ResearchScapes

Discussions on the art and craft of research

Author: Andrew Lopez (page 3 of 3)

Accessing Our Local Newspaper, The Day: Challenges and Opportunities

March 27, 2018 / / 0 Comments

“Digitizing The Day’s back issues is a dream I haven’t given up on.”

-John Ruddy, Copy Desk Chief at The Day

Connecticut College appears on page four of the 450-page history of our local newspaper, The Day Paper: The Story of One of America’s Last Independent Newspapers. This is because in 1911 the newspaper’s early and prominent publisher, Theodore Bodenwein, championed the cause of establishing Connecticut College for Women in New London at a time when other Connecticut towns were vying for the opportunity to host the new college.

Unfortunately for anyone who wants to fact-check the newspaper’s coverage at the time (i.e. October 19, 1911), or any other historical issue, your best bet is to make a trip down to the Public Library of New London (PLNL), where they maintain a complete run of The Day back to 1881 on microfilm.  The PLNL website even claims they are “the only repository in the world with a complete record of the paper.” While that seems mostly true, it is also the case that the Waterford Public Library, the Groton Public Library, the Connecticut State Library, and The Day itself combined have pieces of what amounts to a second or third microfilm copy of the newspaper’s back issues. Not to mention the film negatives allegedly stored at ProQuest that are used in the creation of the microfilm in the first place. All of these copies combined, however, still amount to a rather precarious legacy for our local paper.

Day index by Groton Public Library

Day on microfilm at PLNL  Day index 1881-1890
The Day on microfilm along with a few incomplete print indexes at the Public Library of New London.

The date of October 19, 1911, cited in The Day Paper makes for an interesting example, because it is not covered by the pieces of The Day that were digitized by Google when the company aspired to scan everything in every library; a project that was abandoned in haste without explanation some years ago. At least that’s how The Day‘s Copy Desk Chief John Ruddy recalls the relationship when he described it to me in recent communications. Ruddy estimates that Google scanned about a third of the paper, “but the gaps are random and unpredictable.”

It was only when I asked Ruddy how anyone can make an authoritative claim about what is, or is not, printed in The Day without systematic access to all of its contents, that he explained how he uses the microfilm in conjunction with several incomplete indexes in existence:

  • a card file maintained from 1929 to 1977 by librarians at The Day
  • a system of story clippings from 1977 to around 2000 also at The Day
  • incomplete print indexes available in local public libraries covering the years 1881-1890, with a partial index to one or two decades later in the 1900s
card file at The Day


Conn College entry in the card file at The Day.

Most of the cabinets that makeup The Day’s card and clipping files.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Budding researchers may be surprised to learn The Day is not free and it is not all online.  It has been cut up with scissors over the years into little pieces of paper folded into envelopes and documented by hand on index cards that are organized  in the drawers of some filing cabinets in an office almost no one still uses, while other components were bound between book covers, photographed, microfilmed, and/or digitized in haste and incompletely, some of it available on the internet for you to puzzle over.  The rest of it is buried until someone comes along to sort it all out, assuming the various scattered pieces will last that long. Besides, who would do such a thing? How long would it take? How much would it cost? How come no one does it?

We have to ask these questions as a starting place in the hope that someday something will happen. Hopefully someone will find a grant or a benefactor and connect with the right people to help advance a project like realizing the complete digitization of The Day.

As part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, the Connecticut Digital Newspaper Project has been working in this direction, to be sure, but each NEH grant received only provides for the digitization of a small portion of one or several papers in a state that has seen the publication of some 1,600 newspapers since the 1700s. One outstanding example is the Hartford Courant which has been well-digitized from 1764-1991, albeit by ProQuest rather than the public, and is available through a database via the CT State Library.

For my part, I have talked with stakeholders at area public libraries and now The Day itself about possibly getting a group together to return to the massive project of indexing the entire paper. At least then we would have a means of making efficient use of the microfilm available at PLNL. Ruddy at The Day told me that if I do resume work on the index, then I should focus on the period from 1890 to 1929, which given the tools available is the hardest portion of the paper to search, in his view.

As for access today, in addition to the abovementioned, here’s what we have:

—Andrew Lopez

Harvesting Gov Docs Locally for Preservation and Discovery

January 16, 2018 / / 0 Comments

On Wednesday January 10, I had the privilege of presenting the following poster at the annual CTW* Retreat:

Harvesting Gov Docs Locally for Preservation & Discovery. Poster presented at CTW Retreat 10 Jan. 2018.

Harvesting Gov Docs Locally for Preservation & Discovery. Poster presented at CTW Retreat 10 Jan. 2018.

A quick summary of the chart featured prominently in the center of the poster, which is copied from James A. Jacobs’ report “Born-Digital U.S. Federal Government Information: Preservation and Access,” and which was re-presented in his October 2017 presentation with James R. Jacobs called “Government Information: Everywhere and Nowhere,” provides an easy way to understand the nature of the problem.

Scope of the Preservation Challenge. Source: Jacobs, 2014.

Scope of the Preservation Challenge. Source: Jacobs, 2014.

