BIOGRAPHY: 1946-2000 ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS
OVERVIEW
Studying individual historical figures is an important part of understanding the full story of American history from different perspectives. By summarizing sources and paraphrasing information from other sources, students can learn the basics of researching primary and secondary sources. Properly citing sources is foundational to a college education. The purposes of this assignment are to teach you about important figures in U.S. History, introduce you to the process of finding different sources available through Liberty University, and help you learn the importance of proper formatting.
INSTRUCTIONS
Identify a significant figure in American History who was active from 1946-2000 from the American National Biography Online database, available through the Jerry Falwell Library (found in the Learn section), and write a 1-2 page biography of that individual with a ten-source bibliography.
• Your paper should be a full, 1-2 page summary. The summary should not include any footnotes, in-text or parenthetical citations.
• Include your name, date, and course on the upper right of your biography. Please single space these items.
• The summary must be typed and doubled-spaced, and have 1-inch margins.
• The summary should have at least three paragraphs including an introduction, body, and conclusion. There should be no extra space between paragraphs.
• You must place page numbers at the bottom of each page of your summary and bibliography.
• Each source in the bibliography must be single-spaced with an extra space between the sources. The sources should be in alphabetical order by the author’s last name.
• With very few exceptions, the best biographies will be the ones that undergo several revisions. In your revisions, check for grammatical errors, organizational problems, and the clarity of your descriptions.
• After writing the summary, you will create a bibliography that includes the American National Biography Online page you used, as well as three scholarly books using the Jerry Falwell Online Library search engine and/or WorldCat, three scholarly, journal articles using JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, Academic OneFile, and/or Summon (found in Liberty Library’s databases), and three reputable websites (.org, .edu, .gov, .mil) to create a bibliography related to the subject of your biography.
• The use of current Turabian formatting in your bibliography is required.
