Your next library assignment will allow you to investigate how the story of Dick Dowling and the Battle of Sabine Pass have been remembered and retold in books and schoolbooks over the last one hundred and fifty years. Each of you will select

To complete the assignment, you will need to follow these steps. All of the steps must be completed by 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, March 30.

STEP 1: Go to this Writeboard, enter the password distributed in class (it’s the same password we used for Library Assignment #1), and then select one of the books on the list. Just as you did last time, edit the Writeboard and put your last name next the title that you are claiming.

STEP 2: Locate the book and any other editions of the book published in other years in Fondren library. You may wish to talk to a librarian to make sure that you can find and access the book(s) you need.

STEP 3: Examine the book and make some notes to yourself about what kind of book it is. Is the book a textbook meant for use in schools? A popular history text? Was it published in Texas or outside of Texas? When was it published first, and what was going on in the country either then or at the time of later editions? Who is the author and what can you find out about him or her, either from the book itself or from other sources like the Handbook of Texas? Were there multiple authors, editors, and compilers involved in making the book?

STEP 4: Look inside the book and locate any passages that talk about Dick Dowling and the Battle of Sabine Pass. If these topics come up in the book, carefully transcribe the complete passage into a document on your computer. If there are multiple editions of the book, check to see if the section that talks about Dowling remains the same in later editions; if it changes, transcribe the new passages as well, making careful note of which edition(s) the passages come from. (Note: If Dowling and Sabine Pass don’t come up in the book, make note of that and see if you can come up with reasons why it doesn’t. Is the Civil War in Texas discussed at all? If so, how?)

STEP 5: Write a blog post about what you’ve found. The post should conform to these specifications:

• The title of the post should be the author of the book you examined.
• At the beginning of the post, provide a full bibliographic citation of the first edition of the book you studied, using the formatting guidelines provided by the Chicago Manual of Style.
• In a paragraph, briefly summarize, using mainly your own words, the author’s presentation of Dowling and the battle or, if the author doesn’t talk about the battle, what parts of the Civil War era in Texas the author talks about instead.
• In a paragraph, briefly summarize any changes in the author’s presentation in later editions, including changes in fact or wording that you noticed. (This won’t apply if there weren’t multiple editions.)
• In a paragraph, briefly report on the reflections you made as part of STEP 3, and any information you located about the kind of book you had.
• Finally, at the end of the post, include your full transcriptions of the passages that you located having to do with Dowling and Sabine Pass. Make sure you indicate what pages the copied passages come from, and use the “blockquote” function within WordPress to make the transcribed passages stand out clearly as quotes from the book.
• Before “publishing” to WordPress, make sure that the box next to “Library Assignments” (in the “Categories” panel on the right hand side of the dashboard) is checked.

Any questions about these steps? Leave them in the comments here or email Dr. McDaniel for more information. Remember that all of these steps must be completed by midnight on Wednesday, March 30. The blog post that you will write for this library assignment is not a substitute for Blog Post #9, which will be a separate assignment having to do with the group projects.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 21st, 2011 at 11:15 am and is filed under Assignments, Dowling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.