Great Expectations Project:

A Resource Guide

Upper School Library: Getting started

  • Go to Library catalog to find books such as these:
  • American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare, by Jason DeParle. Viking, 2004. Call no. 362.5 D419a
  • Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children, by Michael Thompson et al. Ballantine, 2001. Call no. 305.231 T468b
  • Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England, by Judith Flanders. Norton, 2003. Call no. 942.081 F584i
  • The New American Poverty, by Michael Harrington. Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1984. Call no. 305.569 H311n
  • No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row, by Susan Kuklin. Holt, 2008. Call no. 364.66 K96n
  • Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, by Piper Kerman. Spiegel & Grau, 2010. Call no. 365.43 K39o
  • Poor People, by William T. Vollmann. Harper Perennial, 2007. Call no. 362.5 V924p
  • Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature , by Richard D. Altick. Norton, 1973. Call no. 942.081 A468v
  • What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist--The Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England, by Daniel Pool. Touchstone, 1993. Call no. 820.9 P821w
  • The Working Poor: Invisible in America, by David K. Shipler. Knopf, 2004. Call no. 305.569 S557w

Finding books outside OES

Finding articles

  • Proquest Research Library: General-interest magazines and newspapers
  • Gale InfoTrac : Made available through the Oregon School Library Information System (OSLIS). Magazines and journals across a wide spectrum of subject areas. For best results, go to "PowerSearch" and select the Academic OneFile and Popular Magazine indexes to search.
  • JSTOR: Awesome full-text collection of academic journals, including titles such as Victorian Studies and Victorian Review, accessible with your library card number through Multnomah County Library Databases
  • The Oregonian: Full text from 1861-1972 and from 1987 to the present, available through America's Historical Newspapers and NewsBank in the Multnomah County Library Databases
  • Proquest Historical New York Times. The entire run of the Times, accessible from the OES database collection.
  • ArticleFirst: Accessible with your library card number from Multnomah County Library Databases
  • Remember: Almost any article you find in ArticleFirst or another index can be requested for you through interlibrary loan. Print out the citation for the article and bring it to Chris Myers

Topical Websites

  • Child Labor Education Project: Based at the University of Iowa, the Child Labor Education Project provides a wide-ranging collection of resources and data about the history, current state, causes, and effects of child labor in the U.S. and in other countries
  • Children's Defense Fund: An independent, non-partisan national organization that advocates for children's welfare and collects data on the status of children in the United States
  • CQ Researcher Excellent coverage of current political and social issues, accessible with your library card number through Multnomah County Library Databases.
  • Gale Virtual Reference Library through OSLIS: Essentially an electronic version of a collection of subject-specific encyclopedias and other reference works. Click on a title and then use the hot-linked table of contents to find pertinent articles. Titles of interest for this project include Crime and Punishment: Essential Primary Sources and Social Policy: Essential Primary Sources.
  • National Center for Children in Poverty: Based at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, the NCCP is "the nation’s leading public policy center dedicated to promoting the economic security, health, and well-being of America’s low-income families and children."
  • National Foster Care Coalition: A non-partisan, non-profit organization that gathers information and statistics on foster care and adoption
  • National Poverty Center: A project of the University of Michigan, the National Poverty Center promotes and gathers scholarship about the causes and consequences of poverty
  • PrisonReform.org: A very large collection of links to groups, mainly in the United Kingdom, working in the area of prison reform. The site includes another collection dedicated to organizations working on prison reform outside the UK
  • Urban Institute The website of a nonpartisan organization dedicated to collecting data and providing reports and analysis on a variety of social problems in the United States
  • Opposing Viewpoints through OSLIS: Well curated, balanced collection of articles and opinion pieces covering both sides of major issues. Go to Gale InfoTrac under Databases, click on Power Search, select "Opposing Viewpoints," then click on "Issues"
  • The Urban Portal:A web portal, from the University of Chicago, that gathers current research and resources on urban issues
  • The Victorian Web: Broad-ranging collection of material about Victorian England, including a special section on Dickens

Statistical Websites

  • Uniform Crime Reports: The official data collection site of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
  • Adoption and Foster Care Statistics: From the Children's Bureau, a division of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, national and state statistics on adoptions and foster-care arrangements, as well as on child abuse and neglect.
  • American Factfinder: The online data service of the United States Census Bureau (the government agency dedicated to collecting and sorting demographic data)
  • Occupational Outlook Handbook: This rich resource, produced by the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, provides data on employment prospects, average pay, job requirements, and current employment levels for a variety of professions and types of work
  • Pew Research Center: A nonpartisan "fact bank" that gathers data and public opinion on a range of issues in the United States
  • Federal Bureau of Prisons: This website, maintained by a division of the United States Department of Justice, offers current data about inmate populations at federal penitentiaries and prison camps.

Local agencies and organizations