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History: HIST 318 - Bowman

Background Information

Encyclopedias are a good place to start with your research. In addition to helping you to narrow and refine your topic and providing keywords for catalog and database searching, the bibliographies at the end of entries allow you to quickly access the historiography or a particular topic.

Selected Scholarly Journals

The list below is a small selection of relevant scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. The links will take you to the catalog record for each title. The "View Online" section will take you to the full text--showing what years are available and where.

Secondary Sources - Journal Articles

The databases below are only suggestions for starting places to find journal articles covering European history.

Note the subjects on article records in Historical Abstracts. These subjects can save you a great deal of time and are a significant advantage over JSTOR's keyword-only searching.

Primary Sources - Newspapers

Our collection of historical newspapers are largely American (The New York Times, for example) and British (The Times). If you are able to read French or German, some magazine material is included in Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France) and Europeanana (a collection of digitized museum and library collections funded through the European Union).

Primary Source Databases - Letters, Diaries, etc.

Searching for Primary Sources in MUSCAT Plus or Worldcat

Some primary source material can be found by searching MUSCAT Plus, the library catalog, using a keyword or subject search. These search techniques work in any library catalog, including WorldCat.org.  Additional primary sources may be found in Gettysburg College's Special Collections.

  • First try a KEYWORD search which searches all words in the titles, authors, subjects, and notes of MUSCAT Plus records. You can enter words in any order. This is the broadest, safest search. Take note of Subject Headings for promising titles.
  • Next try a SUBJECT search with the subject headings from the keyword search. This searches only the subject fields of MUSCAT Plus records, and word order matters. Ask a librarian if you need help identifying the best subject heading(s) for your topic.
  • Finally try an AUTHOR search to find original writings of a person or documents published by a government or organization (these are called "corporate authors").

    Examine the subject headings carefully. The following subheadings will help you identify books and microfilm that contain primary sources:

--diaries
--correspondence
--case studies
--sources
--documents
--sermons
--early works to  1800
--early works to  1900

 --photographs
--posters
--pictorial works
--caricatures and cartoons		 --personal narratives
--interviews
--anecdotes
--underground literature


In the MUSCAT Plus advanced search, you could build a search  the subject headings on your results where the keywords appear. For example:

National socialism --  Sources

Germany -- History -- 1933-1945 -- Sources

advanced keyword search for primary sources for socialism AND documents OR sources

Online, Free Primary Source Collections

There are numerous digital collections with primary source material available online. They're not always easy to find, however. Typically, try searching by your country, event, or person with words like "national library," "digital collection," or "digital library."

Subjects: History