The first column represents the number of items distributed by the Government Publishing Office (GPO) to Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) libraries in 2011 (appx. 10,200 items). The second column represents the total number of items distributed by GPO to FDLP over its entire 200 year history (appx. 2-3 million items). The third column is the number of URLs harvested by the 2008 End of Term crawl (appx. 160 million URLs).

Clearly, the scope of government information produced outside of the GPO and FDLP is very large. So large in fact that what is produced online each year makes the entire 200 year history of the Depository Library Program look like a drop in the bucket. This vast array of online government  information can be called fugitive. No one knows how much born-digital government information has been created or where it all is.

At Connecticut College, Lori Looney and I are exploring ways of being proactive about this situation through our role in the FDLP. While we are unable to participate in large-scale digitization projects, we have nonetheless adopted this idea of being proactive in the FDLP from some of the ideas sketched out in Peter Hernon and Laura Saunders’ College & Research Libraries article “The Federal Depository Library Program in 2023: One Perspective on the Transition to the Future.” We see their proactive approach as preferable to withdrawing from the program altogether or assuming a more passive role within it that would maintain the status quo. We describe our adoption of this approach in our essay “Experience of a New Government Documents Librarian,” published in Susan Caro’s book Government Information Essentials.

Our latest activity addressed by the poster consists of several easy steps that librarians everywhere can do in their own libraries:

  • Keep track of your favorite websites and online publications, and make sure their URLs are captured in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine
  • Add rare, hard-to-find, and/or local government documents to your library catalog, as well as digitizing those that are not already available online, and upload them to Internet Archive, ideally with as much catalog metadata as possible
  • Advocate for the long-term value of seemingly obscure government information and help spread the word that short-term ease of accessibility actually masks the major problems associated with long-term preservation, access, and usability

Some of the documents we harvested in this capacity (see a few examples below) are local government publications that may not be easy to find online and which may not be accessible through any other library catalog anywhere. By finding them, adding them to Internet Archive, downloading them, physically adding them to our collection, and adding records to OCLC/WorldCat we are actively supporting preservation and discovery.

Hodges Square creativeplacemaking master plan_Page_01    

2017_draft_comprehensiveenergystrategy_Page_001    NEW LONDON DOWNTOWN TRANSPORTATION AND PARKING STUDY 2017_Page_001

 

This is a very small way of responding to the very large problem of web preservation in general. However, as a small institution with a selective collection of government publications, it is a practical strategy for contributing to the efforts of larger institutions involved with the fascinating and complex problems like the End of Term (EOT) Web Archive.

 

—Andrew Lopez

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Works Consulted

Hernon, Peter, and Laura Saunders. “The Federal Depository Library Program in 2023: One Perspective on the Transition to the Future.” College and Research Libraries 70, no. 4 (2009): 351–70.

Jacobs, James A. “Born-Digital U.S. Federal Government Information: Preservation and Access.” Center for Research Libraries: Global Resources Collections Forum, 17 Mar. 2014.

Jacobs, James A., and James R. Jacobs. “Government Information: Everywhere and Nowhere.” Livestream web-based presentation to Government Publications Librarians of New England (GPLNE), 24 Oct. 2017.

Lopez, Andrew and Lori Looney. “Experience of a New Government Documents Librarian.” Government Information Essentials. Ed. Susanne Caro. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2018. 13-20.

Seneca, Tracy, Abbie Grotke, Cathy Nelson Hartman, and Kris Carpenter. “It Takes a Village to Save the Web: The End of Term Web Archive.” DttP: Documents to the People (Spring 2012): 16-23.

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*CTW is the library consortium between Connecticut College, Trinity College, and Wesleyan University

Open Data Salon at Hartford Public Library

October 30, 2017 / / 2 Comments

On Thursday, October 26, I attended the Connecticut Open Data Salon presented in partnership with UCONN Library at the beautiful and spacious Hartford Public Library.

After a brief introduction from Tyler Kleykamp, the chief data officer for the State of Connecticut, I launched into conversation with Steve Batt, the Data Visualization Librarian at UCONN and the Associate Director of the Connecticut State Data Center.

Steve showed be how he uses NHGIS and Tableau Public to make impressive data visualizations using Census data. The visualizations can be seen on the Connecticut State Data Center Tableau dashboard, with one example here:

Data Visualization from CT State Data Center

Data Visualization from CT State Data Center

One can click on the map and zoom in to see an area of specific interest. I was surprised to discover the median household income in New London county in the southeast corner of Connecticut has increased from $59,087 per year in 1979 (adjusted for inflation to 2014 dollars) to $66,693 in 2014.

Next I spoke with Graham Stinnett, Archivist at UCONN, and Anna Lindemann, Assistant Professor of 2D Animation and Motion Graphics, about their collaboration working with the Human Rights Collections at UCONN. Specifically, they showed me how they take photographs from the Romano Archives and transform them digitally to enhance their emotional affect.

A representative from the Korey Stringer Institute talked about the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSIR) and how they collect data nationwide.

