Pre-Research

Each of the research topics that I have chosen I have continued to carefully pick valid resources to continue finding information on them:

When I began researching each topic I came to the conclusion that my topics and questions were pretty broad. I originally thought that the more broad my topics were the more information I could find on them. My only topic that was not broad was Jane Addams and the Hull House. Unfortunately, I have not been having much luck finding a good source for that particular topic that I could use to help write an in depth paper. So I had to ask myself if the questions/goal I have are not enough?

For Jane Addams I found plenty of websites/books on Jane herself. I found her (biography, her time in the White House, and her other contributions to society. The types of websites I found were primary and reliable. All of them came from .edu site. I was surprised that I didn't find any from a government page on the Hull House. There was one website, except the page could not be found. Must have been deleted. 

The Statue of Liberty had a number of sources on it as well. I found about 7 reliable sites along with 2 books from the library that gave me in depth information about the purpose of the Statue of Liberty, what it meant at the time, and how it impacted our world. The websites gave plenty of information, one especially from Harvard, that included facts that I never knew about the Statue of Liberty. Specifics that go all the way down the number of points she had on her crown and why. The information from these pages will allow me to go more in depth about immigration as well. I am thinking about rewording some of my questions so they focus more on the immigration aspect on coming to America and what that looked like for them (ie. the process of entering America and becoming a citizen, beginning life here in the states).

The last topic on my last blog post included the New Madrid earthquake which shaped history by changing the flow of the Mississippi River. Even though there is so much information on this topic as well, I'm weary of choosing this topic because I am afraid that most of the information I found were based on scientific information and even though it was historical, I would feel that I am turning in a science research paper rather than an American History paper. I looked at changing my end goal of this specific topic and relating it back to how people lived and how it effected society after the shock of the quake, but information did not appear to be as reliable and finding good information was scarce. 

Based on the research I have found and the number of reliable sources, I am going to focus my paper around Immigration to the United States. I will focus in on why immigrants chose to begin life in the US, what the conditions were, and dig into journals of a few immigrants and what it was like to begin life here in America beginning in the late 1800's.