History of Science OnlineWeek 2: Science in the Ancient Near East |
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Web Project assignment: Explore Primary Sources
| # | Due Date | Pts | Activity | Time |
| 6 | Monday
11:59 p.m. |
10 | Web
Project this is a semester-long project where, little-by-little and step-by-step each week, you create your own web project on an aspect of the history of science of special interest to you |
90 min
- 2 hours |
During this assignment you will:
One of the most exciting and important aspects of this course will be your Web Project. Every week it is worth 10 points, which is a significant proportion of your weekly total. And the Web Project is the only weekly assignment that is not graded completely on effort, but is evaluated by the instructor.
The rest of this page assumes that you are familiar with the general description of this weekly assignment found on the Web Project assignments page. After reading that description, I'm sure you are wondering how you will find information or do your research about the theme of your Web Project. Since this is an online course, many students prefer to do their research on the Internet whenever possible. But in order to find reliable sources, you will need to go beyond the garden-variety websites that turn up in simple Google searches (Research tips). But whether your sources are printed or online, Googled up or accessed through the Library's online databases, for your project you will need a combination of both primary and secondary sources.
Primary sources are original works written at the time. For this assignment, you'll explore some of the primary sources that you can find online, which may help you get some ideas for the topic of your web project.
What is the purpose of this assignment? As you begin to think about your web project, the first step will be to identify possible primary sources that interest you. You will eventually choose three primary sources as the basis for the three episodes that form the core of your web project. You will hear of many primary sources in the assigned readings for this course. Once you know of a primary source that you want to explore, say, Euclid's Elements of Geometry, then you will need to get hold of a copy of it. The purpose of this assignment is to enable you to find a copy of both an original printed version and a modern English translation of any primary source in the history of science. This is the first step you will follow in researching each of your three episodes. When writing an episode, you will begin by looking at a primary source from a given period (ancient, medieval, or early modern) and then write your episode in a way that shows what you found interesting about that primary source.
Instructions
Part I: Finding Primary Sources - Exercises
1. Determine whether the primary source you want is held in the OU Library or History of Science Collections.
Imagine you are working on a web project about mathematics, and you want to devote one episode to Euclid. Study these instructions for searching the OU Library's online catalog. Use the online catalog to answer this question: what is the earliest edition of Euclid's Elements of Geometry (in any language) that is held in printed form by the History of Science Collections? (Do not include microfilms; only printed books.) Hint: It was published well before 1600.
Hint: Watch the following online video tutorials provided by the Library: Navigating the Library Website; Using LORA; Catalog Basic Searching; Catalog Advanced Searching; Searching Databases; and ArticleLinker. These are available from the Libraries' Online Tutorials home page.
2. Find out whether images from the original primary source are available through the History of Science Collections.
Imagine you are working on a web project about agriculture, and you want to devote one episode to Pietro de Crescenzi, a medieval professor and writer on how to manage a feudal manor. Study these instructions for finding images. Follow the instructions linked to from there to find out how many images are online from the OU History of Science Collections' copy of Crescenzi, Ruralia commoda, the first printed work on agriculture. It was published in 1471 but written in the middle ages -- Crescenzi lived from 1233 to around 1320.
PART II: POSSIBLE TOPICS AND PRIMARY SOURCES FOR YOUR WEB PROJECT
3. Brainstorm four possible topics for your Web Project.
Identify four topics related to the history of science that interest you as possible topics for your web project. To get ideas, browse the textbooks and future weeks on this course website. Re-read the explanation about How can I choose a topic for my Web Project? that you have already encountered on the description of the web project assignment.
4. Explore some possible ways you might find English translations of primary sources.
For each of the four possible topics you have identified in Step 3, find at least one relevant primary source either in the library online catalog or on online.
