LibGuides: Research Hacked: History Topics: Plan Your Search

Get Started

Have a history assignment coming up and need help choosing/narrowing down a topic? Are you struggling to find credible historical sources? We can help!

In this guide, you will find information about:

Librarian suggested databases to start your history research
Keyword strategies
Differences between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources
Videos and media about historical research and analysis
And more!

"History is an academic discipline that examines the past. As an applied critical approach or for public policy development, it traces present conditions in human society and outlines future alternatives—considering likely societal and technological changes... Perspective and context are important processes in analyzing history: viewing actions by the standards of their times and acknowledging influences on the author’s (and reader’s) thinking."

Kronzek, Lynn. 2022. “History.” Salem Press Encyclopedia, February.

Pick Your Search Tools

Best Bets

Biography (Gale in Context) This link opens in a new window
Offers authoritative reference content alongside magazine and journal articles, primary sources, videos, audio podcasts, and images. Covering a vast array of people from historically significant figures to present-day newsmakers, it’s continuously updated to ensure that students have access to the very latest information.
Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Covers every major subject, from art to medicine, psychology to history, and technology to literature. The award-winning titles in Credo Reference include general and subject encyclopedias, dictionaries, biographies, bibliographies, chronologies, handbooks, atlases, and more. Credo's collections are continuously updated to reflect the most relevant, up-to-date content.
New York Times Historical This link opens in a new window
Provides scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. The database offers searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from The New York Times from 1851 to 2010.
U.S. History (Gale in Context) This link opens in a new window
U.S. History in Context provides a complete overview of our nation’s past that covers the most-studied events, decades, conflicts, wars, political and cultural movements, people, and more. The database delivers coverage of the most-studied topics – from the arrival of Vikings in North America, to the stirrings of the revolution, through to the Civil Rights movement, 9/11, and the War on Terror – through a web-like experience that supports the development of critical thinking and information literacy skills.
World History: Ancient and World Eras This link opens in a new window
World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras by ABC-CLIO presents a fascinating survey of the civilizations, dynasties, and empires of the ancient and medieval worlds, allowing students to expand their understanding of the present in the context of the distant past.

Power Search Tools

Gale Power Search This link opens in a new window
Cross-search the content of multiple Gale databases (including the content of Gale eBook titles) at one time through a streamlined, common user interface. Filter by source type easily using tabs to limit to Academic Journals, News, Images, Videos and more.
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Serves as the central resource for researchers at all levels. Covering more than 160 subjects areas, ProQuest Central is the largest aggregated database of periodical content. This award-winning online reference resource features a highly-respected, diversified mix of content including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, books, newspapers, reports and videos. *This is a Traveler resource. The Traveler Statewide Resource project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Search Everything This link opens in a new window
Search all of the Library's physical collection and most of its eresources.

Select Your Search Strategies

Exact Phrase

Add Quotation Marks to search for an exact phrase or words in a specific or EXACT order. An exact phrase will return more accurate results because it snaps all of the words together, turning it into a phrase that must be found exactly in that order.

Example: separation anxiety vs. “separation anxiety”

3 Magic Words - AND, OR, NOT

Filters

Apply filters to limit your search results. Because they limit your results, filters might also be called limiters. The most common and helpful filters to limit your results are:

Date: Limit to the past 5 years, or a specific date range
Source Type: Limit to academic/scholarly sources or any other type, such as news or ebooks
Peer Review: Limit to scholarly sources that have been peer reviewed

Keywords

Create a list of keywords associated with your topic.

What else could it be called (synonyms)? What describes it specifically (hyponyms)? What is it related to broadly (hypernyms)?

Topics can be narrowed or broadened depending on the use of search terms.

General: monkeys

Narrower: howler monkeys

Broader: primates

Dive Deeper

Introduction to Library Research
by Shawna Thorup Last Updated Jan 29, 2024 446 views this year
Search Hacks
by Shawna Thorup Last Updated Feb 7, 2024 150 views this year
Source Evaluation Techniques
by Shawna Thorup Last Updated Mar 31, 2024 597 views this year
Citation Help
by Shawna Thorup Last Updated Feb 13, 2024 2150 views this year