It was good to meet with Jennifer Chaput and Renee Walsh, both of UCONN Library, and co-organizers of the Open Data Salon along with Connecticut Data Collaborative.  The CT Data Collaborative is open to partnering with area organizations and has two upcoming events:

Disappearing Government Information and the Effort to Preserve It

October 20, 2017 / / 2 Comments

[Updated 25 October 2017]

The group Government Publications Librarians of New England (GPLNE) has organized a fall webinar on disappearing government information and the effort to preserve it. We are fortunate to be joined by two leading government information advocates, James R. Jacobs (Stanford University) and James A. Jacobs (Emeritus, UC San Diego) who will lead the presentation after a brief introduction.

Disappearing Government Information poster

Link to poster as PDF

Presentation details:

Who: James R. Jacobs (Stanford Univ.) & James A. Jacobs (UC San Diego)
What: Disappearing Government Information and the Effort to Preserve it
When: Tuesday, October 24, at 2pm EST
Where: Live streaming via GPO: http://login.icohere.com/gpo?pnum=QFH57863

A recording of the presentation is now available online at the following URL:

click on this link

James R. Jacobs provided a link to the slides for download here:

https://freegovinfo.info/node/12422

Please note the name of the presentation was changed to Government Information: Everywhere and Nowhere.

Some recent related articles include the following:

Please direct additional questions or concerns to Andrew Lopez, Research Support Librarian at Connecticut College: andrew.lopez [at] conncoll.edu

The ICPSR Undergraduate Research Paper Competition: An Overview of the last 10 Years’ Winners

January 12, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) will soon be reviewing submissions for its eleventh annual undergraduate Research Paper Competition (submissions are due by midnight PST on 1/31/2017). ICPSR is a consortium of academic institutions and research organizations that maintains an impressive data archive in the social and behavioral sciences, providing access to rich data sets on aging, arts, attitudes, criminal justice, economics, education, elections, political behavior, psychology, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields. Part of ICPSR’s role as a data steward includes providing a variety of educational opportunities for students and researchers to learn more about working with data. To mark the occasion of this year’s research paper competition, let’s take a look back at the last ten years’ winners.

As one of two ICPSR representatives at my institution (Connecticut College), my interest in the past winners is to see what kind of work they did so I can promote the competition at my home institution. That means I want to see what data are being used and who is using them. One thing that’s great about ICPSR is that every study has a unique ID number, so it can be easily discovered or shared among researchers. Unfortunately for my purposes, some of the information requested on the Entry Form for the competition, specifically the ICPSR study number, does not appear clearly in the public view of past winners.

This is frustrating because it makes it difficult to determine exactly what data are used in the winning papers. One has to open each paper individually and carefully search it. According to my review of all 26 previous undergraduate winners (there are numerous winners each year), more than a third do not cite the unique ICPSR study number (ID) in their references (e.g. of an ICPSR study number would be ICPSR31521, which when searched on the ICPSR site will take you directly to the data set). Another third of past winners do not cite it accurately (e.g. ICPSR02597 does not seem to exist and it is not obvious to remove the first 0 in order to find it). My findings indicate that only a minority of winning papers accurately cite the ICPSR study number (ID) for the data they used. A list of data sets used for each paper is documented in my review linked above.

ICPSR - studyID

In terms of who was using the data, my main interest is in which department the research was undertaken. Unfortunately again, there is neither class- nor department-specific information provided for the winning papers. Instead, the Entry Form asks applicants for their expected majors and/or minors upon graduation. For the most part, this information carries over to the public view of the winners, as represented in the chart below. But to give an example of when it does not, take a look at the 2012 second place RCMD winning paper, “Black Feminism and Hip Hop: A Cross-Generational Disconnect.”* With this winning paper we cannot tell what the student’s expected major was, and moreover we don’t know in which course or department the work was done, except that it was for Professor R. Khari Brown at Wayne State University. But why does the major/minor matter anyway? And if the work was done early in the undergraduate experience, the major could have changed between winning this award and actually graduating.

Besides, an excellent research paper could have been done in Economics, Sociology, or Political Science, for example, by an English or Religious Studies major. The major could therefore be considered irrelevant. What matters is the course and department in which the winning work was done. Such information would lend itself to thinking about ways of replicating or furthering the research in similar courses or departments at other institutions. It is nonetheless interesting to see that the greatest number of past winners for whom a major is given went on to receive degrees in Economics (28.1%), Sociology (18.8%), and Psychology (15.6%). Perhaps more interesting still, is that the next largest group of winners (12.5%) did not list a major; enough to change the results significantly depending on what they were.  

ICPSR - images

Another aspect of who is using the data that matters to me, is what sort of institution they come from. Fortunately, this information is clearly provided for all winning papers. It is not surprising that research universities account for half of the winning research. What is somewhat surprising and a little exciting for me is that Liberal Arts Colleges makeup about a quarter of previous  winners. This means that students at my institution should plan to submit their research and expect to do well, since so many of our peers already have.

