Library Catalog 

Feinberg Library

Research Guides: Get Started!

InterlibraryLoan

Evaluating Resources
(from Milner Library at Illinois State U.) 

Plagiarism:  How to Avoid It (from Indiana University at Bloomington)

COURSE RELATED RESEARCH INSTRUCTION

HIS122
European Civilization: 1815 - Present

Professor: Richard Schaefer
Librarian: Karen Volkman
Webpage: http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/karen.volkman/researchguide/his122.htm
Date: March  7,  2008

Use Online Encyclopedias for Topic Ideas / Definitions

Credo Reference
Go directly to the history area of this set of online reference books.  Use the search box to find information across the 25 titles listed

Find Books

The Search Feinberg link will lead you to books with  information on European History.  Finding books is different from finding articles or searching the web.  Try some general searches with the following as subjects: 

France History Revolution 1789-1799   
France History Revolution 1789-1799 Causes
Peasantry France History.
Religion and culture      Secularism     Europe Church history
Christianity and politics Europe History
Europe Territorial expansion.
Culture conflict  History
Nationalism Europe      Group identity  Europe      National state
Political violence -- Europe -- History -- 20th century
colonization     Totalitarianism.
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Germany
Germany -- Politics and government -- 1933-1945


You can also easily have books located in other SUNY Libraries sent directly to you.  Search SUNY by author or subject.  When you find a book that you want to read, select the link in red called "Request Item".  The information about the books is filled in for you and you are directed to Feinberg's interlibrary loan form.

Find Articles

Goal
"Your essay should be roughly 5 pages long and be based on 5 different scholarly sources."

How do I know if an article is scholarly ?  
Pepperdine University Libraries has published a concise guide with information and illustrations on the key differences between scholarly information versus the popular press.

Academic Search Premier
Search this large, multidisciplinary, full text database designed especially for colleges &  universities with articles from over 4,000 scholarly journals in full-text as far back as 1975 and indexing for articles in another 4,000 scholarly journals.

Historical Abstracts
-Click on the Advanced Search link
-Specify items such as language
-Specify that you want articles
-Use the "Time Period" selection.  This is the only database that allows you to specify specific historical time periods in increments of ten years.  Check all decades that apply to your search.
-try a variety of keyword combinations
-use keyword search to determine the "official subject headings" for your topic
-use a * for truncation
-use and to connect subjects

Jstor
Complete archives of 411 core journals in humanities, social sciences and sciences

Project Muse
250 journal titles from 40 scholarly publishers covering many fields in the humanities and social sciences.

Should I use Internet Resources?

Please read your paper guidelines VERY carefully.  I would suggest only using sources that you can determine come from other professors, government agencies, or reliable archive / museum type organizations.

The librarians at the UC Berkeley Library have developed a very useful set of guidelines:
Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask

There are internet document repositories that have undergone scholarly review.

Intute is from universities in the UK and has an international flair.  
This is set to go directly to the history section.  It's also searchable by topic with history.

Sources from the Librarians Internet Index  have also undergone review

Also try the Library of Congress American Memory digitized collection.