If you can read other languages, you are by no means limited to English translations of primary sources! However, English language translations will be perfectly acceptable for your web project. There are many possible ways to find primary sources in either English translations or the original languages. One is the library's online catalog, which you used in Step 1, above. Find at least one primary source that interests you using the library's online catalog. Hint: You can browse the chapters in your textbooks, and browse future weeks of this course website, to come up with some possible names of people that will interest you as possible subjects for your web project episodes. Everyone has heard of Galileo and Newton; why don't you try to select someone that your classmates may never have heard of?
Another place to look for primary sources is a web page on History of Science websites where you will find links to some history of science websites with primary source texts. Explore some of these websites in some detail. Some of these sites are easier to navigate than others: you will need to take a few minutes to get familiar with the navigation for each site, and you might check to see if the site has a search engine. Once you have grown familiar with the site, see if you can find a primary source text for a web project topic that interests you! There are many other useful sites that are not listed there, and you are not restricted to the ones I have suggested. Let me know if you find other websites that I should add to the list.
To get started with your web project, you are now brainstorming possible topics. The topic you actually choose in a couple weeks will likely be one of these four topics you are considering now. Once you finalize your choice of topic, then the next step will be to select three primary sources that most interest you, and then build your three episodes around them. This is much easier than settling upon your episode topics first and then trying to find primary sources that fit. Recognize up front that each Episode must involve at least one primary source. However, this week you do not need to identify the three primary sources you will actually use in your real web project; you are only brainstorming four possible topics, only one of which might be chosen for your actual project. To show that each of these four topics is viable, however, you need to identify at least one primary source that would be relevant to it (eventually you will need three primary sources for the topic you choose).
SO: brainstorm four different topics, and identify one relevant primary source for each of the four topics.
5. Practice writing bibliographic citations in proper form.
Provide a Bibliography entry for each of the four primary sources you identified in Step 4. This means you will end up with a Bibliography containing four items: one for each topic you chose. Make sure you look at the Bibliography Guidelines so that you will be able to write the citations properly.
6. When you are done.
Copy the text between the next two horizontal lines and paste it into an email. Replace the text in ALL CAPS with your own words. Answer the questions, describe the four websites and your four possible topics, include proper bibliographic citations for a favorite page on each site, and send it to the instructor. Send the assignment to the instructor in an email. Please give the email a subject line that says "3013-WebProject_Wk2".
Warning: Please do not send a document attachment. Just cut-and-paste the assignment into the message body of the email. Microsoft Word is not required for this course. Because of the risk of passing on Windows viruses through Microsoft Word documents, if you send me a Word document I will delete the email without reading it and you will receive a zero for this assignment.
NAME:
Part I: Finding Primary Sources - Exercises
1. The date of the earliest printed edition of Euclid, Elements of Geometry (in any language), held in the OU History of Science Collections is: ENTER DATE HERE.
2. The OU History of Science Collections currently have how many images online from their copy of the 1471 first edition of a book by the medieval agriculturalist Pietro Crescenzi: ENTER NUMBER HERE.
Part II: Possible topics and primary sources for your web project
1. Topic #1: TITLE
Citation of one primary source that would be relevant for this topic, whether printed or online, in proper bibliographic form: CITATION
A sentence or two explaining why this topic interests you: TYPE SENTENCES HERE
2. Topic #2: TITLE
Citation of one primary source that would be relevant for this topic, whether printed or online, in proper bibliographic form: CITATION
A sentence or two explaining why this topic interests you: TYPE SENTENCES HERE
3. Topic #3: TITLE
Citation of one primary source that would be relevant for this topic, whether printed or online, in proper bibliographic form: CITATION
A sentence or two explaining why this topic interests you: TYPE SENTENCES HERE
4. Topic #4: TITLE
Citation of one primary source that would be relevant for this topic, whether printed or online, in proper bibliographic form: CITATION
A sentence or two explaining why this topic interests you: TYPE SENTENCES HERE
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HSCI 3013. History
of Science to 17th century
Many thanks to Mythology
and Folklore and other online courses developed by Laura Gibbs.
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