Temporal Perspectives on the City

If you are having trouble finding enough good quality scholarly articles, supplement with a search using the following databases:

• Proquest All
• EBSCO All
• JSTOR
  • NOTE: Make sure you check the "peer reviewed" box in Proquest and EBSCO

• You may find additional pertinent information about your city or colony if you look in articles or books (especially) with a broader geographic coverage.
  • For example if you are interested in a Greek colony in Sicily, say Syracuse, you could run different searches on the exact subject headings:
    1. Syracuse
    2. Greek Colonies
    3. Greece Colonies History
• Similarly, you might find additional information on an ancient Roman city or town by looking for books on Roman towns or settlement, using a search strategy like: Roman AND Cities OR Towns or Urban (as in the example for Greek Colonies above)

There are a number of excellent sources to consult to answer questions 1-5:

• Ancient cities : the archaeology of urban life in the ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece, and Rome
  • This source has excellent coverage of cities of the Near East, the Eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, including Roman towns. Good for questions 1-3
• The life and death of ancient cities : a natural history
  • Covers the ancient Near East to the Mediterranean area. Good for questions 1-3
• Londinium : a biography : Roman London from its origins to the fifth century​​​
  • Provides a detailed overview of the city from before its foundation in the first century to the fifth century AD; covers the archaeological and historical evidence for London under the Romans, assessing the city in the context of its province and the wider empire.
• Urban space and urban history in the Roman world
  • Focus on Roman urban spaces, with chapters on the natural environment, religion in the urban landscape, urban borderscapes, political spaces, and road networks
• Faust's metropolis: a history of Berlin 
  • This is a scanned copy of the first chapter of the book, which deals with the founding of Berlin up to about the end of the 1400s. There is a complete print copy available at the library, or you can borrow the ebook from the Internet Archive for a limited period (you'll need to create an account).
• List of ebooks available under the exact Subject Heading: Berlin (Germany)--History
• List of ebooks available under the exact Subject Heading: Cities and Towns, Ancient
  • Note: this is a list of all the ebooks available to Laurier in Omni; not all are necessarily scholarly
• Additional Suggestion for ebooks: Internet Archive
  • There are many additional suggested readings listed in the various Lessons in the course MyLS. A number of these books are older, but have been digitized and are available to read and/or download for a limited period.
    • To do this, simply visit the Internet Archive, create a free account
    • You can then either read online, or download books for up to 14 days.

There are many websites for online maps; the list below is a very small selection.

First, try a search using the terms "your city" historical maps online in your preferred search engine

• e.g. "New York City" historical maps online

Other good sites to consult for historic maps:

• Old Maps Online: a "search engine for historical maps" collaboration between University of Portsmouth, UK, and Klokan Technologies
• David Rumsey Map Collection: digitized map collection of more than 99,000 maps, worldwide coverage
• University of Texas Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, Historical Maps: Thousands of scanned maps of North American and World cities and regions.
• Library of Congress: Searchable collection of online maps; main focus is US, but many world maps as well
• New York Public Library Digital Map Galleries: links out to many online collections; NYPL also very good for digitized maps of New York City

• Watch this short video showing how to easily get citations from one of our databases

• Your assignment has specific requirements the Annotated Bibliography should meet, but please see our short video on Creating an Annotated Bibliography if you have never written one before.