All Guides: History: Getting Started

Research & Instruction Librarian

she/her/hers

Contact:

651-696-6702

Subjects: Architecture, History, Media and Cultural Studies, Music, Philosophy, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, Theater and Dance, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Library Resources

Getting Started with History

Historical research relies on a wide variety of sources, both primary & secondary, including unpublished material.

Primary Sources
First-hand testimonies from sources who witnessed or experienced an event firsthand.

Examples include: a letter, newspaper article, a photograph, a diary, or other ephemera from the time period being studied.
Found in public records & legal documents, minutes of meetings, corporate records, recordings, letters, diaries, journals, drawings.
Located in university archives, historical societies, and within private institutions or museums.

Secondary or Scholarly Sources
These are the peer reviewed articles and scholarly books that historians write after they have worked with the primary sources and consulted other secondary articles or books.

Can be oral or written
Secondhand accounts of events
Found in textbooks, encyclopedias, journal articles, newspapers, biographies and other media such as films or tape recordings.

Strategic Searching

Before you start searching for resources, pause to think about what exactly you are searching for:

Write down key words, phrases, names, and dates that might relate to you topic.
Brainstorm synonyms or words with related meanings.
Think about historical language as well as modern. How do you find historical terminology? Try searching the Oxford Historical Thesaurus, which is embedded in the Oxford English Dictionary tool.

Pro tip: as you find primary and secondary sources, see what language they use, and add new terms to your list to help you refine additional searches!

Best Bets

The Information-Literate Historian by Jenny L. Presnell
Call Number: Stacks - Level 4 D16.2 .P715 2019
ISBN: 9780190851491
Publication Date: 2018-05-31
The Information-Literate Historian: A Guide to Research for History Students is the only book specifically designed to teach today's history students how to successfully select and use sources--primary, secondary, and electronic--to carry out and present their research.
The Historian's Toolbox by Robert C. Williams
ISBN: 1138632171
Publication Date: 2019-12-11
The Historian's Toolbox introduces students to the theory, craft, and methods of history and equips them with a series of tools to research and understand the past.
The History Student Writers' Manual by Mark E. Hellstern; Stephen M. Garrison; Gregory M. Scott
Call Number: Stacks - Level 4 D13 .H4147 1998
ISBN: 9780138747282
Publication Date: 1997-10-10
Brief, yet comprehensive, this user-friendly text/reference provides history students with practical advice about how to improve their writing and study skills while learning about history.

Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Index covering world history (excluding the United States and Canada). It includes hundreds of history journals and books, plus useful features such as the ability to search by time period.
America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Scholarly journals, books, and dissertations covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada from before European contact to the present.

eBooks (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Search across subject-specific reference encyclopedias.
Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new window
Resource of reference materials such as dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. Provides database-wide searching, subject searching across sources, and individual title searching.
Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Access to general and subject-specific reference books (encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and books of quotations and proverbs). Provides a graphics-based Concept Mapping option for topic exploration.

Schedule a Meeting with a Librarian

Have questions about the research process? Don't struggle, reach out to a librarian for help! Students interested in research support can book a meeting with a librarian to:

Narrow down research topic ideas
Find background information
Save time getting started with your research
Use the library’s collections as well as worldwide and web resources
Choose databases for discipline-focused research
Learn more efficient searching method

To make an appointment, reach out to a subject librarian specializing in your topic.