ipl2 Email Reference by Megan McCrery Question One The patron's question: Can you direct me to any source that will reveal information regarding insurance of S.F.1906 Earthquake Needed by: no need by Question: Can you direct me to any source that will reveal information regarding insurance of S.F.1906 Earthquake name: Patricia location: San Diego, CA area: History reason: I am writing my Auto Biography which is based in San Francisco. My family has history beginning with Insuring San Francisco during 1906 Earthquake. I have no information, detailed as such about their pay out or any news of the day or whatever regarding this family called either Cremer Insurance or German Insurance of Peoria, Ill. Thank you school: No sources_consulted: Ancestry.com, hand me down awareness, all family mostly gone My response: Greetings from ipl2. Thank you for your question about insurance information for The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. I have located a few sources for you that I think will answer your question. 1. The website for the Insurance Information Network of California states that "The earthquake and fire that devastated San Francisco on April 18, 1906 was one of the most significant natural disasters in the United States, as well as in the history of insurance. It produced insured losses of $180 million at the time." This and other insurance statistics pertaining to The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake are available on the site at: http://www.iinc.org/articles/345/1/the-1906-earthquake-and-fire/page1.html
The Insurance Information Network of California is a non-profit, non-lobbying organization dedicated to informing consumers and the media about the property/casualty business, and as such I believe this to be a reliable source. 2. The Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) has premium information for San Francisco for the year 1905. According to their web site, "total San Francisco fire premiums in 1905 were $2,985,540, of which American insurers wrote $1,645,710 and foreign companies wrote $1,340,830. One of the problems insurers faced was distinguishing between damage caused by the quake and damage caused by the fires." This statistical information, along with additional facts, may be located at: http://mceer.buffalo.edu/1906_earthquake/industry_impacts/impact-insuranceindustry.asp MCEER is dedicated to the discovery and development of new knowledge, tools and technologies that equip communities to become more disaster resilient in the face of earthquakes and other extreme events. Originally established by the National Science Foundation in 1986 as the first National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research it is headquartered at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. It is a reliable source for the type of information you seek. 3. The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley, maintains an online exhibit to present information about The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and digitized copies of original historical artifacts created at the time. According to this exhibit, in the months following the earthquake and fire, nearly 300 to 400 insurance adjusters, representing nearly 100 companies, came to San Francisco and processed nearly 100,000 payment requests. You may access the insurance claims information from the exhibit at: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/earthquakeandfire/exhibit/room05_item02.html The University of California, Berkeley, established the Bancroft Library in 1905, when it acquired Hubert Howe Bancroft's personal library of works and original documents pertaining to the history of California. As one of the largest and most heavily used libraries of manuscripts, rare books, and unique materials in the United States, it is a dependable source for the information you seek. 4. A company that you requested specific information about, The German Fire Insurance Company of Peoria, Illinois, wrote premiums of $800,878.00 and paid losses of $435,448.44 for their California fire business in the year 1906. This information was located in a document titled "State of California Insurance Department: Summary of Insurance Business Transacted During the Year Ending December 31st, 1906" from the James D. Phelan Papers of the Bancroft Library mentioned above. You may access this document at:
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docid=hb4h4nb3hh;naan=13030&doc.view=frames&chun k.id=div00001&toc.depth=1&toc.id=div00001&brand=eqf&query=german I found the first two sources by performing a keyword search in Google using the search terms < 1906 San Francisco earthquake+insurance information>. I found the last two sources by searching ipl2's resources. I entered the search terms "1906", "San Francisco", "earthquake" and "insurance" (quotation marks are not necessary when you type this in). http://www.ipl.org/ I hope these sources answer your question. If you still need more information, please contact us again. Thanks for visiting ipl2! Question Two The patron's question: Needed by: no need by Question: In undergrad I remember using a kind of dictionary that listed how many times an author used specific words across all of their works. So for example, how many times Emily Dickinson used the word "yellow" across all her works. I cannot for the life of me remember what this kind of book is called, nor can I find the word anywhere. I am not looking for one of these for Emily Dickinson, or anyone else specifically. I just want to remember what it is called! name: James location: Austin, TX area: Literature reason: personal knowledge school: No sources_consulted: Internet, dictionaries of literary terms, reverse dictionaries, librarians, etc.
