History 108
Guidelines for EBSCO Review Assignment
For this assignment, you are to read a journal article about
a topic related to the scope of the entire course, and you are asked to use the
EBSCO database from the Grossmont College Learning Resource Center. The link to
the LRC databases is provided in the Blackboard course menu. Please choose an
article pertaining to any topic that was covered in class, such as slavery,
Civil War, US-Mexico War, colonial America, etc. Once you decide on a subject,
you must use one of the 6 following journals for your review:
Journal of American Studies
Journal of American History
American Historical Review
Journal of the Early Republic
American Nineteenth Century History *Ethnohistory When you
find a suitable article, please send a copy of your article to my e-mail
address, or send it through “Messages for Professor” in Blackboard. The article
that you select must be at least 8 pages in length. I will provide further
instructions on finding your articles with a “nuts and bolts” video on how to
properly use the database.
Please turn in your paper through Blackboard. Late papers
will be accepted for one week only and will be assessed with a full grade
deduction. The report is to be 5- 7 pages in length. Please use a title page
and works cited page. (title page and works cited page do not count toward page
count of your review) You are also encouraged to follow the MLA or Chicago
formats to develop this report. Please double-space your review. This review
will count as 15% toward your final grade. For your works cited page, this an example
of the type of the format you should follow, but you are welcome to use any
comparable format of citing your article: “Pedlar in Divinity: George
Whitefield and the Great Awakening,” by Frank Lambert, Journal of American
History; Dec. 1990, Vol. 77, Issue 3, pp. 812-837. In terms of the content of
the report, I am looking for two main points of discussion. First, you should
devote the first half of the report to a summary of the main points that the
author is trying to convey to the reader. To help you to address
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this issue, consider some of these questions: What type of
article is this? Is the author presenting an original feature, or is he/she
conducting a book review? If this is a book review, what book (or books) is
being reviewed? What is the author’s purpose for writing this article? What is
the author’s academic or professional background?
As for the second point of discussion, this is where you
provide your opinion or perceptions of the article. In other words, what did
you think about it? What were the strengths or weaknesses of the article? How
did the article relate to the class? You are definitely encouraged to write in
first person singular (I feel that…, I think..) as you provide your opinions.
As a general rule of thumb, your EBSCO review should be about 60% summary and
40% commentary. Thus a 5-page review with about 3 & 1?2 pages summary and 1
& 1?2 pages commentary is an ideal proportion.
As you develop your essay, please avoid both very short
paragraphs and excessively long paragraphs, especially those that run longer
than one page. Try to keep your longest paragraphs at no more than
approximately 7/8 of a page. Do not use your first paragraph to immediately
begin a summary of your article. Use your first paragraph to introduce the
scope of your arguments, and provide an overview of your objectives of your
essay. And at the conclusion of your essay, use your last paragraph to express
your final thoughts and observations on the topic.
