COM 442: History of Media Technology & Regulation: Primary: Books

American libraries use official terminology (subject headings) created by the Library of Congress (LC) to categorize books by subject. UW Libraries Search, HathiTrust and the Internet Archive all use these Library of Congress terms. You may want to use subject headings when ordinary keyword searching finds too many irrelevant results.  Keep in mind that some technologies will have more relevant subject headings than others. Here are some that may be useful when you search for books. The last column lists some broader subject headings that may be useful.

The Advanced Search option on UW Libraries Search allows you to search by publication year. This search example shows how to find books on the subject heading "television and children" published between 1950 and 1970.

This search finds 21 items including the book, Television and Our Children (1951), and a congressional hearing, Juvenile delinquency (television programs) : hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-fourth Congress, first session pursuant to S. Res. 62, Investigation of juvenile delinquency in the United States (1955).

HathiTrust is a digitized library of more than 16 million volumes. Most of the full view (pdf) books and magazines are published before 1924 but there are some post-1924 material including government documents and other copyright free items. Use the Full-text Advance Search option for combination searches using subject headings and keyword searches within the fulltext of an item. Use this as a model: books.

This search finds 209 items including many ERIC documents (educational material that may not be as relevant). Sample title found: Art of Good manners, or, Children's etiquette (1899).

The Internet Archive is also a digitized library of millions of volumes. There is quite a bit overlap between the Internet Archive and HathiTrust however generally you will find more in the latter. Internet Archive does include more recent books that you can "borrow" if you register on the site. Use the eBooks and Texts portion of Internet Archive and follow the search example to find children's etiquette books. 

Sample title found in Internet Archive: Art of Good manners, or, Children's etiquette (1899)

Etiquette books will sometimes provide advice dealing with class technologies (especially proper telephone usage), while parenting books will often have advice dealing with television viewing. These type of books can be found using UW Libraries Search, HathiTrust and the Internet Archive using searches similar to the examples given for technologies. 

You can find digitized versions of some etiquette and parenting books in the following database.