The second exercise this semester will catalog the Indianapolis Recorder’s coverage of particular neighborhoods or streets in those historically African-American neighborhoods since World War II. The mentions of these places in the paper could include nearly any sort of newsworthy mention, ranging from club meetings, to the home addresses of particular community folks, to real estate advertisements. First published in 1895, the Recorder is an enormously valuable resource that documents everyday life in African America and Indianapolis while it simultaneously reveals many of the activist politics African Americans championed.
You will record the first 20 instances in which a particular street or neighborhood unique to you is mentioned in the Recorder. That street or neighborhood will be provided to you in class.
- Start by going to the Indianapolis Recorder web page at IUPUI University Library, which will look like this:
The URL is http://ulib.iupui.edu/collections/IRecorder
- Then type a search term into the keyword search space. For example, let’s say you were assigned “Agnes Street”; below is what we would get as a result.
- Of course 2491 results is too much, because it searched for the words Agnes and Street that occurred in the same issue of the newspaper. So we need to search for the exact term “Agnes Street” by clicking on “Advanced Search” located just to the right of the search bar at the top left. Where it says “All of the words” there is a pull down menu, and you want to change that to “The Exact Phrase.” Now push the search button.
- Now (above) we have 2491 results for the exact phrase “Agnes Street.” In this example above they are in order by date (that is, “Sort by: Title”). So the earliest occurrence of the term was January 28, 1899. The example here is set to display 20 occurrences at a time, but that can be pulled down to display larger numbers; for your examples, in most cases the street and neighborhood names will not occur as commonly as Agnes Street (now known as University Boulevard). The example below shows the page of results beginning with July 1, 1944. If your assignment was to search Agnes Street starting with January 1, 1945, then you would click on the newspaper that is first after that date (in this case, that is the April 14, 1945 paper, see the example below).
- Below is what you get when you click on that 1945-04-14 newspaper. You will see the search term is highlighted on the page and in the list of pages on the far right side of the page.
- You must save a file of each article; that is, please save the article or ad with the term, not the whole page, and please be sure the saved JPEG is legible.
Lots of software can save web items as images. Below is what it looks like in the Chrome shareware program that I use, Capture Web Page Screenshot. The program allows you to drag a square or rectangle over the article or image you want to copy (you will see the Chrome bar has the program installed on it here), like this…
…and then it allows you to save the selection as an image.
I strongly prefer you save each as a graphic file (JPEG or PNG), not a PDF (which needs to be converted to display on a web page). I use free Chrome shareware Capture Web Page Screenshot to do this, but you are welcome to use whatever program works for you. If you have technical problems saving files, see me and I will help you with this part of the exercise.
This search engine will not correct your spelling, so spelling must be correct.
Please, you must save files in this format:
STREET NAME Nov 13 1960.JPG
In the example above, you would save it as “Agnes Street April 14 1945.JPG” (no need for a page number).
You can give me the data on a thumb drive, or you can use the IU Box file sharing folder I have set up.
This material is due to me on or before February 29.
If you have questions or technical problems email me and I will help you out.
African American Suburbia 