"Identifying Historical Figures: The Souvenir of Egypt" examines the portraits appearing in the imagery of the decorative silk called "The Souvenir of Egypt," which is collected in the Travelers in the Middle East Archive. Here, we will search for the identity of each person represented in the portraits on the silk using a variety of resources in the library and online.This module is part 4 of a 6-part course on the Souvenir of Egypt.
The portraits of the souvenir of egypt
The
Souvenir of Egypt, a textile of uncertain
origins that is part of the
Travelers in the Middle East Archive ,
contains six portraits of men, but not a single name. The men seem to come from a differenttime--they all are wearing military or professional clothing from another period, perhaps the
nineteenth or early twentieth century.Locating the identity of the men in the portraits will enable us to interpret the
meaning of the images of the silk with more accuracy. AFinding out who they are willrequire that we spend some time in the reference section of a
library. Although we will be using Fondren Library at Rice University for ourexamples, we are confident that the library at your university provides a comparable
section with similar resources. By using the information we have gathered from ourexamination of the
Texts and
Flags of the silk, we will now be able to
narrow down what we find in new resources to the closest match to our
Faces .
Here is a list of the faces with links to their respective sections.Following the list of links below we will provide a brief overview of the
how to use reference work. If you decide to jump to a specificportrait and have questions about how and where we found certain works, please
scroll back to our section on
How to Use the Reference Section .
face1face 2face 3face 4face 5face 6
How to use the reference section
If there is one area in the library in which one feels that a huge amount of
information is within arm's reach, it is the Reference section. Here we will show youexactly what we mean by looking up a few works that should
provide us with some useful information about the possible identities of the menin our portraits and then browsing the surrounding shelves for more.
Targeting a resource in reference
The library's Reference section offers a number of useful tools for quickly finding basic facts
and getting started with research projects. For instance, Reference contains encyclopedias,atlases, dictionaries, manuals, guides, collections of brief articles, and more. Since
everything is arranged by call number, once you find one or two relevant works, you will likelyfind more close by on the shelves.
Let's begin by searching the catalog for works on Egypt. For purposes of demonstration, we'lluse Fondren library's online catalog
WebCat ,
but a similar process will work at most other libraries.(If you want to learn more about using library catalogs, please visit our
WebCat Module ).
Our first step is to make sure that our search is limited to
the Reference section. Look to the bottom of the Advanced Search page andyou will see a series of text boxes. Location the one labeled location and
highlight reference. It should look like this:
Selecting location in the catalog Then we need to specify what type of reference material we need. We
will be searching by region. In the previous module on
identifying the flags present in the
Souvenir of Egypt, we learned that one of the most prominent flags was the Egyptian flag between 1914 and1923. Of course, "Egypt" is also printed on the silk, so let's start our search for reference
tools thatcountry.
.
Searching on "Egypt" Our results have a variety of call numbers, but notice the similarity
in those that seem most promising.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, DT58 .O94 2001 v.1Historical Dictionary of Egypt, DT45 .W83 1984 It looks like DT in the 40's and 50's is our area. Through a similar process, we find
that
Britain is in DA around the 20's
Italy in the DG 450's
Russia in the DK30's
And France in the DC30's. They sound as if they are all within arm's
length of each other. Let's have a look on the shelves.
Reference books on the Middle East Our book on Egypt is not on the shelf. However just to the left we find
in the DS section shelves and shelves of books on the Middle East and just tothe right as many shelves on Africa, both of which should contain reference
material on Egypt.
Reference books on Britain Britain is well represented.
Reference books on France As well as France. Nearly all of the works we need are within five feet of
one another. In browsing between the sections we come across what would appear tobe an invaluable resource for our project,
Rules and Governments of the World .
We need aa comprehensive list of
the leaders of the world and the dates they heldtheir positions, so this book seems to be perfect. Let's gather up the most promising
works and get to work.
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Source:
OpenStax, Understanding material culture: deciphering the imagery of the "souvenir of egypt". OpenStax CNX. Oct 08, 2006 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10301/1.7
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