ICPSR - institution

My takeaway from this brief review of past winners is that the winning work is impressive and exciting. I want my institution to focus on submitting papers to this competition in the years ahead. However, as a liaison librarian, I wish there was more clear information about what classes and in which departments the winners did their work. I also think it is not sufficiently clear exactly what data were used for many of the winning papers. Moving forward, I recommend that the Research Paper Competition Winners website clearly indicate each of the following for all winning papers:

  • ICPSR study number (ID) used
  • Class in which the research was undertaken
  • Department in which the research was undertaken

While collecting and sharing this kind of information about applicants could help attract interest in the ICPSR Research Paper Competition moving forward, I certainly hope researchers everywhere will take the occasion of this review to spread the word and get submissions ready for the upcoming deadline on January 31, 2017.

—Andrew Lopez

 

*The RCMD competition is for papers written on data held within the Resource Center for Minority Data archive and/or on a topic relevant to the focus of that archive.

Manage Your Citations with RefWorks to Save Time and Keep Organized

November 21, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Per the request of seniors writing honors theses this year, the librarians offered an advanced workshop on citation style. In the workshop, we took a close look at how the three main style guides (APA, Chicago, and MLA) handle translated sources, and we did some exercises with the additional tools in RefWorks (the citation manager of choice available to all at Connecticut College):

  • Save references on the Web
  • Cite in Microsoft Word
  • Cite in Google Docs

Pros & Cons of Citation Managers

It is important to be clear up front about the advantages/disadvantages of using a citation manager. Now that we can export citations for virtually everything in a library catalog or database, as well as anything listed in Google Scholar, citation managers promise to substantially cut down the number of keystrokes required to compose a list of citations. As the number of citations grows, we are quickly talking about hours of typing labor that can be saved by using a citation manager. Organizationally, it’s a tremendous help to keep all citations stored in one place. The major drawback is that all sorts of typographical errors creep into the citations, whether from the exporting source such as a database, or from within RefWorks itself. It does not take long, however, to recognize the pattern of typos that occur. Just keep an eye on them and make sure to edit them as you go along, or at the end of a project.

Citing Translated Sources

For translated sources, the main style guides do not have a whole lot to say. But they provide just enough guidance that we should be able to document non-English language sources clearly and consistently. That guidance is reflected on these slides, which spell out the main rules for translated sources:

Translated_Sources

Click here to view slides on style guidelines for translated sources

New Tools in RefWorks

In the new RefWorks interface, click on the three dots located on the top white ribbon to access the tools.

Click here for the Tools in RefWorks

Screenshot of RefWorks

The “Save references on the Web” tool can be dragged to your browser and used to capture information from Web pages for composing a citation. It works perfectly on a site like PubMed, which must have really good metadata; less so on the New York Times and other sites, but worth a shot.

The “Cite in Microsoft Word” tool needs to be downloaded and installed according to your operating system and version of MS Word. While there can be as much as a two-hour learning curve in getting this tool up and running, it ultimately promises to be a major time saver. With this tool activated, one can seamlessly insert formatted citations into a Word document, whether parenthetical or footnotes, as well as inserting a bibliography or list of works cited. If at a later date you need to change the citation style of your paper, you can do so with the click of a button, and watch your entire document reformat to the designated citation style.

The “Cite in Google Docs” tool is an Add-on that’s easy to implement. If you need footnotes instead of parenthetical citations, simply manually insert the footnote in Google Docs, then select a reference from the RefWorks sidebar.

Conclusion

As far as citations go, we know there are a thousand exceptions and a million quirky sources that don’t seem to fit the rules laid out in style guides. That’s why we encourage anyone with questions to contact one of our librarians for assistance.

Additional Resources

The Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) has long provided a very useful overview of the main rules from the three major citation styles. It’s easy to cross-check what you’re doing with the rules laid out on Purdue OWL.

Our own succinct Citation Guide for Print & Electronic Sources provides links to RefWorks and other leading citation managers, as well as to the major style guides, which are all available at the Reference Desk in Shain Library, and to additional online help.

Additional support from RefWorks:

—Andrew Lopez

 

 

 

 

Schedule a Research Consultation to Get Help Finding Sources

September 23, 2016 / / 0 Comments

The fall semester is well underway at Connecticut College and the reference desk in Shain Library is abuzz with questions and consultations about finding, evaluating, and citing scholarly sources on a wide variety of topics.

What follows is an overview of a recent transaction in which an undergraduate student wanted to find works by two renowned anthropologists. The takeaway is that sometimes when it seems like the library doesn’t have a book you’re looking for, be persistent (e.g. ask us); it could be just a few searches away.

An anthropology student contacted the library by using the Schedule a Research Consultation link on the library website. One can schedule a research consultation using the library mobile app as well, so it’s super easy to schedule an appointment with a librarian.  In her message, the researcher told us about her project and the kinds of sources she was hoping to find:

I would like help finding works by Franz Boas such as his 1907 essay “Anthropology”, or his 1911 book “The Mind of Primitive Man”, or his 1920 essay, “The Methods of Ethnology”. And such works by Lewis Henry Morgan as “Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family” or “Ancient Society” (1877)

We scheduled an appointment and met in person to work on this together. Some of the sources can be found using the library catalog online, but some of them are trickier and require a more advanced search technique.

