History 400 Research Seminar in European History (Peters)

The purpose of this guide is to familiarize you with the best resources for historical research in order to research your paper and presentation. The focus of the librarian's presentation will be on primary sources, the other source types are presented here as a refresher!

• Getting Started
• Books
• Journal Articles
• Primary Sources
• Style Guides

 

Getting Started

British History is certainly found over a long time period and covers an extensive range of human behaviors, so this course is concentrating on the 1640-1832 date range. A number of possible topic areas are identified in your syllabus and assigned readings, but you will likely need to narrow the topic even further to not be overwhelmed by the materials available. 

Before getting too invested in time and effort, think about what you know about several topics that interest you. Review your notes for terms, events and important people. You might also want to browse the Britannica.com site Age of Empire for ideas. Before choosing a specific focus on a topic, you may wish to survey what is available--if you can't find materials on your topic, you are creating barriers for yourself and working much harder than you need to for a successful paper.

What do you need?

Project Proposal

• Primary sources that will serve as key items in your research

Historiographical Essay

• One book (this is a secondary source, although some primary materials may be included)
• Three published articles (secondary sources)

Research Paper

• Primary and secondary sources, including the previously used materials. It cannot be stressed enough that PRIMARY SOURCES are the most important element of historical research

 

Books

Any well researched paper uses books to support your thinking and writing. There are two kinds of books you will want to investigate in the library. Primary sources can be letters, diaries, contemporary newspaper reports or other first-person accounts. Secondary sources are articles and books that review a number of works to create a text. Secondary sources are most often written years after the event or time period and may be based on research in primary sources.

Reference Books...
are normally secondary sources. These are works like encyclopedias, directories, and collections of reviews that do not circulate from the library. They may be quick overviews or in-depth studies and can help you in developing ideas on topics or a focus on a topic.

• Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350 to 2000  REF HN373 .E63 2000
• The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion   REF BL31 .H37 1995
• Women Writing Home, 1700-1920: Female Correspondence Across the British Empire REF CT3320 .W66 2006 
• Documents in British history REF DA26 .D58 1993
• Atlas of the British Empire REF DA16 .A8 1989 

Circulating Books (check out and take home)...
can be a mix of secondary and primary materials. Be aware that sometimes primary materials will be held in special collections or archives and may be more difficult to access.

• CSUSM collection -- Located in the Kellogg Library on both 4th and 5th floors.
• E-books (Net Library or History EBook Project)  Available through a WWW link in library catalog. Access is normally for 2 hours at a time.

Finding Books

Start your search by typing your topic in the KEYWORD search option in our Library Catalog. This will return a list of titles (including books, videos, slides) for you to browse. When you find an item that looks relevant, click on the title for more information. Especially useful on the item's record will be SUBJECTS which describe the content of the item and will link like items together.

Other Options

Circuit (1-3 day delivery)
Search the collections of other San Diego area libraries -- about 3,000,000 books. Find and request books directly online; pick them up at our Library in 1-3 days.

WorldCat (5-10 day delivery)
Search the collections of libraries world-wide -- about 52,000,000 books. Find a book in this database, and fill-out an Interlibrary Loan delivery request. Book will be delivered to Library for pickup.

Other Resources 

• Newspapers  More recent issues available through the Research Databases, older on microfilm. Especially important for reviews, firsthand accounts, and commentary.
• History Subject Guide  Portal to online resources brought to you by CSUSM

Useful Subject Terms

Library catalogs use specific subject headings to group related books together. In doing your keyword searches, look at the hyperlinks next to the SUBJECT header (below the location box). These are specific labels added by subject experts to identify the content of a book regardless of the title or terminology the book's author uses. Click on a subject heading that sounds useful and you will retrieve a different set of titles than with the keyword search. When you go to the shelves to get the item you found, be sure to look at other items near the one you want, as other works sharing the same subject will be shelved there. Here are some sample subject headings.

• Great Britain -- Civilization -- 18th Century
• British -- Travel -- Europe -- History --17th Century
• Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603 1714 (particular rulers)
• Scotland -- Foreign Relations -- England (political relations)
• Ireland -- History
• Riots -- England -- History -- 19th Century
• Riots -- Great Britain -- History
• Luddites (anti-technology movement in 19th Century England)
• Women -- Great Britain -- Diaries

You may wonder why not start in the catalog with a subject search, rather than the keyword search. Look at the structure of the subject headings and how they vary from how we normally speak or write. If you type 'British History' into a subject search, you won't get any results as the subject headings are not structured that way. Remember, computer search engines do a character by character match and don't know that you might want something that comes in a slightly different phrasing. Search the full Library of Congress Subject Headings Authority.

 

Journal Articles

History journals include some of the latest research in the field. They're a good source for finding very detailed information on your topic.  It's best to start with a couple of books before diving into journals to gather scholarly terminology and names of recognized authorities on your topic. To find articles, you need to start with a research database. NOTE: most databases do not cover material published prior to the early 1980's, but will cover topics dating back to prehistory.

Some databases do not offer full text of the articles. Use the button to check our other resources for full text.

Most Useful

Historical Abstracts
Abstracts of journal articles covering world history, from pre-history to the present with SFX links to full-text when possible. This database does cover materials published since the mid-1900s on.

JSTOR
Full-text. Contains complete full-text back files (EXCEPT for the latest five years) of core scholarly journals in such areas as sociology, history, economics, political science, mathematics, African-American studies, Asian studies and others.

Project MUSE
Full text. Scholarly article collection which supplements the holdings on some titles in JSTOR.

Also Useful (research the non-British side of the scholarly conversation)

Academic Search Premier
Full-text. A multi-disciplinary database offering full text for nearly 1,850 scholarly journals, including more than 1,250 peer-reviewed titles. Use the Advanced Search feature to limit your searches scholarly material.

America: History & Life
Abstracts of journal articles covering American & Canadian history, from pre-history to the present; handful of links to full-text.

Handbook of Latin American Studies
An essential bibliography on Latin America consisting of works selected and annotated by scholars.

History E-Book Project
Full-text. Approximately 750 full-text e-books in the area of history. Each title is also included in the library catalog.

Oxford English Dictionary
A guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It includes etymological analysis, listings of variant spellings, and shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet