Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Reference desk

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A collection of reference materials for researching Oregon-related topics.

Contents

[edit] Books

Many books are available online, notably those that were published before 1923, whose copyright has expired. Many of those with expired copyright are available in full on Google Books, where they may be searched, or as downloadable PDF files.

[edit] Pre-1923, online

  • Pete has a library on Google Books with links to a bunch of online Oregon history books, and will be moving them over here as time allows. (Feel free to help!)
  • Hines, H. K. (1893). An illustrated history of the state of Oregon; containing a history of Oregon from the earliest period of its discovery to the present time, together with glimpses of its auspicious future; illustrations and full-page portraits of some of its eminent men and biographical mention of many of its pioneers and prominent citizens of to-day. Chicago: Lewis Pub. Co.. 

[edit] Post-1923, online

[edit] Not online, but very useful

  • Oregon Geographic Names: has a background on the name of nearly every place in Oregon. Excellent starting point, though occasionally inaccurate. Katr has a copy. The Oregon Historical Society formerly had some of the spreadsheets from the CD that accompanies this book available online. They have since revamped their website so that information may or may not be available currently.

[edit] Newspapers

  • List of newspapers in Oregon
  • If you do a search on Google News, and then click "All dates" in the left-hand nav bar, you'll get a list of all kinds of articles. Many of the older ones will be a small preview for a fee-based system (depending on the news outlet), but it's a great starting point even without buying any articles. (See here for an example search on "Tom McCall.")
  • <describe other online access methods for Oregon papers>
Catalogs of newspapers and newspaper articles
Newspapers that keep essentially their entire archives online for free on their own web sites
  • Portland Tribune (web site) -- Portland area twice-weekly, est'd 2001. Their search engine's a little kooky, so use Google or Google News and put "site:portlandtribune.com" in the search terms.
  • Willamette Week (web site) -- Portland area weekly, been around since the 1970s. Their 25th anniversary issue had lots of good history, and is cited in many Portland- and Oregon-related articles. Would be good to find out the exact date of that issue.
  • Portland Mercury (web site) -- Portland weekly, est'd around 2000 as an offshoot of Seattle's The Stranger. Excellent coverage of Portland city politics.
  • Portland Business Journal (web site) -- Portland business weekly, has lots of stuff online (not sure if it's the full archive or not.)
See also

[edit] Academic journals

JSTOR (journal storage) is a for-fee web site that contains lots of academic journal articles. It's possible to get free access through various institutions, though; if you're a Multnomah County Library card holder, you can log in from anywhere:

You'll need your card number and PIN, usually the last four digits of your home phone. Go to the library's web site. Click "Research," then "Databases A-Z," and scroll to JSTOR.

JSTOR has a list of other Oregon institutions that provide free access to its database.

[edit] Databases and other web resources

  • The "Oregon Biographies Project", a volunteer-driven effort, has compiled numerous biographical pieces about noted Oregonians, from books dated roughly 1850–1928. Note that all pre-1923 bios are copyright-free; the 1928 text may be as well, if copyright was not renewed (would be good to find out.) Any controversial claims based on this source, of course, should be double-checked against original texts.
  • HistoryLink is an online encyclopedia of Washington history, and contains numerous articles pertaining to Oregon. Its writers are knowledgeable – history professors and the like – but it doesn't have a clear editorial review process, so caution should be exercised on anything controversial.
  • Oregon Geographic Names (different than the book above), a web resource from PSU Department of Geology Northwest GeoData Clearinghouse. Includes County, Latitude, Longitude, Elevation, and 7.5' Quadrangle Name. Can be used to fill out coordinates templates and to prove or disprove that a geographic feature exists, according to the USGS, whose data the database uses.
  • USGS Geographic names information system (GNIS), to supplement the above link. Katr uses this to search for the "feature class" of geographic features (useful if you don't know if a "place" is really a place, i.e. is it a populated place, a locale, someplace that once had a post office, or...?) Also excellent for disambiguating place names like "Diamond Lake". Read the FAQ before you try to use your search as a citation--there's a trick to it.

[edit] Libraries

[edit] Image libraries

  • Oregon Historic Photograph Collections is part of the digital collection of Salem Public Library. This archive has 1000s of images from the 1800s to the present. The collection concentrates on Salem and the Willamette Valley, but has photos from all over the state. These can't be uploaded, but it's nice to add a link to a selection of relevant images in the external links section. You may have to try several different search parameters to find what you are looking for. Note that the stream-of-consciousness photo descriptions should be taken with a grain of salt and that most of the place name information is taken from Oregon Geographic Names. The descriptions are rife with misspellings, speculation and inaccuracies, so do try to find a back up source if you're using the description as a citation.