I thought this could be a place where you could link to your sites so you could all see what the final projects look like.  Feel free to post yours in the “comments” section below.

Can’t wait to see them — !

SA

hope that helps!!

see you wednesday…

SA

Some questions (among many) you may want to consider before you begin:

What kind of information have you gathered?

What formal construction will best help you deliver this information/tell the story you want to tell about your neighborhood?

What kind of story *do* you want to tell?

Who is your audience? Will this be an informational guide for strangers or residents? Will it advertise the neighborhood for those who might move there?

Is it meant to attract those seeking business or pleasure?

Will you share negative aspects of the neighborhood? If so, what purpose will they serve?

What kind of information are you interested in? Are you interested in mostly library-based research or are you more interested in what residents have to say?

What kind of new media does the best job conveying the view of your neighborhood you’re interested in promoting? Sound clips, pictures, graphs, video?

What kind of tone will you use when you write?

Many of the considerations for the Neighborhoods Project are the same considerations we’ve discussed for formal essays. Though you will construct this project in a nonlinear fashion, you will want to think seriously about introductions, transitions, and conclusions as well as what kind of “argument” you are making about the neighborhood (see questions above)

Structural Requirements:

- I would like this project to have some thematic/stylistic coherence. Decide how your pages will look. Please begin with a theme that ties these pages together (e.g. “a day in the life,” a historical look at…, “______ at night”/“_____ at 7:25 am,” “A teen’s guide to _____,” etc, please feel free! the more creative, the better…)

- You must have at least SIX embedded pages.

- Each page must contain information in complete, grammatically correct paragraphs.

- I would like *some* historical information on the neighborhood.

- You must include some visual material. You may take pictures yourself, find visuals on the web, etc. You may also, for example, use Google Earth and crop screenshots of the streets you want to examine. The possibilities are many, so be creative!

Research Requirements:

This research is aimed at helping you craft a narrative about the history, culture and identity of your neighborhood. To do so, I am requiring that you use FOUR of the following six kinds of information:

1. Historical Newspapers – Using the Historical New York Times Index, you should locate the earliest reference to your neighborhood in the newspaper’s history. Browse through the articles and try to find something interesting from every decade that follows this first appearance. Think about how the newsworthy concerns of your neighborhood have changed over the years. Has the identity of your neighborhood altered significantly? Are there key moments in your neighborhood’s history?

2. Online sources – Look at Forgotten NY and see how they characterize your neighborhood (if you neighborhood isn’t listed, check out another one you know something about). See if you can find 3 other online sources on your neighborhood. These could be consumer sites like Citysearch, Outside.in, etc. They could also be local histories. Evaluate the sources for their usefulness.

3. Ethnic Newswatch or Local Newspaper – See how your community defines itself today. Either use the database Ethnic Newswatch (available through the library website) or pick up a local neighborhood paper (these are free; you can often find them at the local bank branches or occasionally on the streets) to see what concerns exist in the community.

4. Field work – you need to interview at least two people who live (or have lived) in your neighborhood.  The longer someone has lived in a community, the better. These interviews should be documented either via audio or video and the audio or video will accompany the project.

5. Book – Queens College library has a lot of local history, including many Master’s Theses done by History students in the 1970s. You need to find one book that deals in some way with your community.

6. Photos/Video – No multimedia presentation would be complete without some visual documentation of your subject. Take pictures of important places (mentioned in your research) to include in the final project.

***Print and web-based sources must be properly cited and be accompanied by a bibliography. If you need a reminder about how to cite, please see the librarian’s handout re. RefWorks and/or look at the MLA’s citation guide.***

Reflection Requirements:

You will also be required to turn in a two-page, double-spaced essay that describes to me what you think your project accomplishes. I expect, among other reflections, for this essay to detail what you conceive to be the formal elements of your piece: introduction, choices about which kinds of information to include, transitions, conclusion. I would also like to know the logic behind your thematic/stylistic choices. Finally, I would like to know what you thought worked, what didn’t work, and why…

**Due Dates**

Two of four research components complete: Monday, November 23

Four of four research components complete: Monday, November 30

Final project due: Wednesday, December 9

LATE PROJECTS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.