Here’s a look at how we found them:

Franz Boas’ work called “Anthropology”:

  • Do an Advanced Search in the library catalog

    Screenshot of an Advanced Search in the library catalog.

    Screenshot of an Advanced Search in the library catalog.

  • Search for franz boas in the first search box (case doesn’t matter), and set the drop-down option to search Author Name
  • In the second search box, search for anthropology, and set the drop-down to search Title
  • This search produced 5 results, including one for the book Anthropology and Modern Life, which is what it turned out we wanted

Because we were not sure at first if “anthropology” is the title of a whole book or perhaps just an article or chapter, we started with an advanced search to see how the catalog would handle this information. The advanced search technique helped in this case, because we found what we wanted and quickly.

The next item of interest, The Methods of Ethnology, sounds more like a book title, so we thought we would find it with a basic title search:

  • Do a Basic Search in the library catalog

    Screenshot of a Basic Search in the library catalog.

    Screenshot of a Basic Search in the library catalog.

  • Search for the title (without the initial article, because library catalogs and databases do not search initial articles such as “a” and “the”)
  • Limit the search to within the Title field
  • Unfortunately there are no results for this title, so it is either something we do not have in our library, something that’s contained in another item or classified under another title, or maybe it’s not a book, but a journal article or conference presentation instead

Assuming the work in question is at least part of a book, we can redo the search in WorldCat, the catalog of library catalogs, where we can hope to find out for sure if it is in a book somewhere:

  • Under the Catalog search box on the library website, click on WorldCat

    Screenshot of search results in WorldCat.

    Screenshot of search results in WorldCat.

  • Do a keyword search like this: “Methods of Ethnology” Boaz
  • This search contains a unique phrase (“in quotes”) and a unique name (Boaz); all as keywords
  • We still get a lot of results, but notice the first few. They happen to be titles available at Connecticut College, because the name Connecticut College appears highlighted in green
  • Click on those records to find out more about them
  • When viewing the full record in WorldCat, one can see these various titles contain the chapter we’re after – The Methods of Ethnology / Franz Boas
  • Pick any of the titles that appear to contain the essay of interest, and return to the Connecticut College Library Catalog to find out where the book is located in our library

With the search techniques listed above, we found everything we needed in about 15 minutes. It was all available only a few steps away.

— Andrew Lopez

 

The Search for a Missing National Security Document: A Student-Librarian Collaboration

August 11, 2016 / / 0 Comments

We met in the Spring 2015 semester. The blog which follows provides an overview of our experience working together as student and librarian on a challenging research assignment. In the first place, it took a lot of work to figure out a focused topic that would be amenable to the assignment. Then we unexpectedly had to do a lot more research than expected to try to track down a Polish national security document that is often referenced in the literature, but nowhere to be found. Included in the blog is a select list of works consulted, as well as the names of some of the individuals and organizations we enlisted for support on this project.

 

The Assignment

 

For an introductory comparative politics course taught by Professor Caroleen Sayej, a 15-page research paper was assigned as a semester-long project. The research paper was to include a clear research question; an engagement with the scholarly literature relevant to one’s topic (the theory) in the form of a literature review; and the use of primary source materials (the data). Those materials could include a wide range of possible sources such as constitutions, speeches, military, trade, or demographic data, or even literacy rates. To be clear, the following discussion is a reflection of the process of finding a topic and primary sources, not of the writing process. While it is true that we collaborated in the process of finding sources, it is also true that Dominic navigated the writing process, as well as the synthesis of the research, entirely on his own.

 

The Research

 

Choosing a topic was a long and constantly changing process that brought student and librarian together early in February. Our first meetings were discussions of ideas for a topic to research and considerations of various book and journal sources to support that research. We started off thinking about political violence and failed states in general, but after consulting some sources, the topic changed to a comparison of US and EU security strategies—still a giant topic.

We corresponded regularly for several weeks exchanging ideas. It seemed that with nearly every email, or every time we met, the topic changed again. It was frustrating. On March 18, we read with interest a front page story from the Sunday New York Times, “Poles Steel for Battle, Fearing Russia Will March on Them Next.” This newspaper article marked a turning point after which the rest of the semester was spent focusing on questions dealing with the article’s main subject: Poland. This evolved into the final research topic: Polish Security and Defense Policy in the Post-Communist Era.

Dominic Lentini, presenting a poster of his research, 6 May 2015.

Dominic Lentini, presenting a poster of his research, 6 May 2015.

As part of this assignment required an examination of primary documents, we discovered that The National Security Strategy of The Republic of Poland (NSSRP), coupled with the annual address given by the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs (MFA), would be appropriate. A review of secondary literature revealed The National Security Strategy was issued periodically over the years after 1989, while the Annual Address was delivered yearly going back almost 100 years, as mandated by Polish law. The years from which the documents were chosen were 1992, 2003, and 2014. Analysis of these documents, we hypothesized, would shed light on the development of Polish security and defense policy in the difficult years of independence after communism.

