Brooks Library Research Guides: History, World

Historical Atlas of the Middle East
Print Location: Ref G2206 S1 F7 1993

There are over 100 maps, illustrating the "earliest historical times" of Egyptian empires up to 1993. The atlas groups the maps by historical geography and then chronologically within. Themes include: Arab Period, Muslim World, Crusaders and Muslims, The Further Spread of Islam, Ottoman World, and the Twentieth Century.  Search the library catalog or ask at the Reference Desk (509) 963-1021 for help in locating historical atlases of other world regions.

Internet History Sourcebook Project

"The Internet History Sourcebooks Project [IHSP] is a world wide web project designed to provide easy access to primary sources and other teaching materials in a non-commercial environment.  It was developed and is edited by Paul Halsall with the aid of numerous other contributors."  The three main sourcebooks cover Ancient, Medieval and Modern history.  There are also sourcebooks for East Asian, African, Indian, Islamic, and Jewish history, as well as an online guide to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered peoples history, global history, the history of science and women's history.   Site has not been updated since December, 2006, and there are a number of broken links.

Kingdoms of Europe: an Illustrated Encyclopedia of Ruling Monarchs from Ancient Times to the Present
Print Location: Ref D107 G85 1981
Useful for identifying the historical significance of individual monarchs and ruling families.

Mapping History

A project at the University of Oregon, Mapping History contains modern maps illustrating historical topics in American, European, Latin and African history.  Requires Shockwave Player 11.0--a free installation from Adobe.

Oxford Reference Online: Maps

This title now includes over 775 maps, with locator, physical and political maps for each country, over 120 island maps, state maps for North America, Canada, and Mexico, and more than 100 city maps.  It is part of a suite of reference materials available through the subscription database Oxford Reference Online.  The database is available in full from the CWU library's homepage under "Research" -- "Databases by Title".

For digital collections of original maps, see also the research guide section "Images Online & in Databases".

Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection

From the University of Texas, Austin, one of the best collections of online maps and mapping materials of general interest ordered geographically. The collection includes historical maps, maps showing economic activity, land utilization, population, and industry operations regarding places across the globe.

Great Lives from History: Rennaissance to 1900
Print Location: Ref CT104 .G68 1989

This five volume work examines the lives of 450 individuals whose contributions greatly influenced the world's cultures that flourished from the Renaissance through 1900. An annotated bibliography accompanies each entry.

Great Lives from History: Twentieth Century
Print Location: Ref CT120 .G69 1990

Biographies of individuals across the world who have shaped events from 1900-1990s. You may use this resource when you are in the CWU Library.  Ask at the Reference Desk for assistance in locating and using this series.

Women in World History : a Biographical Encyclopedia [1999- ]; 17 vol.
Print Location: Ref HQ1115 .W6 1999
Exhaustive look at the accomplishments of individual women that heretofore have gone undocumented in male-centered histories. The encyclopedia has 90 genealogical charts, which become useful as a way to keep track of individual women through name changes after marriage. The collection of entries ranges internationally, from 3100 B.C.E. through the 1990s.

Biography.com

This site, operated by the Biography Channel, contains tens of thousands of biographies, some quite detailed.  Biographical video and short biographical video clips are also available.  There is also a page with examples of how to properly cite this site.

Ancient Europe 8000 B.C.--A.D. 1000 : Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World
Print Location: Ref D62 .A52 2004

The Mesolithic to Copper Age (c. 8000-2000 B.C.) -- v. 2. Bronze Age to Early Middle Ages (c. 3000 B.C.-A.D. 1000).  Search the library catalog or ask at the Reference Desk, for help in locating historical encyclopedias and dictionaries of other world regions and time periods.

Dictionary of Historic Documents
Print Location: Ref D9 .D525 2003
This is a dictionary of historic documents, not a full text publication of the documents. That said, it's a great resource for identifying historic acts and laws, written speeches, religious proclamations, treaties, journals (but not diaries), etc., and a smattering of books. Mainly Western in scope, entries range from ancient history to modern times. There is a timetable of the documents, an index where you could search by author, and a list of entries grouped by category.

Encyclopedia of African Nations and Civilizations
Print Location: Ref DT14 .E43 2002

The first section discusses the economy and history of the five regions of Africa--Northern, Eastern, Western, Central and Southern. The next section looks at the continent's cultural development. Finally, the last and largest section lists each civilization alphabetically for an in-depth look at their history as well as providing pertinent facts and figures.  Search the library catalog or ask at the Reference Desk (509) 963-1021 for help in locating historical encyclopedias and dictionaries of other world regions and cultures.

Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350 to 2000
Print Location: Ref HN373 .E63 2001
Essays in this set look at the history of everyday people, starting with the definition, development and methodology of social history, and exemplified under topics such as the Reformation, the Enlightenment, regionalism, specific geographic regions, economics and colonialism. This set is arranged thematically, with each essay containing cross-references and a bibliography. Volume I also has an annotated chronology of each decade.

Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire
Print Location: Third Floor: DS798.4 .A88 2004
The Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire provides accurate and readable entries on all aspects of the turbulent history and rich culture of the Mongols.  While particular emphasis is placed on the Mongol Empire, entries cover the country's entire history and range from geography to culture and religion to personalities, battles, daily life, and folklore.  Topics include the Altaic language family, Confucianism, the modern economy, the Golden Horde, foreign relations, matrilineal clans, the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, shamanism, and the yurt.  Major entries are accompanied by a further reading list that guides readers to selected resources for more in-depth research.

The encyclopedia makes a sound case for the enormous influence of Mongolian civilization on the history of the Far East, the Indian subcontinent, and Eastern Europe.  The introduction includes a guide to pronunciation, a real necessity.  The volume ends with a list of rulers and leaders of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire; a detailed chronology of events from 209 B.C.E. to 2003 C.E.; a general bibliography; and a comprehensive, accurate index.  Seventeen maps and 78 black-and-white illustrations are well placed and serve to extend and clarify the text.  This volume is a great first stop for research on Mongolia as well as a valuable reference for those wishing to expand their knowledge of the region, its history, and culture.

Additional information on Mongols and Mongolia is available under the Subject-Terms 'Mongol' or 'Mongolia' and in our databases.  This title is one of the 16 volumes we have of the "Facts on File library of world history".

Encyclopedia of World Environmental History
Print Location: GF10 .E63 2004

Looks at the history of environmentalism around the globe, beginning with ancient history up through modern times. The editors provide a list of general topics, including: Arts, Climate, Exploitation and Processes, Law and Regulation, Organizations, Places and Events, Religion, Socio-cultural Resources, and Technology and Science.

Oxford Reference Online
Oxford Reference Online, with over 2 million entries, many of which are illustrated, is a superb cross-searchable resource to use when you are at the 'looking for a clue' or 'needing verification' stages of your research.  Oxford Reference provides quality, up-to-date reference content from its extensive series of well-respected books - and unlike Wikipedia you can cite Oxford Reference in a paper!

The Quick Reference materials include information on many Subjects, a series of informative Timelines, a wide variety of Quotations, as well as English Dictionaries, and Bilingual Dictionaries.

The Reference Library is divided into Subject Categories, drawn from the 308 volumes of the Oxford Reference Library.  Those categories are:

Archaeology	Media studies
Art & Architecture	Medicine and health
Bilingual dictionaries	Music
Classical studies	Names studies
Encyclopedias	Performing arts
English Dictionaries and Thesauri	Philosophy
History	Quotations
Language reference	Religion
Law	Science and technology
Linguistics	Social Sciences
Literature	Society and culture

Assistance and advice with using the Quick Reference and the Reference Library are available at this link, and by contacting your friendly neighborhood Brooks Library Librarians.

Notes: The Search Box is in the upper right corner of each Oxford Reference page, with additional options on the left-side and in the center of the page before you scroll down.  Most Oxford Reference results pages are scrollable lists of information, and scrolling is worth doing.
          There is also an Advanced Search available.
          To cite an entry click on the individual entry, the Citation Tool is now visible - it is the 'little pencil' to the right and above the entry that you wish to cite.

Oxford Reference Online: History Encyclopedias

CWU Library's subscription to the database Oxford Reference Online includes a suite of history -related dictionaries, guides and encyclopedias on various fields and periods of history. You can search the entire suite to find entries within all of the references, or you can search within just one history reference for scholarly articles that are overviews of a topic and usually contain a bibliography for further research. 

Brooks Library Online Catalog - CATTRAX
Cattrax is the online catalog that describes nearly all the materials held by the Brooks Library: books, government documents, maps, microforms, journals, and other items.  Below is everything you might want to know about how to use Cattrax - but all you need to know to start searching is summarized in the numbered items and note directly below:

Using Cattrax to find an item in the Brooks Library:
1. Enter a search term – a word, a phrase, whatever – in the search box.

2. Use the drop-down menu to select whether you wish to do a keyword/word search, a title search, a subject search, an author search, or one of the other options.  Click 'Search'.

3. Results that are 'relevant' to the search term that you used will be retrieved.  Examine the results.  Repeat steps 1 through 3 as needed.

