The resources in this section are selected to help you contextualize your research question and orient you to current and previous scholarship.

Timelines

situate your research historically, geographically, and disciplinarily and allow you to quickly identify the kinds of general topic overviews you should consult.

Encyclopedias, Handbooks, Subject Dictionaries, and Guides

offer general overviews of varying depth. These can be particularly useful for quickly orienting yourself to adjacent fields that impact your research question and for identifying key concepts that you will need to understand more fully in order to properly investigate your research question.

Dictionaries, glossaries, and controlled vocabularies

are useful for clarifying terms you've uncovered with which you're unfamiliar, as well as guiding you toward keywords for effective searching.

Bibliographies

are generally well-scoped and selective, thus allowing you to focus on a smaller set of studies within a field.