School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
JOMC 50: Electronic Information Sources (EIS)
Research Project by Bob Stepno
Summer Session II, 1998
Carolina and the Banjo
Proposal
What I know
I know a little bit about the banjo: I own more than a dozen records of banjo music, I own a banjo myself, have a couple of instruction books, know there are differences in styles of playing, and even took lessons for a week. I've heard that one of the most famous banjo players, Earl Scruggs, is from North Carolina. Now that I live here, I'd like to find out more about the instrument's history in this state and elsewhere.Being flexible
While my goal will be to focus on North Carolina, broadening the research beyond the state lines will give me more flexibility in using government and business information sources. Perhaps North Carolina doesn't have banjo manufacturing companies (business information) or laws against playing the banjo (government information). Maybe other states or countries do. (I know my banjo was made in Massachusetts and that some newer ones come from Japan.)
I know the banjo came from Africa and that there are African instruments considered relatives of the banjo. I'd like to learn more about them, too.
Keywords and preliminary search
I did a preliminary search on the UNC-CH (Davis) library catalog with "banjo" as a keyword and found that there are even people named banjo and fictional works with banjo in the title. "Banjo and music" found 182 items, and adding "Carolina" to that search cut it down to 77, which is a start.On the Web, AltaVista found 193,420 matches for "banjo and carolina," so I definitely have to whittle that down to the best ones! I switched to "+banjo +carolina" and it found 3,938 matches. I used the "refine" command to focus on the "clawhammer" style of playing, then used "-catalog" to get record catalogs out of the list, which brought the total under 300.
For AltaVista's hints on refining a search, see AltaVista Help.