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

I. RESEARCH GUIDES

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:

• history--study and teaching--United States
• history--research
• history--bibliography
• history--methodology

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.

II. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Tools 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.

A. Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

The three titles below are examples of specialized encyclopedias for your topics.

• Dictionary of American History. 3rd. ed. Stanley I. Kutler, ed. in chief. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. 10 vols. Really more of an encyclopedia than a dictionary. Also available in print.
  Online Resource and E 174 .D52 2003
• Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East & North Africa. 2nd ed., 4 vols. Philip Mattar, editor in chief. Detroit, Mich.: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. Also available in print.
  Online Resource and DS43 .E53 2004
• Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History: the Black Experience in the Americas. 2nd ed. Colin A. Palmer, ed. in chief. Detroit : Macmillan Reference USA, c2006.
  E185 .E54 2006. Also in Stone Center Library Reference.

You can also search for encyclopedias and dictionaries using Library's online catalog.

• Library of Congress Subject Headings
• Labor unions -- United States-- encyclopedias
• United States -- foreign relations -- encyclopedias
• Education -- United States -- encyclopedias
• Keyword searching
• Investment banks and encyclopedias

B. Atlases and Maps

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:

• North Carolina -- history -- maps
• Middle East -- historical geography -- maps

Another option today is finding maps on the Web.

• Maps101 Academic. Targeted more at high schools, but still useful.
  Online Resource
• WWW-VL History Maps
  Online Resource

C. Chronologies

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.

• Labor unions -- United States -- history -- chronology
• New England and chronology

You might also find useful chronologies on the Internet.

• WWW-VL History Timelines.

D. Statistics

Statistical 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.

• Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition. This updates a work last published over 30 years ago and includes data from the 2000 Decennial Census. The five volume print set is available at the Davis Reference Desk.
  Online Resource
• Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Commerce, Social and Economic Statistics Administration, Bureau of the Census; U. S. Government Printing Office, 1st - 1878 -.
  Online Resource and at Reference Desk HA 202 .A2. Print backfiles in Bay 11.
• Lexis Nexis Statistical. A Web-based service that provides indexing and abstracts from three databases: American Statistics Index (ASI), 1973 to present, Statistical Reference Index (SRI), 1980 to present, and Index to International Statistics (IIS), 1983 to present.
  Online Resource
• Stats DataFinder. This is a guide produced by the Davis Reference Department to identify locally-held or available data and statistics.
  Online Resource

You can search for additional statistics sources using Library's online catalog.

• Library of Congress Subject Headings
• North Carolina -- Population -- Statistics
• Russia -- statistics
• Keyword searching
• secondary schools and statistics

E. Biographical Sources

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

• Biography and Genealogy Master Index. This electronically indexes thousands of biographical sources of the "who's who" variety.
  Online Resource
• Biography Index. This indexes biographies in periodicals, journals, books, etc. Holdings from 1946 to date.
  Row 1

Collective Biographies

• American National Biography. 24 vols. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, gen. eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Also availabe in print. This complements but does not replace the older Dictionary of American Biography (Reference E 176 .D563)
  CT 213 .A68 1999. (Also in UL Reference.)
• Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. 6 vols. William S. Powell, ed. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1979-1996. This is a state-level version of the title above.
  CT 252 .D5 (Also in Davis, UL Reference, and North Carolina Collection.)

You can search for additional biographical sources using Library's online catalog.

• To find collective national or state biographies, use a Subject Heading search in the catalog such as the one below.
• Russia -- biography -- dictionaries
• To find individual biographies in the library's catalogs, use your subject's name as a Subject Heading.
• Brezhnev, Leonid
• To find biographies of specific groups of people, try a Subject Heading search such as
• Puritans -- Massachusetts -- biography

III. SECONDARY SOURCES

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.

A. Cumulated Subject Bibliographies

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.