My response: Greetings from ipl2. Thank you for your question about a compendium of specific word counts for authors or literary works. I have located a few sources for you that I think will answer your question. 1. I believe the item that you are seeking is called a concordance. According to Wikipedia, "A concordance is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, with their immediate contexts." This basic definition, along with additional background and some examples of the use of concordances in linguistics, are available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/concordance_(publishing) Wikipedia is a web-based, free-content encyclopedia project written by a mostly anonymous community of Internet volunteers. Because membership in this community may include non-experts, information taken from this source should be verified using other, more reliable sources. 2. The Victorian Literary Studies Archive offers a hyper-concordance tool for searching numerous Victorian, British & Irish, and American authors: http://victorian.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/concordance/ The Victorian Literary Studies Archive is a venture of two members of the Graduate School of Languages and Cultures, Nagoya University, Japan, and as such I believe it to be a reputable source for this information. 3. Open Source Shakespeare is a free web site containing Shakespeare's complete works. It is intended for scholars, thespians, and Shakespeare lovers of every kind." The site offers concordances for Shakespeare's plays, sonnets, and poems at: http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/ Open Source Shakespeare is the result of a graduate thesis project and is currently hosted by George Mason University. As such, I believe this to be a reliable source. 4. For an alternative word counting tool try the Google N-gram Viewer, a graphing tool based on a catalog of 5.2 million books, published between 1500 and 2008, containing 500 billion words. By typing in a word or phrase in one of seven languages, you may view how its usage frequency has changed during a specified period of time. https://books.google.com/ngrams The Google Ngram Viewer was a special project developed by Google Labs, and as such I believe it to be a trustworthy source.
I found the first source by performing a keyword search in Google using the search terms <list of principal words in a body of work>. I found the second and third sources by searching ipl2's resources. I entered the search term "concordance" (quotation marks are not necessary when you type this in). There are additional types of concordances available via this search too. http://www.ipl.org/ I found the fourth source by performing a keyword search in Google using the search terms <ngram viewer>. I hope these sources answer your question. If you still need more information, please contact us again. Thanks for visiting ipl2! Question Three The patron's question: Question: I am wondering what the connection is between Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus. Another name for Santa Claus is Saint Nick, but they are not the same person based on their background stories. How does the story of Santa Claus relate to the story of Saint Nicholas? How did the modern ideas about Santa Claus come to be? name: Elizabeth location: Columbia, MD area: Religion reason: Research Paper school: Yes sources_consulted: Wikipedia
My response: Greetings from ipl2! Thank you for your question about the connection between Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus. I enjoyed researching this question and have located a few sources for you that I think will answer your query. 1. The Saint Nicholas Center is devoted to "discovering the truth about Santa Claus" and provides detailed information about Saint Nicholas and the origin of Santa Claus under the "Who Is St. Nicholas?" tab on their web site. The site also provides information about the timeline, geography, and stories related to the Santa Claus legend: http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/origin-of-santa/ The Saint Nicholas Center is the work of Jim Rosenthal, a Director of Communication for the Anglican Communion, and Carol Myers, a trustee of New Brunswick Theological Seminary and the Community Foundation of the Holland (MI) Area. The Center provides resources for families, churches, and schools to further education about Saint Nicholas. As such, I believe this to be a dependable source. 2. You mentioned needing this information for a research paper in the area of Religion, so I thought that a religious perspective on Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus might be helpful. "The Origin of Santa Claus and the Christian Response to Him" is an article that explains the connection of Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus and the migration of the legend to America: http://www.orlutheran.com/html/santa.html The article was written by Dr. Richard P. Bucher, an adjunct professor at Concordia Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Theology (Boston University) with a focus on 16th Century Reformation and the New Testament. As such I believe that this item is a reliable source for the information you seek. 3. The article described above contains a bibliography listing a book that seemed quite relevant to your question: St. Nicholas: His Legend and His Role in the Christmas Celebration and Other Popular Customs (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917), by George H. McKnight. Chapters include "St. Nicholas, Santa Claus and Kris Kringle" and "Biography and Legend" and "St. Nicholas As Patron Saint" among others. Though the item is nearly one hundred years old it is available online, in its entirety, at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42969/42969-h/42969-h.htm Author George Harley McKnight (1871-1951) was the author of several books on the English language. The respective chapter notes of this book contain extensive citations about the content, and as such I believe this to be a reputable source.
4. Additional insight into the Saint Nicholas connection to Santa Claus may be derived from the Dutch legend of Sinterklaas. An exhaustive three-part history of St. Nicholas of Myra and his connection to both Sinterklaas and Santa Claus is presented from an ancient history perspective at: http://www.livius.org/ne-nn/nicholas/nicholas_of_myra1.html Livius is a website on ancient history written and maintained by the Dutch historian Jona Lendering, a teacher of historical theory and ancient history at the Free University (Vrije Universiteit) in Amsterdam and one of the founders of a school for history teaching, Livius Onderwijs. As such, I believe this to be a reliable source that may offer relevant historical insight to your research topic. I found the first source by searching ipl2's resources. I entered the search terms "Saint", "Nicholas", "Santa" and "Claus" (quotation marks are not necessary when you type this in). http://www.ipl.org/ I found the second source by performing a keyword search in Google using the search terms "St. Nicholas" and "Santa Claus" and "origin of legend" (quotation marks are not necessary when you type this in). I found the third source in the bibliography of the second source, listed as the first reference. To locate the actual text of the book, I searched the book catalog of Project Gutenberg, the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or ebooks, here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ I found the fourth source by performing a keyword search in Google using the search terms "St. Nicholas" and "Sinterklaas" and "Santa Claus" (quotation marks are not necessary when you type this in). I hope these sources answer your question. If you still need more information, please contact us again. Good luck on your research and thanks for visiting ipl2!