Early Caribbean History
Quicksearch
QuickSearch is the libraries google like search engine, which searches both the Libraries collections and most (but not all) of the databases most of the Rutgers Libraries' physical collections and electronic resources. You need to use QuickSearch to look for ebooks and/or print books. Visit the library homepage [www.libraries.rutgers.edu] to use QuickSearch
Ways to Search:
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Search for Specific Materials: if you already have a specific item in mind, search by specific title, the first 5-6 words or the entire title in quotes, and/ or author
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Basic Search: The basic search option from the Libraries homepage searches authors, titles, subjects, and abstracts and fulltext, if available, across most of the Libraries resources: books, scholarly articles, news sources, videos, etc.
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Advanced Search: more precise searches once you have a hold on your topic
www.libraries.rutgers.edu
Materials Searchable in QuickSearch
- Books
- Journals
- Newspapers
- Articles
- Media
- Reviews of Books
- Dissertations
- Audio and video recordings
- Archival materials
- Government documents
Keyword Searching
Key Word Searching:
Keyword searching is the default way to search our (and most) search interface(s). Use it when you're not quite sure what you're looking for, or when you want to survey the libraries' holdings on a topic. Generate key words based on the central terms related to your area of interest.
Example Topic: I am interested in how enslaved women in the Caribbean generally navigated daily life and motherhood.
Possible Key Terms: "enslaved" "women" "Caribbean"
And as you go, consider the reoccurring terms in abstracts, tables of contents etc.
Boolean Operators:
Boolean operators are connecting phrases that, when used in library databases (typed between your keywords) can connect your search words together to either narrow or broaden your set of results.
- AND: narrows results; tell the database that ALL search terms must be present in the resulting records
- OR: broadens results; telling the database that ANY of your search terms can be present in the resulting records;
- NOT: narrows results; exclude words from your search; tell the database to ignore concepts that may be implied by your search terms
- Ordering Boolean Operators:
- Use AND First, databases usually recognize AND as the primary operator, and will connect concepts with AND together first.
- If you use a combination of AND and OR operators in a search, enclose the words to be "ORed" in parentheses.
- Examples : enslaved AND (persons OR Africans OR people)
- Wildcards: use an asterisk after a term to search all forms of a word
- Example: slave* searches slave, slaves, slavery, slaveholder
- Quotation marks: use quotes to perform a search of an exact phrase
- Example: "enslaved women"
Advanced Searching & Subject Headings
Advanced Search
As opposed to the default basic search, Advanced Search lets you search with more flexibility and precision by searching for words and/or phrases in specific "fields" (author, title, subject) in the records of the Libraries' books and resources
For example, if you wanted to find books by Martin Munro on the Caribbean:
- On the first line: Author ... is (exact) ... Martin Munro
- On the second line: Subject ... contains ... "Caribbean Area"
Subject Headings:
What are subject headings? In library catalogs, materials are assigned Library of Congress (LC) a standardized set of subject headings to categorize material based on content. Here is a sample list of Caribbean Studies subject headings, some of which pertain equally to books and media materials. Some refer to topic, form, geography, chronology.
When to Use: When you begin to get a handle on your research topic, you might be aided by the greater precision of an advanced subject search (as opposed to keyword).
How to use: From QuickSearch on the Libraries homepage, click Advanced Search on the right. Then, under Resource Type on the right, select Books.
Caribbean Studies Subject Headings: not exhaustive list
- History (add to indicate discipline/method)
- Caribbean
- Caribbean Area
- Blacks
- West Indies
- Enslaved Persons
- Cuba -- History
- Puerto Rican -- Literature
- Revolution (Haiti : 1791-1804)
- Women -- Caribbean Area
- Slavery
- Enslaved people
- Jamaica [Cuba, Antilles, etc.]
- Netherlands [Spain, Portugal, etc.]
- History
- English-speaking or Anglophone
- Francophone
- West Indies
- Slave insurrections
- Emancipation
- Latin America
- Plantations
- Sugarcane industry
- Toussaint L'ouverture [or other figure name]
Note:
- More subject headings can be identified by exploring the library records!
Finding Books in the Library
When you locate a book that you wish to use in the library, you can locate it by using the call number, so long as it is a book that is circulating or indicated as being in the STACKS (as opposed to REF or Special Collections).