Initially it seemed like finding the documents would be a trivial task, as the 2014 NSSPR and annual address were accessed in English with a single search on the Internet. That original search could not have been any more deceptive, however. The first obstacle appeared as soon as the two of us began to search for the documents for the 2003 juncture; also referenced in secondary sources. We quickly realized that the remaining documents were not nearly as accessible as they had been for the 2014 juncture.

 

The Impasse

 

This brings us to the most substantial impasse of our experience researching this topic. It is an impasse that continues to trouble us and one that might qualify as impossible research. A copy of the 1992 NSSPR in English, which is cited at least half a dozen times in our review of the scholarly literature, cannot be located. Now, please consider the following list of institutions with which we communicated in an attempt to locate a copy of this document:

 

  • Baltic Defense College (Estonia)
  • Connecticut State Library
  • Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Poland )
  • Ministry of Defense (Poland)
  • National Defence University (Poland)
  • NATO Multimedia Library (Belgium)
  • Polish Embassy in the United States (through which we had success in locating the 2003 NSSRP)
  • Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM)
  • United States Army War College
  • United States Embassy in Poland
  • Warsaw Security Forum (Poland)

 

Additionally we communicated with all of the following individuals:

 

  • Bert Chapman, Govt. Information, Political Science, & Economics Librarian, Purdue University
  • Jackie Granger, Brussels Liaison Officer, European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)
  • Rick Lyman, Central and Eastern European Bureau Chief, The New York Times
  • Karolina Pomorska, Director of Studies MA European Public Affairs, Department of Politics, Maastricht University
  • Tomek Szlendak, Director of the Institute of Sociology, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń

 

We were successful in finding what we thought were two copies in Polish, but despite the fact that neither of us reads Polish, it was clear the two documents were different. This called into question their validity, and that aside, we did not have time to work with a translator even if it was the right document. The end of the semester was fast approaching.

 

The Takeaway

 

As a final thought, we’ll share a few points we both want to emphasize. This project would not have existed if it were not for student and librarian collaboration. Our collaboration was brought into being by a class and an assignment that made it necessary. Without classes, assignments, and discussions that have the potential to bring us together, students and librarians, we likely remain strangers. That we met countless times and came to rely not only on each other but also on the cooperation of other individuals and institutions tested our commitment, transforming this one research paper into less the product of one individual working alone than of a network of participants coming together through the research process, creating a sort of community where the was none.

 

Note About Works Consulted

 

A number of the works we consulted made reference to and/or included links to documents online that we were not always able to retrieve. So-called “link rot” is of course a serious problem with information on the Web. In some cases we were able to use the WayBack Machine from the Internet Archive to recover lost documents.

 

Works Consulted

Primary Sources

Annual Addresses

 

Address by the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the goals of Polish foreign policy in 2014. http://www.msz.gov.pl/en/news/address_by_the_minister_of_foreign_affairs_on_the_goals_of_polish_foreign_policy_in_2014

 

Address by the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the goals of Polish foreign policy in 2013. http://www.mfa.gov.pl/en/news/address_by_the_minister_of_foreign_affairs_on_the_goals_of_polish_foreign_policy_in2013_

 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs on Polish Foreign Policy for 2012. http://www.mfa.gov.pl/en/news/the_minister_of_foreign_affairs_on_polish_foreign_policy_for_2012?printMode=true

 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs on Polish Foreign Policy for 2011. http://www.msz.gov.pl/resource/66a3030d-07b7-4489-ab40-23b28b04df9e:JCR

 

Something from 2010. http://www.msz.gov.pl/resource/9f966390-1ccf-4c6c-80d7-63f6a4f42ff4:JCR

 

Links to annual addresses for the years 2002-2013 (2008 in Polish only) http://www.msz.gov.pl/en/foreign_policy/goals_of_foreign_policy/annual_address_2011/

 

National Security Policies

 

Polish Foreign Policy Priorities, 2012-2016. http://www.msz.gov.pl/resource/d31571cf-d24f-4479-af09-c9a46cc85cf6:JCR

 

National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland, 2014. http://www.bbn.gov.pl/ftp/dok/NSS_RP.pdf

 

National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland, 2007. http://www.sfpa.sk/dokumenty/pozvanky/481

 

National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland, 2003. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?id=156794&lng=en

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20130216140023/http://merln.ndu.edu/whitepapers/Poland-2003.pdf

 

Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland, 2000. http://web.archive.org/web/20020302162940/http://www.msz.gov.pl/english/polzagr/security/index.html

 

Something from 1992. https://www.msz.gov.pl/resource/a2467a85-fabe-4347-9fc6-cedc038e8832:JCR

 

http://www.koziej.pl/files/Strategia_RP_z_92_r.doc

 

Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives. http://www.msz.gov.pl/en/ministry/polish_diplomacy_archive/access_to_documentation/

 

Secondary Sources

 

An asterisk * at the beginning of a citation indicates the source makes reference to the 1992 National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland even though we were unable to locate that document.

 

Asmus, Ronald D., Thomas S. Szayna, and Barbara A. Kliszewski. “Polish National Security Thinking in a Changing Europe: A Conference Report.” RAND/UCLA Center for Soviet Studies. Santa Monica, CA:

RAND Corp., 1991. Web. 5 May 2015.

