Research Guides: History: Background Information

Finding Background Information

Reference materials are designed to help provide background information about people, events, concepts, and more related to our topic. You want to gather enough information that you can begin searching in library databases for Scholarly/Secondary Sources. We recommend you take notes on important concepts to help you search later!

Things to track:

Major people, locations, dates related to your topic
Concepts that may have alternate spellings (this can be because of translation, or just because the word has changed over time)
Abstract concepts or theories that are showing up frequently
Works or authors that may be "experts" on your topic, you can look these up later!
Citation information for anything you could cite in your final work
- This is a good time to download a citation manager like Zotero to help keep track of everything!

Search Reference Collections

CREDO Reference This link opens in a new window
Dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. from a variety of sources.
Britannica Online This link opens in a new window
Vast knowledge base contains more than 65,000 articles and includes the latest editions of the Book of the Year and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Many articles also include links to related internet sites.
Oxford Reference This link opens in a new window
Reference books by Oxford University Press, including the Oxford Digital Reference Shelf.

Wikipedia

Not sure if it's okay to use Wikipedia or a web search as a starting point for your research? Check with your instructor or a librarian!

For an overview of the issue, check out Wikipedia's Citing Wikipedia article!