Assignment 10: To-Read Book List

While working at the Columbus Dispatch Newspaper this summer, I have had the opportunity to research many local-interest topics, including a couple of historical cemeteries. One of these cemeteries is the Camp Chase Cemetery, which was once part of a prison that held thousands of Confederate POWs during the Civil War. More information about this topic can be found in the 8/16 and 8/18 blog posts I wrote for the Dispatch Librarians' Historical Photo Collection blog callled, A Look Back.

Through my research, I found the history of Camp Chase to be particularly interesting because I enjoy reading about the Civil War and hadn't realized that we had such an historic site so nearby in Columbus. After the war was over, a former Union Soldier, William H. Knauss arranged for the care of the cemetery which held his former enemies. He then wrote about his efforts in a book and included in it letters that were written to and from Confederate prisoners, many of which were found undelivered after the war. Though the book is quite old (published in 1906), both the Dispatch and Columbus Public Libraries own copies. Flipping through this 400+ page book piqued my curiosity and made me want to read it in its entirety when time permitted. It also made me curious to know what other books existed relating to the subject of Camp Chase and the people associated with it.

My Search Process
-I started by searching for, finding and adding Knauss' book, "Story of Camp Chase" using GoodReads and was impressed that the book was already in the system. I then conducted an author search on WorldCat using William H. Knauss as the search term. It did not appear that he had written anything else.

-I searched for "Camp Chase" on WorldCat, which returned 319 hits. Scanning through the list, I chose the following books that were about Camp Chase. Through reading the hit list, I learned that there is an historical military field music group called Camp Chase Fifes and Drums. Googling their name showed me that, though their group takes its name from the camp I am interested in, materials written about them are not really related to the camp itself.

My Book List:
The following books' summaries fit my interests. Books whose records I had to manually input into GoodReads are highlighted in red.

1. Story of Camp Chase, by William H. Knauss
2. Scraps from the Prison Table, at Camp Chase and Johnson's Island, by Joseph Barbiere
3. Register of Confederate dead interred in Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery, Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio, and in Johnson's Island Confederate Cemetery near Sandusky, Ohio, by Mrs. Phillip Piton; Ohio Genealogical Society; Franklin County Chapter
4. The Men and Women of Camp Chase, by the Hilltop Historical Society.
5. Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy, by Roger Pickenpaugh
6. American Civil War Army Posts: Drum Barracks, Carlisle Barracks, Camp Douglas, Camp Morton, Camp Dennison, Pentagon Barracks, Camp Chase, by Books LLC
7. Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery, (no author given, but 2 copies available at Columbus Metropolitan Library)
8. Three Hundred Days in a Yankee Prison; Reminiscences of War Life, Captivity, Imprisonment at Camp Chase, Ohio, by John Henry King
9. Confederate cemeteries in Ohio : Camp Chase & Johnson Island, by Ohio Genealogical Society
10. Camp Chase: the story of a Civil War Post, by Gilbert F. Dodds
    

Other Interesting Items Found:
The following are a few items I came across that interested me, but for the purpose of this assignment I skipped them since they either weren't books, or were located at libraries/institutions that were too far away.
--An Ohio State University Thesis written by Edward Earl Roberts about Camp Chase.
--A map of Camp Chase by W.W. Pollard
--Six Months of Prison Life at Camp Chase, Ohio--available only at UNC Chapel Hill (390 miles away).
--Camp Chase Military Prison, by U.S. War Dept., National Archives and Records Service (on microfilm)
--Camp Chase, Columbus, Ohio, 1861-1865 : a study of the Union's treatment of Confederate prisoners of war (Thesis for U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kan.)

Analysis:
Overall, I think GoodReads is a useful and user-friendly site, but I do have one suggestion, and that is to add more search options to include WorldCat. GoodReads gives the user the opportunity to search through its own database as well as through Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com (and all its Amazon affiliates), but it doesn't allow for searching through WorldCat. Unfortunately for me, many of my books were found using WorldCat and were not included in the GoodReads database. This meant that I had to take the time to create (basic) records for half of my book list.

I enjoyed the the 'thrill of the hunt.' I found more items than I thought I would and many of them in formats I hadn't previously considered, such as maps and thesis papers. I like using WorldCat because it is so inclusive and informs me of where items can be found, but wish that it included better and more reviews in the style of Amazon. A combination of GoodReads, Amazon, and WorldCat would be ideal because it would include all of the beneficial features discussed above that are currently unique to each individual resource. It makes me think of the idea of Linked Data that was discussed in one of our TED Talk presentations. If only these resources would post all of their raw data (now!), then we would be able to search everything all at once.