If you are struggling to find appropriate sources, it may be time to revisit the keywords you are using. This worksheet will help you navigate the creation of new or more advanced search phrases.
If you are struggling to think of keywords, historical dictionaries can help put your current keywords into historical context.
A historical dictionary is a dictionary which deals not only with the meanings of words but also the historical development of their forms and meanings. It may also describe the vocabulary of an earlier stage of a language's development without covering present-day usage at all.
Ask a librarian if you have trouble finding or using historical dictionaries.
Historical research, like all other types of research, starts with a topic that you are interested in. From this interest you formulate research questions and eventually a thesis statement for your paper. But these “steps” do not happen in a neat order, nor do they happen sequentially. Rather, they happen in cycles of research and evaluation that occurs over and over during the research and writing process.
Because of the nature of your HIST 2001 class project, you will enter the class with a thesis statement already written and sources already discovered, as well as feedback from your originating Professor. Your goal then is to push your writing further based off feedback to enter a more advanced stage of research. However, it may be beneficially to revisit the foundations and gather more contextual information to build your revisions on.
This is what the pre-search is intended to do.
During the pre-search stage, the sources you use are not the same ones you will use in the research stage. Rather, pre-search sources are encyclopedias, historical dictionaries, and yes, even Google.
Full-text reference works from Oxford University Press covering a broad range of subjects, and including timelines, quotations, and overviews.
Full-text encyclopedias on a range of topics that include in-depth, peer-reviewed summaries written by scholars across all fields of study.
Hundreds of short ebooks (around 100 pages each) that offer concise expert overviews of a diverse range of concepts. Subjects include climate, consciousness, game theory, ancient warfare, economics, and literary theory.
Alternate access link: http://proxy.ohiolink.edu:9099/login?url=https://academic.oup.com/pages/very-short-introductions
Coverage: 1995-present
Users: Unlimited
Contains: Online editions of over 600 short books in the Oxford University Press series "Very Short Introductions."
Best for: A wide range of subjects
Printing: Print individual chapters from PDF
Download: Individual chapters only for most texts
Compatible with: Any PDF compatible device/browser
Around 2,700 handbooks providing up-to-date overviews of classic and current research across the Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, Psychology, Engineering, and Built Environment from Routledge and CRC Press.
Make sure to checkmark the "Only search content I have access to" box to limit results to titles that BGSU and OhioLINK subscribe to.
Thousands of scholarly monographs published by Cambridge University Press since 2015. An agreement with OhioLINK will add all newly published titles through 2025, then OhioLINK will purchase a subset for permanent access. Covers all subjects, with particular focus on area studies, history, and political science.
Coverage: 2015- Present
Best for: All subjects
Compatible Devices: Anything with a web browser, PDF
Contains: 8,500+ titles; under 100 are open access
Download: One chapter at a time
Link: https://libguides.bgsu.edu/cambridgeebook
Printing: One chapter at a time after downloading
Users: Unlimited users at a time per book