1) An op-ed on a labor dispute involving public school teachers from before 1970
To do this, I went to ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers section. I searched “labor dispute school teacher 1960-1969” and only got one result: this. But I didn’t think that seemed right.
Next I searched “labor dispute public school teacher” and then sorted the search using the ProQuest tools on the side by including only “article,” “letter to the editor,” and “editorial.” Then I selected the publication date to be between 1960 and 1969. I still ended up with 521 results.
Frustrated, I searched “”labor dispute” AND “public school teachers”” and applied the same time stipulations. This left me with 4 results. Two of these were straight news (not op-ed articles) and another was about a garbage strike. This article was the closest thing I could find.
I wanted to try another search, but then ProQuest had some problems. Moving on.

2) The first documented use of solar power in the United States
I searched “”solar power” AND “united states”” in ProQuest (after it got fixed somehow). Then I sorted it to only show articles and other. I ordered it to show the oldest articles first and ended up with this.

3) The best resource for the history of California ballot initiatives, including voting data
I don’t even know what this means. Anyway, I went to JSTOR and searched “california “ballot initiatives” AND “voting data”.” I got 19 results, which is not bad. I thought this article was pretty good.

Although this assignment wasn’t incredibly difficult, it was frustrating. It’s hard to narrow searches on such obscure topics! I spent a good hour and a half trying to find these items, and I don’t even think I found the “right” stuff. This did, however, teach me some really important things about search engines, narrowing searches, key words and phrases in searching, and patience while trying to find something so specific.
I’m excited for class tomorrow so I can see what everyone else found!