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September 2 - Professional Development Day
November 26 - 28 - Thanksgiving
This guide will help you with your research for your HIS170 and HIS172 research paper.
The library is here to help you along the way! If you have a research question, use the Get Help from a Librarian tab to start a chat or schedule a research appointment.
Any time you're doing research, please be sure to read your assignment carefully so you find the types of sources your instructor requires. Check with your instructor if you have questions about your assignment.
As with any research project, the first step is to identify the kind of information you need. Knowing what kind of information you need will help you plan your research, use the right search tools, and locate relevant sources.
Information need: Choose a broad history-related topic, then identify a historical question related to that topic, and find primary and secondary sources to serve as evidence for your answer to your historical question.
Where are you most likely to find the information you need?
Search Engines (internet browser like Google): Popular secondary sources like news and magazine articles, government sources like the National Archives, primary sources. Sources may be behind a paywall, including sources from Google Scholar.
Library Databases: Scholarly sources, popular secondary sources like news and magazine articles, reference sources, biographies, primary sources, videos, statistics. Full text is available for thousands of database sources.
Once you know what kind of information you need, the next step is to do a little bit of research to better understand the topic and what you might want to learn. We call this pre-research. You're not looking for sources to use yet - you're just trying to learn more about your topic and find keywords to help you do more focused research later.
You might start by searching your topic on Google. That's helpful if you are unfamiliar with your topic and need to learn about it more before you can move on to creating a research question or finding sources.
If you don't have a topic yet, that's ok! We have resources for that too.
For your History research paper, US History (Gale In Context) is a good database to help you identify a topic, get background information, find helpful keywords, and locate primary sources. Just click the Browse Topics button to get started.
U.S. History is an engaging experience for those seeking contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events, and topics in U.S. history. This comprehensive, contextual, media-rich collection empowers learners to develop information literacy and critical thinking skills. Topics range from the arrival of Vikings in North America to the first stirrings of the American Revolution and on through the Civil Rights movement, September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the War on Terror.
