Librarian
Research/IT Desk
Contact:
Contact the Reference Librarians online
reference@carleton.edu
reference@carleton.edu
507-222-4264
Reference Sources
- Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
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A comprehensive collection of scholarship that focuses on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. Contains scholarly articles, reference works, primary sources, timelines, biographies, images, maps, charts and tables, and film clips, among many other things. - Cambridge Histories Online This link opens in a new window
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An authoritative full text collection of the history of scholarship in several different academic subjects. Includes over 260 volumes published since 1960 by Cambridge University Press. - Oxford Bibliographies This link opens in a new window
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This is a key starting place for research in several different fields, providing bibliographies on current scholarship on topics from the social sciences and humanities.
Types of Sources
Think of the paper you're writing as a story that you are narrating. In this story, you want both primary and secondary sources. Your job as a scholar of history is to weave together primary and secondary sources to make a new, coherent argument.
- Primary source = A book, article, picture, letter, document, or other item that was produced in the past.
- Secondary source = Scholarship that is reflecting back upon and analyzing something that happened in the past.
- Reference source = Books or databases that contain quick facts, short essays, bibliographies, descriptions of trends in scholarship.
- Database = An organized place this information is stored online.