• American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature. 3rd ed. Mary Beth Norton, gen. ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995. A definitive reference work, this cites both primary and secondary material, and covers all time periods and countries.
  Ref Desk Z 6201.A55 1995 (Also in UL Reference.)
• United States History: a Multicultural, Interdisciplinary Guide to Information Sources. Anna H. Perrault and Ron Blazek. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2003.
  E 78 .P477 2003
• Harvard Guide to American History. Frank Freidel, ed. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1974. Another classic, and though dated, it is still useful. Vol. 1 covers topics, Vol. 2 covers time periods.
  Ref Desk Z 1236.F77 1974 (Also in UL Reference.)
• Harvard Guide to African American History. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, ed. in chief. Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Similar to the AHA Guide above, this covers reference and research aids and important secondary titles that deal with African American history.
  Desk E 185 .H326 2001. Also in UL Reference and Stone Center Library Reference

You can identify more specific bibliographies using the library's online catalog.

• You can use Library of Congress Subject Headings
• United States -- history -- bibliography
• Middle East -- history -- bibliography
• Russia -- history -- sources -- bibliography
• King Philip's War 1675-1676 -- sources
• Or, use Keyword searching.
• textiles and North Carolina and bibliography

A valuable electronic resource for finding subject bibliographies is the following.

• Bibliographic Index Plus. Cites bibliographies published in journals, books, etc. Online coverage from 1982 to present. Print holdings, 1-, 1937/42 -.
  Online Resource and Z 1002 .B593

B. National and Historical Bibliographies and Library Catalogs

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.

• National Union Catalog, pre-1956 Imprints. Library of Congress and American Library Assn. London: Mansell, 1968-1981. This is very useful to identify titles published before 1956 and held in the Library of Congress and other American libraries. The listings are usually by author's name.
  Z 881 .A1 U518
• English Short Title Catalog 1473 - 1800. The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) describes English or English-language letterpress materials published before 1801, including books, lists, advertisements, rules, songs, election propaganda, and other ephemeral items. It contains records for items of all types published in Great Britain or its colonies or in English from 1473-1800.
  Electronic Reference
• WorldCat This is an "online union catalog" of thousands of libraries, mainly in the United States.
  Online Resource
• National Library Catalogues Worldwide This Web site provides links to national library online catalogs around the world. The catalogs may not be in English.
  Online Resource

Some examples of Subject Headings that can help locate resources such as the above in the online catalog:

• United States -- imprints -- catalogs
• Russian imprints
• Catalogs, union -- England

C. Subject Searching in the Library's Catalog.

Serendipity 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.

• You can use a page on the Library of Congress web site to help identify proper Subject Headings.
• A Subject Heading search in the Library's online catalog attempts to direct you to the proper heading. For example, World War Two retrieves an Authority Record showing the proper term, "World War 1914-1918."

Some other important points to remember about Library of Congress Subject Headings are listed below.

• "History" is used as a subheading for a country (state, city) or topic.
• Subject headings can be subdivided geographically.
• Subject headings are often inverted, i.e., the adjective follows the noun.
• For primary materials, look for subheadings such as archives, archival resources, sources, personal narratives, correspondence, letters, diaries, journals, etc.
• Any name of person, organization, or event might be a subject heading.

Below are a few examples of Library of Congress Subject Heading searches based on your topics.

• Alamance County (N.C.) -- history
• African Americans -- segregation-- History
• United States -- relations -- Russia
• Puritans -- New England
• Education, higher -- North Carolina -- history

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.

• Commercial finance companies
• Banks and banking -- United States

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.

D. Journals and Journal Indexes and Abstracts

Historians 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.

• Historical Journals: a Handbook for Writers and Reviewers. 2nd ed. Dale R. Steiner, Casey R. Phillips, Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c1993.
  Davis Z 6205 .S73 1993
• Magazines for Libraries. 15th ed. New York: Bowker. Look in the History and related sections for selective lists of important journals.
  Ref Desk Z 6941 .M23

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.