This study from 1991 documents the situation in Polish security thinking on the cusp of the establishment of its new policies in 1992 and beyond.

 

*Bieniek, Piotr. Polish Defense Policy in the Context of National Security Strategy. Thesis. Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2006. Web. 5 May 2015.

This is an interesting document, discussing defense policy in the early 1990s, but no reference is made to the key documents of interest from 1992. A link to the National Security Strategy of the Republic of

Poland from 2003 is provided, but it no longer works. More useful are the references to other publications by the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs throughout the 2000s. Unfortunately, all of the URLs given

seem broken.

 

Chappell, L. “Poland In Transition: Implications For A European Security and Defence Policy.” Contemporary Security Policy 31.2 (2010): 225-248.

Interesting study, like Bieniek’s, but similarly its concerns stem from developments after the 2003 policies and more recent activity.

 

*Czulda, Robert, and Robert Los, eds. NATO: Towards the Challenges of a Contemporary World. Warsaw/Ludz: International Relations Research Institute in Warsaw; Department of Theory of Foreign and Security

Policy, University of Lodz, 2013. Web. 7 May 2015.

On pages 103-104 of this document there is a brief discussion of the transformation of Polish defense policy after the country’s independence in 1989. The Principles of Poland’s Security Policy and its Security

Policy and Defense Strategy of Poland both from 1992 are cited in English with Polish translations and  a URL is given for the document in Polish. It is not clear what the document says or in what capacity it can

be considered reliable. This report also contains numerous other references in English with Polish translations to later policies and good citations for finding them.

 

*Gorska, Joanna A. Dealing with a Juggernaut: Analyzing Poland’s Policy towards Russia, 1989-2009. New York: Lexington Books, 2010.

Arguing that accession to NATO was the primary objective in Polish foreign policy by mid-1992 (73), this book contains a reference to “The Principles of Poland’s Security Policy” and “The Security Policy and

Defense Strategy of the Republic of Poland,” adopted in November 1992 (p. 74-75). Although it does not exactly translate the names of these documents for us, in the notes it does say that for the full text one

should refer to “Założenia Polskiej Polityki Bezpieczeństwa; Polityka Bezpieczenstwa i Strategia Obronna Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej,” Przeglad Rzadowy, no. 12 (1992).

 

*Karkoszka, Andrzej. “Defense reform in Poland, 1989-2000.” Post-Cold War Defense Reform: Lessons Learned In Europe And The United States. Eds. Theodor Winkler and István Gyarmati. Washington, D.C.:

Brassey’s, 2002. 165-188.

With a thorough chronological breakdown of defense reform in Poland, this chapter identifies our “two doctrinal documents” from 1992: “The Basic Premises of the Polish Security Policy,” and “The Security

Policy and Defense Strategy of the Polish Republic” (169), albeit with slightly different syntax. Unfortunately, there are no citations and the chapter does not say where either document can be found.

 

*Koziej, Stanislaw. “Polish Defense Policy’s Evolution.” Trans. Aleksandra Rodzinska-Chojnowska. Poland’s Security Policy 1989-2000. Ed. Roman Kuzniar. Warsaw: Scholar Publishing House, 2001. 403-438.

This seems to be the most comprehensive and authoritative source outlining the context within which Polish policy was formed. Although it identifies “The Defense Doctrine of the Republic of Poland” (21 Feb

1990) as “the first Polish postwar document which defined and publicly proclaimed the fundamental elements of the national defense strategy” (405), it was apparently already outdated at the time of its

inauguration. In a footnote it also refers to a “Secret document” from 1985 which played a similar role. But the real beginning of the new era in Polish security thinking was marked by the acceptance of “two

key documents” from 1992 (411): The Principles of Poland’s Security Policy and The Security and Defense Strategy of the Republic of Poland. See appendix pp. 554-557. Note 16 on page 554 indicates that the

policies were sourced from Przegląd Rządowy, no. 12 (December 1992), pp. 73-81, which the NATO library says is short for Założenia polskiej polityki bezpieczeństwa. Polityka bezpieczeństwa i strategia obronna RP,

[w:] „Przegląd Rządowy”, nr 12/1992, s. 73-81, which we requested from the MFA on 5/5/2015.

 

*Latawski, Paul. “The Transformation of Postcommunist Civil-Military Relations in Poland.” Civil-Military Relations in Postcommunist Europe: Reviewing the Transition. Eds. Timothy Edmunds, Andrew Cottey and

Anthony Forster. New York: Routledge, 2006. 33-49.

This essay situates the “Security Policy and Defense Strategy of the Republic of Poland,” accepted in November 1992, squarely within the development of Poland’s policies in the early 1990s (p. 38-39).  A note

indicates that this policy was published in Wojsko Polskie: Informator ‘95 (Warsaw: Bellona, 1995), which is where we ultimately found our main copy of the security policy and defense strategy (p. 48, note 26).

 

Lyman, Rick. “Poles Steel for Battle, Fearing Russia Will March on Them Next.” The New York Times. 14 Mar. 2015. Web. 19 Mar. 2015.