What are Call Numbers? A call number is the combination of letters and numbers that classify and tell us where to that indicates where an item can be found in the library based on its subject. Most call numbers are located on the spine or front of a book
Map of the libraries to help you determine where to find your book based on the first letter of the call number.
Common Caribbean Studies Call Number Ranges:
- F1601 - F2191 - History of the Caribbean and Caribbean Area
- PN849 C3- PN849 C32 - General Literature of the Caribbean
- PQ3940-PQ3949.3 - Literature of the Francophone Caribbean (Haiti, Guadalupe & Martinique)
- PQ7361-PQ7442 - Literature of the Spanish Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico)
- PR9205-PQ9230.9 & PR9260-PR9279.9 - Literature of the Anglophone Caribbean
Need a book not at Alexander Library?
If you need a physical copy of a book from another Rutgers Library, you can request the book by bringing up the record for the book in QuickSearch, logging in with your Rutgers NetID, and clicking on the Request Item link. You'll receive an email when your materials are ready for pickup. You can also ask to have a chapter of a book sent to you by clicking Digitization.
Need a book not at Rutgers?
"Unavailable Books:" If a book is not in the catalog at all then it is likely not owned by the library. If a book is in the library catalog but marked "Unavailable" this means it is checked out/reserved/missing.
Ordering Unavailable Books: The fastest way to get a copy of a book that is not owned or available is to request it through E-Z Borrow. E-Z Borrow is regional borrowing and books are normally received within about five working days. If a book is not owned by the Rutgers Libraries and is not available via E-Z Borrow, you can place an Interlibrary Loan request, which is an international borrowing system that can take longer.
Books To Consider
The Creole Archipelago by ISBN: 0812299973Publication Date: 2021-10-08In The Creole Archipelago, Tessa Murphy traces how generations of Indigenous Kalinagos, free and enslaved Africans, and settlers from a variety of European nations used maritime routes to forge social, economic, and informal political connections that spanned the eastern Caribbean.
Awakening the Ashes by ISBN: 9781469676845Publication Date: 2023-10-17In Awakening the Ashes, Marlene L. Daut situates famous and lesser-known eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Haitian revolutionaries, pamphleteers, and political thinkers within the global history of ideas, showing how their systems of knowledge and interpretation took center stage in the Age of Revolutions. While modern understandings of freedom and equality are often linked to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man or the US Declaration of Independence, Daut argues that the more immediate reference should be to what she calls the 1804 Principle that no human being should ever again be colonized or enslaved, an idea promulgated by the Haitians who, against all odds, upended French empire.
Contested Bodies by ISBN: 0812249186Publication Date: 2017-06-20It is often thought that slaveholders only began to show an interest in female slaves' reproductive health after the British government banned the importation of Africans into its West Indian colonies in 1807. However, as Sasha Turner shows in this illuminating study, for almost thirty years before the slave trade ended, Jamaican slaveholders and doctors adjusted slave women's labor, discipline, and health care to increase birth rates and ensure that infants lived to become adult workers. Although slaves' interests in healthy pregnancies and babies aligned with those of their masters, enslaved mothers, healers, family, and community members distrusted their owners' medicine and benevolence. Turner contends that the social bonds and cultural practices created around reproductive health care and childbirth challenged the economic purposes slaveholders gave to birthing and raising children.
Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean by ISBN: 0812224639Publication Date: 2020-04-03A groundbreaking study of slavery and power in the British Caribbean that foregrounds the struggle for survival Atlantic slave societies were notorious deathtraps. In Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, Randy M. Browne looks past the familiar numbers of life and death and into a human drama in which enslaved Africans and their descendants struggled to survive against their enslavers, their environment, and sometimes one another. Grounded in the nineteenth-century British colony of Berbice, one of the Atlantic world's best-documented slave societies and the last frontier of slavery in the British Caribbean, Browne argues that the central problem for most enslaved people was not how to resist or escape slavery but simply how to stay alive. Guided by the voices of hundreds of enslaved people preserved in an extraordinary set of legal records, Browne reveals a world of Caribbean slavery that is both brutal and breathtakingly intimate.
Activity
Activity (15 minutes!)
A) 5 min: Use Quick Search to locate one physical book in the libraries. Start by thinking of a topic of interest in your course so far and do one of the following:
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Identify 2-3 relevant key terms and What are the major key terms
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Advanced search and subject headings
Feeling stuck? Try a search specific to a specific nation!
B) 10min: Use the library Call Number handout to try and locate your book! Browse the stacks while you're there!