• Serial Bibliographies and Abstracts in History. David P. Henige. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986. This identifies indexing and abstracting services by subject areas within the broad discipline of history.
  Z 6201 .A1 H45 1986
• America: History and Life. This indexes scholarly articles, book reviews, and dissertations, published from 1964 on, covering United States and Canadian history.
  Online Resource
• Historical Abstracts. This indexes scholarly articles, book reviews, and dissertations, published from 1955 on, covering all but North American history from 1450 to the present.
  Online Resource

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.

E. Book Reviews

Book 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.

• Reviews in History
• H-Net Reviews

IV. PUBLISHED PRIMARY SOURCES

Primary 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.

A. Archives

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.

• Archives USA. This online source combines the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, the National Inventory of Documentary Sources, and a directory of manuscript repositories. It may also be useful for finding organizational records.
  Online Resource
• ReadyNetGo: Internet Resources for Archives. This is an archival meta-site linking to thousands of archival collections and respositories.
  Online Resource

You can search for additional sources to archive collections using Library's online catalog.

• Library of Congress Subject Headings can be useful.
• Archives -- United States -- Directories
• Archives -- North Carolina -- Directories
• In Keyword searching, the terms archives, archival resources, and sources, along with the term for your topic, are also often useful.
• United States and diplomats and archiv*
• investment banking and archiv*

Increasingly, of course, primary source material is being digitized and made available on the Internet. Two such sites are the following.

• Documenting the American South. This is a very rich resource for primary source material from the American South. Such material includes diaries, journals, letters, and other personal writings.
  Online Resource
• American Memory Project
  Online Resource

B. Personal and Organizational Records and Archives

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.

• Library of Congress Subject Headings can be useful, using the person or organization as the Subject.
• Autobiography -- bibliography
• Russian diaries -- bibliography
• Diaries -- United States
• Alex. Brown & Sons
• Library of Congress Author Headings can be also useful, using the person or organization as the Author.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Dobrynin, Anatoliy
• You can use Keyword searching using terms such as personal narratives, autobiography, diaries, letters, papers, memoirs, archives, archival resources, sources, and correspondence.
• Jim Crow and (memoirs or personal narratives)

C. Oral History

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.

• Oral History: A Reference Guide and Annotated Bibliography. Patricia P. Havlice. MacFarland, 1985.
  Z 6201 .H38 1985
• Oral History Index: An International Directory of Oral History Interviews. Meckler, 1990.
  D 16.14 .O74 1990
• In the First Person. This is a free online directory of oral history collections. In some case, you may also be able to access the transcripts of interviews.
  Online Resource

You can find information about other oral history collections, using the library's online catalog.

• You can use Library of Congress Subject Headings.
• oral history--bibliography
• oral history--indexes
• You can also try Keyword searching.
• Cary and North Carolina and (oral history or interview*)
• Middle East and (oral history or interview*)

D. Contemporary Popular Writings

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.

1. Contemporary Periodicals

• MasterFile Premier, Academic OneFile, and Academic Search Premier are general and multidisciplinary periodical indexes that usually cover at least some popular periodicals and other publications. HOWEVER, these tools generally only index back to the early 1980s at best.
  Online Resources
• Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. Covers a changing mix of popular periodicals from 1890 to the present. We have the entire back file in print, and electronically from 1890 - 1982.
  Online Resource and Row 19
• Periodicals Index Online. Covers both scholarly and popular periodicals from their beginnings (some in the 17th century) to the 1990s.
  Online Resource
• Nineteenth Century Masterfile. Indexes 19th century periodicals, some books, some newspapers such as the New York Times, and some U.S. government documents.
  Online Resource

2. Contemporary Newspapers

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.

• Newspapers on Microform at Davis Library: a Listing by Decade and Region. Thomas Peterson, comp. Rev. by Maureen St. John-Breen. Chapel Hill: Microforms Collection, Davis Library, 1999. This guide lists newspapers that are available in the Microforms Collection, Davis Library. An alphabetical list is available on the Web.
  Ref Desk Z 6945 .U5754 1999 (also in Microforms.)
• Newspapers Currently Received at UNC Chapel Hill. For those doing really current topics, this tool identifies newspapers to which we currently subscribe in paper format.Online Resource
• Lexis/Nexis Academic. Backfiles are shallow, usually only back to 1980 at best.
  Online Resource
• The New York Times Historical Newspaper offers scanned images of the entire file of this major paper from 1851 to 1999.
  Online Resource
• Early American Newspapers 1690 - 1800. Provides access to hundreds of thousands of newspaper issues during this period.
  Online Resource

• 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.

