HISTORY 691H HONORS Fall 2007
All call numbers and special locations are in Davis Reference unless otherwise noted.
For additional assistance, please contact
Robert Dalton,
Reference Librarian.
Phone: 962-1151
Email: rdalton@email.unc.edu
Research guides help conceptualize a research project, plan it wisely, identify basic resources, and provide initial bibliography.
A Student's Guide to History. 10th ed.
Jules R. Benjamin. Boston: Bedford & St. Martin's, 2007. This provides a basic overview of doing historical research,
from what history is as a discipline to researching and writing an historical paper. It also offers a 40-page appendix
listing basic reference sources and other tools for doing this research.
D 16.3 .B4 2007
To search for similar research tools in the Library's online catalogs, use the following Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) as examples:
The Writing Center on campus provides assistance for the actual writing of student papers, and they offer several subject guides, including one specifically for writing history papers.
Back to topTools such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, atlases, and chronologies provide basic, contextual information and they can help you choose or refine a topic. Also, many provide bibliographies.
The three titles below are examples of specialized encyclopedias for your topics.
You can also search for encyclopedias and dictionaries using Library's online catalog.
Atlases are useful in historical research for visualizing the interaction of peoples, events, places, and trends.
Atlas of American History. Gary B. Nash and Carter Smith.
New York : Facts on File, c2007.
Davis Library Reference Row 19a E179.5 .N37 2007
Typical Subject Headings in the library's catalogs for finding maps:
Another option today is finding maps on the Web.
These sources help the researcher grasp the chronological relationship among different series of events.
Chronology of World History. 4 vols. H. E. L. Mellersh. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, c1999. Each volume covers a different era, with information arranged in columns detailing different arenas of human experience.
D 11 .M39 1999 (Also in UL Reference.)
You can also find other chronologies in the Library's online catalog by using the following Subject Heading or Keyword search as an example.
You might also find useful chronologies on the Internet.
Back to topStatistical data can actually serve a number of research purposes. They can be merely illustrative, they may provide support for a key argument, and they can be primary source material. The following sources can at least provide data for illustration and support.
You can search for additional statistics sources using Library's online catalog.
Depending on one's topic, biographical materials may, in fact, be primary resources, but for this guide, they are considered as tools for background and secondary information. Entries often provide bibliographies also.
Indexes
Collective Biographies
You can search for additional biographical sources using Library's online catalog.
Secondary sources are books, articles, reports, etc., written after an event, usually by a non-participant, which describe, interpret, and/or analyze the event. They are often written by scholars for a scholarly audience, but not always.
Because a bibliography lists books, articles, and other sources, they can save a researcher time. One way to identify bibliographies, and even better, bibliographies of bibliographies, is to use broad-guaged, general guides to primary and secondary sources, such as the following.
You can identify more specific bibliographies using the library's online catalog.
A valuable electronic resource for finding subject bibliographies is the following.
These tools help identify books published in particular countries, at particular times, and libraries at which they can be located. Some are organized or indexed by subject.
Some examples of Subject Headings that can help locate resources such as the above in the online catalog:
Back to topSerendipity is one means of finding books on your topic, by browsing among books that share the same or nearby Library of Congress call numbers, which the Library uses to arrange books on the shelves.
Our Library uses Library of Congress Subject Headings applied to books in our catalog. These headings are not always intuitive, but help is available.
Some other important points to remember about Library of Congress Subject Headings are listed below.
Below are a few examples of Library of Congress Subject Heading searches based on your topics.
The Keyword mode in the online catalog allows a more flexible subject search and indicates appropriate exact subject headings. For example, the search, financial houses and history retrieves 6 records which you can examine for particular Subject Headings of greater precision.
Subject searching for books on a topic is also available in the database WorldCat listed above. Books identified here can be requested through the Library's Interlibrary Loan service.
Back to topHistorians often advance their research through scholarly journal articles. But how do you know what a scholarly article is? Here's a quick guide.
