I approached this assignment happily–it’s not often that you get to play a game (of sorts) for homework. I was also slightly apprehensive; I love to search using Google, and I knew going completely without it might prove to be challenging. I found that to be the case.

I decided to focus primarily on databases like ProQuest, JSTOR, and other journals held by the Mason Library, as we discussed in class. Using some of the new Boolean operations I’d learned (the tilde, for example) was helpful, but I still struggled to find exactly what I was looking for.

I decided to search for the three topics in order, so that’s how I’ll report my findings:

1. Op-Ed/Labor Dispute/Public School Teachers/Pre-1970

I’m a little abashed to say I didn’t know what an “op-ed” was; I had thought it meant opinion/editorial. I did a quick Google search (briefly ignore what I said about not using Google at all above, please–I thought this didn’t hurt since I was looking up background information). I compared the Google definition with a well-cited Wikipedia article; both said that “op-ed” is actually an editorial piece written by a published and/or well-known writer (as opposed to someone from the general public) who usually does not work for the newspaper in which the article is being published; it  happens to appear on the page opposite the regular editorials, hence the name. The Wikipedia article also noted that this concept was officially adopted around 1970 by the New York Times.

Given that information, I decided that ProQuest would be a good place from which to start. I performed several searches:

• “public school teachers” AND “labor ~disputes”
• “public school teachers” AND strikes
• I limited the search field to articles before 1970
• I limited the results to include only articles, commentary, correspondence, or editorials
• I eventually limited the search to articles from the New York Times (because of what I’d read earlier) but then expanded it to include all available newspapers again

I believe the most promising article I found is from the Chicago Tribune. While I can’t say whether it entirely fits the bill as an “op-ed” because no author is attributed to the piece, it’s an editorial that fits all other criteria: “Strikes that Should Be Prohibited“.

2. Solar Power/U.S.

I found this search to be the easiest of the three (relatively speaking). I decided to use ProQuest again and had a surprising number of results. It was difficult to find the first documented case of solar power used in the U.S., so I tried using different search terms to see if I could determine when the phrase was first used.  Some of my search criteria included:

• “solar power” AND “United States”
• “solar power” AND emergence AND “United States”
• “solar collection” AND “United States”
• “solar heating” AND “United States”

When I found articles that used those terms, I’d then limit the search to years before that article to see if solar energy had been discussed even earlier. These two articles seemed to document the increasing interest in solar power in the U.S. well: one in the Los Angeles Times in 1938, “Solar Energy Study Planned” , and one in the New York Times that described the use of solar power in Florida homes by the 1940s: “Solar Power Use Rises Slightly, But Cost Still Poses Obstacle“.

3. California Ballot Initiatives/Voting Records

I found this to be the most difficult search; it was hard to find any sources that gave a comprehensive list of California’s ballot initiatives, let alone a record of the voting results for those initiatives. I searched ProQuest, JSTOR (especially political journals like ABI/Inform that fell under the “Government Documents” or “Political Science and Law” categories), and the Mason Library holdings to no avail. I finally gave in to my desire to return to Google, using the Scholar feature to search for California AND “~Ballot Initiatives”. I was excited to discover this article: “Judicial Review of Ballot Initiatives: The Changing Role of State and Federal Courts“. Though I did not read the lengthy article in its entirety, I gathered that the authors focused primarily on California when discussing the impact of ballot initiatives and discuss in-depth the results of some of the most well known. They may not provide a record of all statistics based on these initiatives, but they do discuss the impact of initiatives on voting extensively, and I think it might be a good place for someone researching this topic to begin.

I enjoyed this scavenger hunt, despite the momentary frustration it caused. I may still prefer Google for a quick search, but I really appreciate the number of sources available when on a quest for more thorough information!