This article marked a turning point in our relationship and Dominic’s conception of his research project.

 

*Marczuk, Karina. “Democratization of Security and Defense Policies of Poland (1990-2010).” Revista De Stiinte Politice 36 (2012): 80-93. Political Science Complete. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

This is a good article with lots of interesting context, and it even mentions both The Guidelines for the Polish Security Policy and The Security Policy and the Defence Strategy of the Republic of Poland from 1992 (note

again the change in syntax; 84), but it does not say where the documents can be found.

 

Michta, Andrew. “Polish Security Policy: Keeping Priorities in Balance.” The Polish Review. Vol. 54. U of Illinois, 2009. 229-241. Web 20 Mar. 2015.

Interesting study, like Chappell and Bieniek’s, but similarly its concerns stem from developments after the 2003 policies and more recent activity.

 

Mutimer, David. “Strategic (Security) Studies.” International Encyclopedia of Political Science. Ed. Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, and Leonardo Morlino. Vol. 8. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference, 2011.

2541-2552. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 3 Mar.

Includes the sections “Security Studies” and “What is Security?” which offer a concrete definition of security studies and an overview of its development historically.

 

O’Donnell, Clara. Poland’s U-turn on European Defense: A Missed Opportunity?. Brookings. N.p., 6 Mar. 2012. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

Interesting study, like Chappell, Michta, and Bieniek’s, but similarly its concerns stem from developments after the 2003 policies and more recent activity.

 

Pomorska, Karolina. “The Impact of Enlargement: Europeanization of Polish Foreign Policy? Tracking Adaptation and Change in The Polish Ministry Of Foreign Affairs.” Hague

Journal Of Diplomacy 2.1 (2007): 25-51. Political Science Complete. Web. 5 May 2015.

There is a lot of good narrative here about the history and development of the Polish foreign policy and the MFA, but there is no substantive discussion of their annual Addresses.

 

Sliwa, Zdzislaw, and Marcin Górnikiewicz. “Security Cooperation Between Poland and The Baltic Region.” Baltic Security & Defence Review 15.2 (2013): 146-82. Political Science

Complete. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

Interesting contemporary regional assessment, with some useful remarks about the orientation of strategies and policy.

 

*Wojciechowski, Slawomir. “Dilemmas of Polish Military Strategy.” Strategy Research Project. Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, 2008. Web. 13 April 2015.

This document by a Polish Army Colonel says the “first written strategic paper was published [in 1992], called Security Policy and Defense Strategy of the Republic of Poland” (12). But the notes contain no

extra information about this source, except for the date 2 November 1992.

 

–Andrew Lopez and Dominic Lentini

Connecticut College Prize for Undergraduate Library Research

February 3, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Connecticut College Libraries is pleased to announce the launch of an annual award dedicated to recognizing excellence in the undergraduate research process. While it is becoming more common today for academic libraries to offer an annual research award, a preliminary review of Oberlin Group library websites indicates that Connecticut College Libraries would be only the 11th of our 80 peer institutions to offer such a prize.

 

Lib Prize at Tufts

A poster display of recent winners of the library prize at Tisch Library, Tufts University

Why aren’t there more prizes at Oberlin Group libraries? This may be because it is a more common practice among research universities – our own efforts at creating the Connecticut College Prize for Undergraduate Library Research were based on previous work undertaken at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Temple University. Other recent prizes of note could include those at Brown University or Tufts University, or the one established this year at University of Toronto Libraries. If there is a dearth of library research awards at smaller colleges, could it have something to do with the hands-on approach to academic work undertaken at these institutions? What if it stems from a sense of ambivalence about the role of library research in the digital age?

 

Questions like these have called our attention to the potential benefits of offering an annual award. The Connecticut College Prize for Undergraduate Library Research would play an important role among other awards offered at the College, because it focuses on the research process more than on the final product, and because it is open to all currently enrolled undergraduate students who have done research in some form for a credit course. When we looked at other awards at the College, we noticed that a good number are focused within departments or applicable only to a certain type of student doing a specific kind of work.

 

Sociology of the wild - foraging

A foraging tour of wild foods in the Connecticut College Arboretum

The research in question for the library prize can be a traditional paper, but it could also be some other form of work for a class, including (but not limited to) a video, a presentation, or an artistic project. It is not hard to imagine the brush strokes of a painting being informed by creative or painstaking research. However, work created for honors projects is ineligible for this prize. For more information about the honors award, see The Oakes and Louise Ames Prize.

 

By offering an annual prize, the library aims to foster appreciation for outstanding student research at Connecticut College. Citations and research statements for all winners and finalists will appear in the Digital Commons – Connecticut College’s Institutional Repository. Along the way, we hope this new form of recognition will help demystify the importance of libraries for student research. This includes encouraging the use of library resources and collections, as well as enhancing the development of library research techniques.

 

The library’s commitment to scholarship will be reiterated formally each year by recognizing student work that demonstrates rigorous, innovative, and/or unique approaches to engaging with library collections and resources.

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