Course Number: HI326
Subject: History
Hands-on Searching
- For your topic, consider search terminology.
Final Topic: search term ideas
- As you search the following databases, consider these questions:
- What is the scope of the database?
- e.g., index, full text (or both), topic, date, etc.
- Are there help pages to describe advanced search options?
- What is the quality of the metadata
- What is the quality of the full text?
- What happens when you change what fields you are searching?
- Are there any other features of the database that stand out?
- e.g, email, linking, tagging, saving, printing, see-also, etc.
- e.g, email, linking, tagging, saving, printing, see-also, etc.
- What is the scope of the database?
- Choose a seemingly unrelated database (e.g., political science) from another subject-database. Find anything interesting?
Databases helpful for topics
Book databases
- Omni catalogue of Laurier print and ebooks; print books from 17 other libraries)
- WorldCat catalogue of library collections from around the world
- Internet Archive wide range of digitized collections
Article databases
See a full list of the library's databases.
- Omni limit to articles
- Historical Databases index of articles from historical publications
- Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 indexes many magazines
- Google Scholar (secondary source articles and books)
Full text article databases
- JSTOR full text journal content (primary and secondary sources)
- Periodicals Archive Online full text journal and magazine content (primary and secondary sources)
Newspaper archives
- Times Digital Archive pdf, 1785 to 2014
- New York Times pdf, 1851 - 3 yeear ago
- British Library Newspapers 1800's, regional and local papers
Bibliographies
- any book or article that has one, wikipedia pages
- Theses (often contain expansive bibliographies of primary and secondary sources)
Primary source databases
See a full list of the library's primary source databases.
- Accessible Archives wide range of digitized primary sources
- Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive sources from 1880 - 2000
- Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 social, political and cultural changes
- Google (TIP: search: [topic] "primary sources")