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University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

History 492C: Historiography and Methodology

A course guide. Describes library resources for conducting historical research.

Exercise 1: Database / Interface

For each of the following examples:

  1. Identify the name of the interface.
  2. Identify the name of the database.
  3. Can you find any information about the database besides its name?
  4. Are there any other databases available through this interface?

Example 1

Example 2

Exercise 2: Full Text Database / Bibliographic Database

For each of the following examples:

  1. Determine whether it is a full text database, or a bibliographic database.
  2. Determine whether it provides subject headings.

Example 4

Example 5

Example 6

Exercise 3: Book Reviews

Find book reviews of the following:

  1. The Cultural Turn in U.S. History: past, present, and future / edited by James W. Cook, Lawrence B. Glickman, and Michael O’Malley (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
  2. The Black Struggle for Public Schooling in Nineteenth-Century Illinois.  By Robert L. McCaul.  (Southern Illinois University Press, 1987)
  3. All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity.  By Marshall Berman.  (Simon and Schuster, 1982)
  4. Hysterical Men: the hidden history of male nervous illness.  By Mark S. Micale.  (Harvard University Press, 2008)
  5. The Making of the English WOrking Class.  By E. P. Thompson.  (Pantheon Books, 1964)

Exercise 4: Citation Searching

Use both Web of Science and Google Scholar to find articles that cite the following article:

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for 'Indian' Pasts?" Representations. 37 (1992): 1-26.