Great Plains Studies, Center for

 

Date of this Version

Spring 1997

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 2, Spring 1997, pp. 154.

Comments

Copyright 1997 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract

For many years to come, researchers in Nebraska history will depend on the industry and exactitude of Michael Tate, compiler of this excellent bibliography. The first such tool ever published for the state, it offers comprehensive coverage of books, articles, dissertations, and other materials dealing with aspects of Nebraska history up to October 1994. This is the sixth volume in the ongoing series of state bibliographies published by Greenwood.

Tate organizes more than five thousand entries under sixteen general topics, among them environment, Native Americans, the frontier period, agriculture, transportation, economic affairs, government, cultural life, and social issues. Entries concerning women, immigrants, and racial and ethnic groups appear in a "people" category, while reference works are listed separately. The bibliography concludes with an extensive list of community and county histories.

In his effort to keep this long book from becoming prohibitively expensive, the compiler could not avoid omissions, such as government documents, manuscript collections in various depositories, and newspaper runs. Most such items are conveniently indexed elsewhere, however. Similarly, since authors Willa Cather and John Neihardt have received so much scholarly attention, citations to their work are limited to the most important.

Tate's annotations, though brief, add considerable value to the book and help justify its high price. Usually a sentence in length, they are most often descriptive, though some are interpretive or qualitative. In most cases they provide the reader with enough information to encourage or discourage further pursuit of the entry. A few items, mostly master's theses or doctoral dissertations unavailable through interlibrary loan, could not be examined personally and hence are not annotated.

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