical Abstracts Seite, habe ich viele Artikel gefunden. Man geht richtig in der Anahme, dass nicht alle Revolutionäre die gleichen Meinungen hatten. Adams sagte immer deutlich die Wahrheit, auch wenn er dabei riskierte andere Revolutionäre zu beleidigen. Irgendwie wurde seine Rolle der Amerikanische Revolution vergessen, möglicherweise weil er sich kein Blatt vor dem Mund nahm. In den letzten c.a 200 Jahren hat es sich die allgemeine Meinung zu Adams drastisch verändert und aus diesem Grund trägt die grösste Bibliothek Amerikas seine Name. Ich zitiere von der Abstract von einem Artikel von Rossiter und Clinton, 1956‚A revaluation of John Adams as a conservative force in American history‘.
Für zukünftige recherchen, werde ich sicher diese Seite wieder verwenden.

My Friend Wiki

I really enjoyed discussing the controversies of wiki last time in class. I think it is ironic that although most academic institutions do not allow students to use it, profs will informally recommend it or even use it themselves in presentations! Image you are someone who hasn’t been to uni, has a normal 9-5pm job and wants to quickly gain accurate information on a certain topic..wiki I think in this case is a great option. Sure, people can write a lot of inaccurate information on it, but with the high usage I am convinced that false information would not stay on the site very long. As Mr Tantner showed use last time with the archived wiki page with the incorrect date..this  got changed fairly rapidly.

With regard to the texts I support the view of Klaus Graf: is it not a good idea to cite wiki for an essay or something as it is not very credible and as he writes unstable.  Surely Jimmy Wales wouldn’t have a bad word to say against his own brainchild?! I am impressed to read about his own educational background, I don’t care about his German skills however or when it’s his birthday.  It would appear though that for the German-speaking world wiki fills a gap. I often have conversations here with friends and they have to quote me the exact, correct, most precise piece of information. They have this look in their face like the world might end if they quote me false information. Brits often say ‘Sorry, I don’t know’. I rarely here these words here and so I can see how wiki fills a gap for the perfection the German-speaking world aims to achieve.  The last article by Maren Lorenz also largely raises the negative side of wiki.

Yes, I am going to continue to use wiki as a primary reference source…quote it in a bibliography…NEVER!!!