Course Guide
Using Subject Encyclopedias
Subject encyclopedias are a good starting point for researching a topic. The library provides access to hundreds of print and online encyclopedias. The articles in a subject encyclopedia are usually written by a scholar or expert in the field. Using subject encyclopedias at the beginning of your research can help you to define key terms to use in searching the library catalog and databases. Often these resources will include a list of references (books or journal articles) that you can use to identify other sources on your topic.
Gathering Background Information
Use the background sources here, as well as other sources you might encounter, to gather information about your topic and consider what you still need to know before you start researching. You can use this information in searching for primary sources.
- Dates - Places - Names of persons involved - Names of organizations, government agencies, etc. - Names of particular laws or events
Background sources can also help you understand the larger historical context, so that you can determine what primary sources might be most useful or how a particular primary source fits into what was happening at that time.
General Background Sources
- Gale eBooks This link opens in a new windowSearch across hundreds of subject encyclopedias and other reference works. A great place to find background information on almost any research topic. Includes a topic finder for help with narrowing or broadening your research topic. Coverage: varies
- Cambridge Histories This link opens in a new windowTopically focused collections of essays that seek to provide comprehensive analysis of major events, peoples, and ideas in world history.
- Oxford Handbooks Online: History This link opens in a new windowOnline access to the Oxford Handbooks series in History. Each handbook takes an aspect of its discipline, explains the key issues, the classic and contemporary debates on those issues, and describes how those debates might evolve. The handbooks offer authoritative and trustworthy guides to the scholarship that defines the field.
Bibliographies
- Oxford Bibliographies Online: African Studies This link opens in a new windowOxford Bibliographies are authoritative, scholar-developed research guides covering a variety of subject areas. They combine features of an annotated bibliography and a subject encyclopedia, guiding researchers to the best available scholarship on the topic.
- Oxford Bibliographies Online: Chinese Studies This link opens in a new windowOxford Bibliographies Online: Chinese Studies provides an authoritative guide to the key works across the whole field, pointing researchers and practitioners at all levels to the most important scholarship in European languages as well as in Chinese and Japanese. Subjects covered include economics, religions, calligraphy, history, poetry and drama works, politics and political movements.
- Oxford Bibliographies Online: Latin American Studies This link opens in a new windowOxford Bibliographies Online are authoritative, scholar-developed research guides covering a variety of subject areas. They combine features of an annotated bibliography and a subject encyclopedia, guiding researchers to the best available scholarship on the topic.
Selected Resources
Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9780028658438Publication Date: 2006-08-25
The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9780198713197Publication Date: 2019
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9780230392786Publication Date: 2016-04-29
