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Stuthehistoryguy:
The Stuff I Told You About
Greetings, and thanks for visiting my meager little place on the web. With the exception of the Woman’s Journal-Advocate Index, this probably won’t be a real content-heavy place. Nope, it’s mostly a site for links that I tell people about. Boring? All in the way you look at it. Follow the links below, and I’ll bet you’ll find something that rocks your world.
The one piece of real substantive content I am putting on here is the text index I did of the Woman’s Journal-Advocate for my senior internship way back when I was an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska. The WJA (as it was so affectionately called) was a feminist newspaper for the Lincoln, Nebraska area. It covered women’s events and was a forum for feminist commentary on local and national issues. It ran from January, 1982 to July, 1993. Since I am a congenital slacker, the index only covers the period up to March, 1992 (the issues that had come out when I was in college), and it's in plain text, so you'll have to use the "Ctrl+F" feature on your browser to find stuff, but I guess it’s better than nothing. If anybody wants to add the final sixteen months, they can be my guest; I don’t think I’ll be getting back to Nebraska for that length of time in the foreseeable future. The hard copies of the WJA are held at in Love Library at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and at the Nebraska State Historical Society. If you’re a researcher interested in this sort of thing, check them out – they are a wonderful resource. (This also provides a wonderful incentive to link to this site, since doing so makes it much easier for Google and the rest to find the index’s content!)
One of my main hobbies lately has been writing trivia quizzes for Funtrivia.com. There are over 60,000 quizzes on this site (including mine), so you should find something up your alley.
Before essentially frittering grad school away, I had a long stint with the University of Illinois Libraries as a contributing editor for the American Bibliography for Slavic and Eastern European Studies. As such, I can recommend a few good libraries for research on both Eastern Europe and folklore studies:
- The University of Illinois Slavic and East European Library – A legendary resource, and the home of several of my best peeps. The whole library is actually quite a treasure, especially the History Library (which has recently been transformed into the University’s place for newspapers) and the Rare Books collection (which is located behind an imposing six-inch steel vault door).
- Indiana University – Also the home of at least two of my best peeps – yo, Jess & Kris! Be sure to check out:
- The Lilly Library – Indiana’s rare books collection, and the home of some of the most effervescent librarians I’ve ever met. Seriously, they take GREAT pride in their work. Home of the Stith Thompson papers and at least two of John Ford’s Oscar trophies.
- The Folklore Collection – The best of its kind.
- The Kinsey Institute Library – I used to tease my friends in Bloomington that they lived there just to be close to the world’s biggest concentration of porn (which this collection certainly is), but in all seriousness, this is a fine resource for anyone with a serious interest in human sexuality, even if it is even more secure than Illinois’ rare books.
- The Cleveland Public Library – Something of an unknown treasure. The amazing Special Collections department, which houses some remarkable rare books and folklore research materials, is also staffed by some of the nicest librarians around.
- The Proppian Fairy Tale Generator, v. 1.0 – One of the outstanding folklorists of the twentieth century, Vladimir Propp advanced the notion that all traditional folktales were based on the assembly of fewer than 100 basic story "functions", and that understanding the structure of these functions within any given story was essential to analyzing that tale. I've never been convinced of this, but this website tests Propp's theory by allowing the user to select fairytale functions and generate a story from them. Give it a whirl!
Before I started doing the trivia thing, I spent a lot of time cataloging cemeteries for Find A Grave, a great website for folks interested in genealogy or in simply honoring those who came before. If the spirit moves you, you can even leave flowers! My humble contributions to the site can be found here.
Later on, I might post some personal stuff – my curriculum vitae, blogs, photos, papers, progress on my upcoming book, and what not. For now, though, I’ll just leave you with my email for such things, and conclude this index page with my favorite links:
Drop me a line if you get a chance!
Peace,
Stu Burns
bravenet.com