Skip to Main Content

ENG 111 Prof. Sean Gerrity Spring 2021

Guide to support the annotated bibliography project tied to the novel No-No Boy.

Annotated Bibliography assignment

Remember, from Prof. Gerrity's instructions (see Blackboard for more details):

Each entry in your annotated bibliography must begin with a citation in MLA format, and then answer the following questions. Each entry should be two paragraphs long, and each paragraph should be 5-7 sentences long.

The first paragraph should answer the questions under (1) below, and the second paragraph should answer the questions under (2):

1.    What is the creator of this source’s point of view on the Japanese American internment in the United States? Why are they writing about it? What do they want to communicate about it to a reader?

2.    How does this source connect to something you have read about the Japanese American internment in No-No Boy? How is the point of view on Japanese American in this source similar or different to the point of view presented in No-No Boy?

You will need to find 5 (five) total sources to include in your annotated bibliography. They can be any type of source you find using the Library Guide for this assignment.

Taking notes = saving time

As you probably know, taking notes while you read is always a good idea. Note-taking helps you remember what you've read as well as your own reactions to the text and questions it raises for you.

Terms and vocabulary from your questions and notes will be helpful to use as keywords in your searches. (Keywords = the search terms you type into the search box).

For example, note:

- questions and topics that you think of while you read and discuss the book 
- words that Japanese Americans use to describe themselves
- names of relevant laws
- names of relevant politicians
- names of the different camps
- anything else that strikes you as important or something you want to learn more about

What kinds of sources can I use?

Here are some kinds of sources you can use (if you find something that you'd like to use and aren't sure if it qualifies, contact Prof. Gerrity!) 

Reference articles - also called background articles, usually about the size of a Wikipedia article. Many come from encyclopedias, and are meant to be introductions. Click here for more about finding reference articles.

Primary sources - you may be especially interested to find news articles and other documents that were written during World War II or shortly after. Click here for more about finding news articles.

Book chapters - the library has many ebooks that you can read online. You don't have to read the entire book, but could pick one chapter as one of your bibliography's sources. Click here for more about finding book chapters.

 

Reference articles

Here are a couple ways to find introductory reference articles:

1. Using a reference article-only database

A database like Gale Virtual Reference Library has a wide range of articles from academic encyclopedias, usually written by professors to provide an overview of a topic. 

OR

2. Using OneSearch to find reference articles 

In OneSearch, to limit your results to reference articles, use the "resource type" filter on the right and select "Reference Entries" (of course you will use your own keywords in the search box):

Click on upside-down carat to open menus in onesearch

 

resource type menu opened - reference entries

Primary sources

There are several ways for you to find primary sources from the era when No-No Boy is set. 


logo of Densho Digital Repository

 

 

The Densho Digital Repository contains photographs, documents, newspapers, letters and other primary source materials from Japanese Americans from 1900-the 1980s, with a focus on internment experiences during WWII.


Library of Congress logo

The Library of Congress has a collection of Japanese-American internment camp newspapers, 1942 to 1946

 

 


Museum of the City of San Francisco logo

The Museum of the City of San Francisco has some links to San Francisco news articles of the time regarding the internment.

 

 


The New York Times logo

This NYT article from 2017 has a number of good links to primary sources. 

The Historical New York Times database can also be searched for articles that appeared in the NYT during World War II.

Please remember - to use any of the library's databases, you must sign in with the same username and password you use for Blackboard:

Login box to read articles from databases and ebooks from home

Once you are inside the database, you can choose advanced search, 

Choose Advanced Search from menu for New York Times Historical database

then enter your search terms and limit your results by date:

advanced search with "tule lake" as sample search terms. click on date menu to specify date range; years 1941-1945 entered for range

 

Using E-books

Hostos Library has many ebooks that you can read online. This is what an e-book result looks like in OneSearch:

screenshot of result list for ebook with book and "available online" circled

On the record page, you will see at least one link to get to read the book. If there is more than one database listed, you can click on ANY of them to get to your e-book.

Screenshot of result page, with "view online" and "Ebook Central: Hostos Collection" circled in red. The name shown is the database collection that includes the book. If there is more than one database listed, you can click on any of them to get to your e-book.

 

Once you get to the book, notice the information before you. Each e-book publisher is a bit different, but there may be:

  • a table of contents (click on any part of the table of contents to start reading)
  • a link that says “open book” or “read online”
  • information about how many pages you can copy, download, or print (you usually will not be able to print the whole book).

screenshot of table of contents with link to read online, information about page download limits, and chapter headings highlighted

 

When you click on "read online" you will be able to read the book, and can also search for particular words inside the book.

screenshot of book in read mode with icons for downloading, printing, citing, and changing text size circled

 

After you do a search - the more blue you see, the more often the word you searched for appears in the chapter. You can click on the triangle to open it up and see the pages where the word is found, and can click straight to those pages.

screenshot showing the results of a search, arrow and blue bars highlighted with the same instructions as given in the preceding text