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Course Research Pages

HIS 309: 20th Century History

Finding Background Information

CQ Researcher - Reports on timely and controversial topics; provides thorough coverage, plus a bibliography of other works that may be useful in your research.

Credo Reference - A collection of online books, good for overviews of topics.

Gale Virtual Reference Library - A collection of online books, including many general works on history and social sciences; good for overviews of topics.

Finding Books

Bowman Library Book & Media Catalog - search by keyword or subject heading to find books in the Bowman Library collection.

WorldCat - WorldCat is a catalog of books available in libraries worldwide; it is useful for searching for books not in Bowman Library, but which may be obtained via Interlibrary Loan.

Google Books - search for books and get a preview before ordering via Interlibrary Loan.

Using Research Databases

Academic Search Premier - Contains scholarly articles on a range of topics, including history.

Business Source Complete - If your topic crosses over into business, this database may be useful.

Historical New York Times - Online access to The New York Times from 1851 through 2008. A primary source that is extremely useful for seeing how historical events were reported at the time they occurred.

JSTOR - Contains articles in the areas of history, sociology, and political science.

Wilson OmniFile Full Text Select - Articles in the humanities, sciences, education, and business. Also good for offering perspective on historical events.

The following databases contain some abstracts and very little full text; they are useful for finding relevant articles that may be obtained through Interlibrary Loan:

First Search

Google Scholar - Search only for scholarly articles on Google. If full text is not available, check Bowman Library's Journal Finder to see if your article is available in a library database; if not, order it through Interlibrary Loan.

Finding Visual Resources

Use Bowman Library's Visual Resources Guide for a list of sites with images that might be useful for historical research.

Selected Web Sites

Best of History Web Sites
An easy to use listing, by history type and time period, of reputable history web sites.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
A collection of full-text scholarly journals freely available.

History Matters - Making Sense of Evidence
Useful information on how to use primary sources.

History On-Line
From the U.K.'s Institute of Historical Research, this site contains lists of web sites on history. You can browse by type of history, geographical area, time period, or type of resource.

Intute
Another collection of high-quality web sites. While the focus is on the U.K., the history tutorial contains valuable information on how to research history.

Voice of the Shuttle
A collection of links to web sites in the humanities; there is a large collection of history sites.

Page Last Updated: February 14 2013