Getting started with online historical research

First off, it's official that I'm a PhD and I have a two year fellowship at the USDA's Climate Change Program Office! I'm moving from Arizona to Virginia and I couldn't be happier.

In the course of my dissertation research I utilized many online databases and archives. Some of these were through my library, so they required a university login and password, but many are freely available to anyone. I thought I'd list some of these resources.

Universally helpful:

• Google n-gram viewer. When I'm learning about a new historical topic, this is one of the first places I turn to, especially when I want to know about the etymology of a specific phrase or word. I can then click on the link to Google books from specific time frames and check out how the word is used, in what contexts, etc. 
• WorldCat.org. WorldCat is a database of virtually all published (and some unpublished) materials. While no website has a universally perfect search function, typing keywords or authors into WorldCat's search usually turns up a relevant list of publications. WorldCat is helpful because it lists the complete biographical information and what libraries hold a specific item. If it is available online, it will often link to it.
• Hathi Trust and Archive.org. These sites contain thousands of open-access digitized texts. You may have to refine your search terms to find relevant texts. (FYI "hathi" is Hindi/Urdu/Bengali for elephant, so it's pronounced with a hard aspirated "t". Listen here!)
• Google.com and Google Scholar. I'm not an expert at database querying so I spend a lot of time trying out different keywords and strings of words in Google and G-Scholar. Google often leads me to documents that I wouldn't have been able to find even within an institution's website. For example I find a lot of documents scanned and uploaded on USAID's website (because USAID funded many of the projects I studied), but there was not a good way to access these through USAID and there is no hierarchy or organization of the information, so it's just random.

International agricultural research history:

• CIMMYT Repository and University of Florida Digital Collections. CIMMYT's repository has been organized by topic, the link provided is for "wheat" but there is a sidebar on the left titled "Collections." In this case I sorted the repository by year. This repository contains published materials as well as a large amount of published and unpublished CIMMYT reports and conferences. UF's Digital Collections has a repository called "International Farming Systems" that is a collection of materials donated by Peter Hildebrand, an agricultural economist. I'm not sure what his professional affiliations were, but this repository has over 2000 international agricultural reports, some in English and some in Spanish, from roughly the 1950s onwards.
• University of Minnesota Library's digital collections. There is a large amount of scanned materials deposited here. The green revolution collection (no link, just cntl-F it on the homepage) hosts correspondences, diary notes, and biographical details of Norman Borlaug, John Gibler, and Elvin Stakman among others. It takes a while to load each scanned page, but if you're interested in finding the "raw" archival data, this is it. Borlaug's oral history is included here, so if you can't make it to the Rockefeller Archive Center but still want to read it, find it here!

Foreign policy history, Cold War era-specific:

• US State Department Historical Documents. This repository spans from 1945 to 1980 and the archivists here have helpfully separated various documents (memo's, correspondence, etc.) by date, topic, and region. All materials are transcribed so it is easy to read and to copy-paste exact quotes.
• Harry S. Truman Library & Museum. I haven't browsed this fully, but it has a collection of digital material from Truman and his cabinet, advisors, and other policy-related people. It has a large collection of oral histories.

Publication: Wide adaptation of green revolution wheat

I recently co-edited a journal section with a colleague from ASU. The journal alerted me that my article is available for free for one month, so you can download it via this link until May.

Abstract:

Indian wheat cultivation changed radically in the 1960s due to new technologies and policy reforms introduced during the Green Revolution, and farmers' adoption of ‘packages’ of modern seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation. Just prior to the Green Revolution, Indian scientists adopted a new plant breeding philosophy—that varieties should have as wide an adaptation as possible, meaning high and stable yields across different environments. But scientists also argued that wide adaptation could be achieved by selecting only plants that did well in high fertility and irrigated environments. Scientists claimed that widely adapted varieties still produce high yields in marginal areas. Many people have criticized the Green Revolution for its unequal spread of benefits, but none of these critiques address wide adaptation—the core tenant held by Indian agricultural scientists to justify their focus on highly productive land while ignoring marginal or rainfed agriculture. This paper also describes Norman Borlaug's and the Rockefeller Foundation's research program in wide adaptation, Borlaug's involvement in the Indian wheat program, and internal debates about wide adaptation and selection under ideal conditions among Indian scientists. It argues that scientists leveraged the concept of wide adaptation to justify a particular regime of research focused on high production agriculture.

Citation: Baranski, Marci R. "Wide adaptation of Green Revolution wheat: International roots and the Indian context of a new plant breeding ideal, 1960–1970." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 50 (2015): 41-50.

Passed my dissertation defense!

This blog has been silent for quite some time because I've been working full time on my dissertation. Happily, a few days ago I passed my dissertation defense! I'm still working on my dissertation edits until April, but I hope to post a published article from my dissertation here soon.

What makes good science writing?

While working on my writing my dissertation now, I'm also involved in editing articles for the Embryo Project Encyclopedia. I think I enjoy this job because I'm working out both my science-brain and writing-brain. It can be a real challenge to transform an undergrad's piece of writing into publishable material, but it's also very rewarding.

In my program, Biology and Society, we are encouraged to take the Embryo Project writing and editing classes. Actually, you can read about it in the Huffington Post right now, where a former EP scholar shares her thoughts on the experience. In the editing class, we receive a lot of training on how to write clearly and logically about science. Some of the main lessons I've learned through the course and my own editing are:

• Present information in a logical order (i.e. big concept to detailed concept)
• Always explain uncommon words
• If you're going to use a technical word or acronym only once or twice, get rid of it and use a more common word
• Avoid nominalizations (making words into unnecessarily longer nouns)
• No passive voice

From what I've experienced, a lot of scientists struggle with everything except the first point, because the rest are regularly included, if not encouraged, in scientific writing such as journal articles. When you're writing for a scientific audience, it's quite like writing in a foreign language because you assume that your audience already has a grasp on that language. But when I write or edit for a public audience, I only assume that person has about a 9th grade education. Which is a good rule in general if you're speaking to an audience outside of your own field!

There are some good examples of science writing out there, such as the New York Times Science section, NPR's science section, Scientific American, and Wired. I was wondering what else my audience would recommend? And what, for you, makes science writing good?