LibGuides: Library Research for Undergraduate History Students: An Introduction: Home

Welcome!

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This guide is intended for undergraduate History students who are doing a project that requires original research and working with sources.

The purpose of this guide is to:

Offer research strategies that can help you make effective use of your time.
Discuss how historians distinguish between primary and secondary sources.
Provide some guidance on where to begin looking for these kinds of sources.

If you have any questions at any stage of your project, please don't hesitate to contact us! Visit us in the Main Library, Room 246, call us at (217) 333-1509, or email hpnl@library.illinois.edu

Quick Links

JSTOR
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The full text of over 2,500 scholarly journals, with coverage back to the first issue for each, in some cases as far back as the 17th century. Recent issues of most journals in this database are embargoed by journal publishers, so to be certain you are also identifying the most recent publications, use an article index like Historical Abstracts or America: History, and Life.
Historical Abstracts
Journal articles, book reviews, and dissertations on all aspects of world history, excluding North America, from 1450. Includes links to the full text of some articles. Complements America: History and Life. Indexes publications from 1954-present.
America: History & Life
The main article database for researching American history. Use to journal articles, book reviews, and dissertations on all periods of North American history. Includes some links to full text. Complements Historical Abstracts. Indexes publications from 1964-present.

University of Illinois Library Catalog
Use the Library Catalog to identify books, journals, microform collections, and digital collections owned by the University of Illinois, which the holds the second largest academic library collection in the United States. In the Library Catalog you can search for books by subject, and you identify the location within the Library of a particular book or journal. Books and journals are organized in the library by subject. Each item is assigned one or more subject headings and a unique call number. Subject headings are standardized terms from the Library of Congress. The call number is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification or Library of Congress Classification. Boolean operators must be capitalized if used: AND, OR, NOT. Interface automatically truncates some search terms unless Boolean operators are used within the same query line.