3. Contemporary Books

The Library provides access to several retrospective collections of digitized books, and similar materials.

• Early American Imprints Series I Evans (1639-1800) and Early American Imprints Series II Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819) These two databases offer full text access to book and similar publications from Colonial America and the early national period.
  Online Resource
• Black Thought and Culture. Black Thought and Culture is a landmark electronic collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major black leaders in North America.
  Online Resource

E. Microform Collections

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.

• Microform Research Collections. 2nd ed. Suzanne Cates Dodson. Westport, CT: Meckler, 1984. This provides descriptions, annotations, and other information about several hundred major microform sets. Ref Desk Z 1033 .M5 D64 1984
• Guide to Microforms in Print. Author, Title. We keep the current year only in Reference. The earlier editions are in the Davis stacks.
  Books in Print Stand

You can find information about other microform collections, using the library's online catalog.

• You can use Library of Congress Subject Headings.
• Microforms -- catalogs
• United States -- foreign relations -- Sources --Microform catalogs
• Keyword searches in the online catalog might also be useful.
• New England and Indians and microfilm

F. Government and International Organization Documents

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.

• Introduction to United States Government Information Sources. 6th ed. Joe Morehead. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1999. This identifies and explains major US government sources.
  Ref Desk Z 1223 .Z7 M665 1999
• Sourcebook to Public Record Information: the Comprehensive Guide to County, State, and Federal Public Sources. 6th ed. Tempe, AZ: BRB Publications, 2005.
  JK2445.P82 S64 2005
• Public Records Online: the National Guide to Private and Government Online Sources of Public Records. 4th. ed. Michael L. Sankey and Peter J. Weber, eds. Tempe: AZ: Facts on Demand Presss, 2003.
  JK 468 .P76 P83 2003
• Guide to Official Publications of Foreign Countries. 2nd ed. American Library Association Government Documents Round able. Bethesda, MD: Congressional Information Service, 1997.
  Ref Desk J 9.5 .G834 1997 (Also in Law)
• International Information: Documents, Publications, and Electronic Information of International Governmental Organizations. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Peter I. Hajnal, editor. Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1997-.
  Ref Desk JZ 4850 .I58 1997 (Also in Law)

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:

• Public records -- North Carolina
• Government publications -- United States
• International agencies - bibliography

The Reference Department offers many indexes to government sources, especially the U. S. Government, such as the following.

• Lexis/Nexis Congressional. This indexes Congressional publications from 1789 on.
• GPO Monthly Catalog. This indexes U.S. government publications, from 1976 on.
• GPO Access. This offers full-text access to U.S. government information, for recent years.
• Declassified Documents Reference System Online. Contains over 79,000 documents, comprising approximately 500,000 pages of material as of 2003.
• UNBISnet. This indexes both United Nations and non-UN publications, from 1975 on.

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.

G. Using the Web

Increasingly, 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.

• The History Highway: a 21st Century Guide to Internet Resources. 4th ed. Dennis A. Trinkle and Scott A. Merriman,eds. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2006
  D 16.117 .H55 2006

Above are listed selected Internet web sites. Additional Internet resources are listed below.

• Various text archives are available, and a few sample sites are listed below.
• WWW-VL: History
• Voice of the Shuttle
• AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History
• American Memory Project
• Various Web search engines or directories can be useful.
• Google. Search: "jordan national identity" site:edu
• Librarians' Index to the Internet. Search: "Jim Crow" for example.
• You may also need tools for "managing" what you find on the Web.
• Searching, Evaluating, and Using Web Resources
• Citations and Style Manuals