Access to historic textbook collection
Hello, I am researching the history of World History curricula in the 20th century. I was wondering if the library had a collection of historic textbooks, and if more a more current textbook collection was available onsite. I have a few titles I am looking for, but I'd also like to browse the collection if possible.
Answer
The Gottesman Libraries' physical collection of historical curriculum materials are not able to be browsed onsite and must be requested in advance and read in the Special Collections Reading Room. However, there are a few ways to search the library's catalog for historical textbooks, especially in the areas of history and social studies.
First, narrow down your search terms to things like "World History","Education World History","Social Studies World History" or similar terms. If you are using the catalog's "Advanced Search feature" you will get the most precise results if you place search terms in quotation marks. You can also use Boolean Operators, such as AND, OR, and NOT to narrow your results. Using limiters from the drop-down menus to search for authors and subjects will further refine your results.
See example below:
From there, you can further refine your search to include more specific material types or locations within the library. If you are searching for historical materials, for example, you will want to look for items located in the Closed Stacks (Special Collections). By refining your results on through the menu to the left hand side, you can find items that might be relevant to your inquiry. I would recommend choosing locations such as "closed stacks curr" if you are looking for textbooks. These can be good resources to mine from. See image below for example on refining your search:
You can also utilize the Teachers College Digital Collections, more specifically the American Curriculum Collection, which yields several results if you search for "history." To access the Digital Collections, please fill out and submit a digital collections user application
For current materials, we do not have a separate section for textbooks, but our Stack Guide indicates where materials can be located. You can also use similar search strategies to those mentioned above to locate current materials.