Analyzing your topic
These slides offer ideas and advice about how to break down your topic into searchable concepts.
"Hunting" vs "gathering"
If you "hunting" for a specific kind of source, such as a scholarly journal article in a particular field, start your search in a specialized resource such as the article indexes listed below under Periodicals.
If you are trying gather as much useful information as possible, it makes sense to use resources with the broadest possible coverage, such as:
- EBSCO DiscoverySearch across all article databases (and other bibliographic resources) hosted on the EBSCO platform.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowProvides page images of back issues of the core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and basic sciences from the earliest issues to within a few years of current publication. Users may browse by journal title or discipline, or may search the full-text or citations/abstracts. New issues of existing titles and new titles are added approximately on a weekly basis. The University of Illinois has access to the following JSTOR collections: Arts & Sciences I-XV, 19th Century British Pamphlets, Business IV, Global Plants, Hebrew Journals, Ireland, Life Sciences Collection, Lives of Literature, Security Studies, Struggles for Freedom - South Africa, Sustainability, and World Heritage Sites - Africa.
Scholarly communication
As a researcher in the field of history, you are entering into a conversation with other historians. Review these slides to learn more about how historians communicate their ideas.