Throw me something, mister

Viewers along the Mardi Gras parade routes stand with arms raised, shouting for the costumed benefactors on the float, to share the wealth. How did Mardi Gras, as we know it, get started in New Orleans?

A search in multiple GALILEO databases is pretty easy to do. The Search tab (5th tab over) provides steps to complete the search.
- Step 1 Enter search keywords. There are three search boxes with drop down limiters for title, author, subject, etc.
- Step 2 Select Search Options. You have three choices- full text, peer reviewed, and dates. I suggest selecting full text and peer reviewed. Full text to make sure you get the entire article and not an abstract. Peer Reviewed so the articles aren't from People magazine.
- Step 3 Choose Databases to search. Academic Search Complete (Ebsco) and Research Library (Proquest) are the two displayed. There is a Show more databases link that opens a long list of options.

To answer my questions about Mardi Gras,
Step 1. I entered Mardi Gras as a subject search.
Step 2. I limited my search to Full Text. I'm looking for articles with information not acadamic treatises.
Step 3. I added the two Religion databases. Mardi Gras is the last day before the Christian season of Lent.
I clicked on the Search 4 databases button
The results are in date order.
There is a box on the left that tells me Results by Source. Interesting that Ebsco's general database has no articles with Mardi Gras as a subject but Proquest has 596.

The article from ProQuest that shared some early history of Mardi Gras was published in 2002, in the New Orleans magazine, The men who made Mardi Gras. There isn't any information about the bead throwing. I need to go back and look some more. Meanwhile, I can think of the folks lining the streets of New Orleans with arms waving!


-kss