Research Guides: History: Getting Started with History Research

History research: a brief overview

Your professor may require you to find scholarly sources popular sources, secondary sources or primary sources on your topic. Here's a very basic guide if you need more details

Primary Sources: Primary sources are the raw stuff of history. Examples of primary sources:

diaries and journals
documents,
newspaper or magazine articles,
statistics,
novels, plays, or poetry
reports, autobiographies, memoirs, or books written during the time of an event

Some Primary Sources maybe be considered popular sources, but they are of the time that you are researching.

Secondary or Scholarly Sources:

These are the peer reviewed articles and scholarly books that historians write after they have worked with the primary sources -- and consulted other secondary articles or books.

Historiography: Historiography is the study of how historians have interpreted historical events throughout time. One way of doing this comparative interpretation, is looking for bibliographies on a subject or using the keyword "historiography" in UC Library Search or an online scholarly database such as Historical Abstracts or America: History and Life.

Want more information about primary resources? Check out the Primary Resources Research Guide!

Before you start searching

Before you start searching for resources, think about what exactly you will search for.

Write down key words, phrases, names and dates that might relate to you topic.
Think about historical language as well as modern.
Put phrases with words that need to be together in a certain order inside "quotation marks"

How do you come up with the words to write down?

If you have a course textbook, notes from faculty lectures, start with terminology you find there
Read encyclopedia entries about a related person, place, event, or concept to get ideas for more words. Wikipedia is an easy place to start, but for more in-depth information, please see Reference Databases (below) with more detailed information.
Search the Oxford Historical Thesaurus (part of the Oxford English Dictionary) to discover historical synonyms for modern words
As you find primary and secondary sources, see what language they use, and add new terms to your list ot help you refine additional searches

Reference databases

* UC Irvine access only

CQ Researcher
Provides in-depth coverage reports on the most important issues of the day.
Gale Virtual Reference *
Provides searchable full-text e-book versions of many reference works in a wide range of subject areas.
Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970
Covers: population, work & welfare, economics, government, finance, & employment. We also have in print at the Langson Library Reference 1st Floor: HA 202 H57
International Historical Statistics, 1750 - 2010
Includes population, labor, agriculture, industry, external trade, transport and telecommunications, finance, prices, education, and national accounts from all regions of the world.
Oxford Bibliographies Online. Latin American Studies *
Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on Latin American studies.
Oxford Bibliographies Online: African American Studies. *
Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on provide bibliographic articles that identify, organize, cite, and annotate on key areas of African American Studies -- culture, politics, law, history, society, religion, and economics
Oxford Bibliographies Online: Atlantic History *
Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on the transnational interconnections between Europe, North America, South America, and Africa.
Oxford Bibliographies Online: Chinese Studies *
Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on China across ALL disciplines, not limited to history.
Oxford Bibliographies Online: Medieval Studies *
Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on European and Mediterranean civilization from the 4th to the 15th centuries.
Oxford Bibliographies Online: Renaissance & Reformation *
Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on the period of the Renaissance and Reformation, which spans roughly from the 14th through 17th centuries.
Oxford English Dictionary (with Historical Thesaurus)*
Use this dictionary to find the meaning, history, and pronunciation of words. The OED online, which contains all 20 volumes of the print edition, also traces the usage of words over the past millennium through quotations from English language sources. For historians, the Historical Thesaurus module is particularly helpful for finding identifying historical synonyms for modern words.
Oxford Handbooks Online. History *
Review essays that evaluate the current thinking on a field or topic. We have 41 books online but many more Oxford Handbooks in print.
Oxford Reference Premium *
Two million reference entries.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia: Latin American History *
Offers long-form overview articles written, peer-reviewed, and edited by leading scholars.
Sage eReference *
A database of encyclopedias, many about history.
Statistical Abstracts of the United States *
Statistics on the social, political, and economic conditions of the United States. Being updated constantly. Coverage will eventually be 1790 to present

Page Contents:

History Research: A Brief Overview

Before You Start Searching

Secondary Sources: Databases for Getting Started

Reference Databases