You can identify scholarly by browsing selected journals, which you can identify by using the two titles below. You can also check the Research Guide and the recent cumulated subject bibliographies listed above.
Another means to find scholarly journal literature, and usually more efficient than the one just above, is to use an index which specializes in the journals that cover one's area of interest and study. The first title below is a guide to such indexes, and the other titles are the two major history journal indexes in the United States.
The Libraries also offer discipline-specific journal indexes, both hard copy and electronic, for areas such as area studies, education, literature, minority and ethnic studies, music, philosophy, politics, religion, sports, and women and gender studies. The electronic ones are available at the Library's E-Research Tools Web page.
Back to topBook reviews are helpful in identifying relevant books and are often indexed in scholarly indexes such as ones listed above.
For additional help in locating book reviews, check our Book Review Research Guide.
Online Resource
You may also find reviews of scholarly books at the following Web sites.
Back to topPrimary sources are "firsthand" or "eyewitness" records, such as letters, diaries, autobiographies, travel accounts, government documents, oral histories, and organization records. They are not always easy to identify and locate, but aids are available. Bibliographies often list primary sources, as do monographs and articles. Primary sources are often preserved in microform, and increasingly, electronically.
You may want to look over the Library's guide to Finding Primary Source Documents as a starting point.
Primary sources are often found only in archival and manuscript collections, which you will have to visit in order to use the materials. Often, secondary works and bibliographies you find on your topic will reference such collections. In addition, below are two tools to identify such collections.
You can search for additional sources to archive collections using Library's online catalog.
Increasingly, of course, primary source material is being digitized and made available on the Internet. Two such sites are the following.
Personal and organizational correspondence, records, papers, and archives are included and/or referred to in a variety of sources.
You can search for such sources to personal and organizational records using Library's online catalog.
Interviews with actual participants of historically important events are becoming a significant source of research material, especially for events of the 20th century. Often you can access transcripts of such interviews if not the actual tapes. Three general guides to oral history sources are listed below.
You can find information about other oral history collections, using the library's online catalog.
Of particular interest are popular books, periodicals, newspapers and similar writings published in the place and time period of interest. Though often treated as secondary sources, such materials can serve as primary sources for the time period in which they were published. For the historical researcher, they can document both mass and elite opinion, current fashion, religious thought, political events, popular culture, etc.
Newspapers also reveal then-current perspectives, attitudes, and behavior. For help in finding newspapers here, use our Newspaper Research Guide. Additional tools are listed below.
For North Carolina related topics, our own North Carolina Collection has extensive newspaper clipping collections and should be consulted. For topics that touch on UNC Chapel Hill, use the Daily Tar Heel Headline Archive covering from 1970 to 2003. You can also search Daily Tar Heel full text from 2000.
The Library provides access to several retrospective collections of digitized books, and similar materials.
Microform, either microfilm or microfiche, is used heavily for long-term storage and easier dissemination of research materials. The two titles below are general guides.
You can find information about other microform collections, using the library's online catalog.
Davis Library has rich, extensive collections of United States government material, American state government resources, and United Nations and other international organization documents. The Library also has extensive collections of documents from certain other governments. For some of these sets, we have good indexing tools; for other, less so. A good approach is to locate published guides to official publications of nations and international organizations and use them to identify materials relevant to one's topic. Five such guides are listed below.
Many of our US government and international agency documents are now cataloged in our online catalog, so a search will often retrieve records for these. More general sample Subject searches in the Library's catalogs include:
The Reference Department offers many indexes to government sources, especially the U. S. Government, such as the following.
Many U. S. government records are retained by the National Records and Archives Administration. You can check their Web site for materials we might be able to acquire by Interlibrary Loan.
In addition, check our Government Information Resources Web page, and the Web sites of international and non-governmental organizations.
Back to topIncreasingly, research related materials, both primary and secondary sources, are being provided in various electronic formats such as CD-ROM and on the World Wide Web. The title below is a guide to history resources on the Internet.
Above are listed selected Internet web sites. Additional Internet resources are listed below.