*** Note: Information is often described in several different ways; you may need to try a variety of terms before you find ones that provide you with the information you are looking for. And spelling counts.***

More Information about Cattrax:
You can sort the results by 'relevance', date or by title, by clicking on those words below the Search Box.

Click on a title to see a detailed bibliographic record about that title.  The ‘bib record’ will contain a variety of additional information about the book: the author, location, call number, often a summary, status, subject terms, etc.  Any and all of that information can be important clues.

The ‘bib record’ will also have a link to a location map, two ways to send the information to your mobile phone, a citation tool, and will often have book cover images.

You can also save the ‘bib record’ to either ‘My Lists’ (requires you to use your ‘Library Log-in’) or you can ‘Save to Bag’ and remember to email, save, or print the resulting list of titles before you finish your session with Cattrax.

Once you have saved the useful results of your first search you can perform more searches – perhaps starting by opening the author link, the subject terms (towards the bottom of the ‘bib record’), or the 'Call #', in a new browser tab, or using the search box to start a totally new search using what you have learned so far from your search.

(Note: the books are in Call Number order on the shelves and clicking on the "Call #" will display a list of books in something like 'shelf order', which can help you find some good ideas for searching Cattrax.  It is also a good idea to look on the shelves, discovery happens in many ways.)

When you finish your session with Cattrax remember to email, save, or print the ‘Save to Bag’ list of items that you found.

Additional Cattrax Information:

• Note: the “Request” service located in the upper left of a 'bib record' page is only available for Center Campus Students.  This is because the Center Campus Students would need to use more than the stairs or the elevator to get the book from the Brooks Library.  (If you are a Main Campus student wishing to check out a book in a Center Library please consult the Circulation Desk.)


• The ‘Modify Search’ link at the top of any Cattrax page is almost the same as the ‘Advanced Search’ option.  The ‘Modify Search’ option is very useful for narrowing down your list of results.  The "Limit/Sort Search" option is a way to narrow your Subject, Author, or Title search results.


• If you have the citation for an article you can select Journal/Serial Title to find out what kind of access (print/digital, which issues/years) we have to a particular journal.  We often have access to a journal through more than one database.  If you do not succeed in locating the journal or article that you need please consult one of our charming Brooks Library Librarians, or submit a request to our very resourceful Interlibrary Loan Department.


• If your professor said that something you needed to read was 'on Reserve' (the professor may have said 'in the library' or something else roughly equivalent) you can check our Reserved List by searching in Cattrax by course name or by the professor's name.


• Last, but certainly not least, if what you are looking for is not available in Cattrax try repeating your searches in Summit.  Summit enables you to search the catalogs of 37 academic libraries in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and request materials owned by those libraries; a courier service provides near-daily delivery of library materials here to Central Washington University.


• Summit Notes: There is usually a three to five day interval between your making a request and receiving the book, DVD, or other item.  Summit is part of Worldcat.  Each result will have a notation "Libraries that own this item:".  Items owned by a Summit member library can be requested by clicking the purple 'Request Summit Item' button.  Items owned by a Worldcat Library will need to be requested through Interlibrary Loan.

The book collection is shelved on the 3rd (A-J) and 4th (K-Z) floors of the main campus library and shelved by Library of Congress subject classification.  The Government Documents, Maps, and Microforms are on the 3rd floor.  The Music Library is on the 4th floor.  Our physical journal, magazine, and serials collection is on the 2nd floor.  DVDs, video tapes and films are on the 1st floor.  Children's Books are on the 4th floor.  Cattrax also contains links to a variety of e-books, and links to digital materials located elsewhere.

Ebsco eBook Collection
The Brooks Library has permanent access to 3037 digital books from the EBSCO eBook Collection.  EBSCO eBooks are digital full-text versions of books in the areas of:

Children's & Young Adult Nonfiction	Literature & Criticism
Arts & Architecture	Mathematics
Biographies & Memoirs	Philosophy
Business & Economics	Political Science
Computer Science	Psychology
Education	Reference Works
Engineering & Technology	Religion
Fiction	Sciences
General Nonfiction	Self-Help & Family
Health & Medicine	Social Sciences
History	Study Aids & Language Learning
Law

Note: EBSCO's classifications of these books is a bit imaginative, in each of the above categories there will be some books that you would not expect to see in that list.

You can copy and paste from these ebooks, you can access them from off-campus, and you can save portions of them as a pdf.

Summit Online Catalog
Summit is the unified library catalog of 37 universities, colleges, and community colleges in the Pacific Northwest.  Through Summit you have access to over 9.2 million distinct books, CD’s, DVD’s, and more (that the Summit unified collection is over 28.7 million items virtually assures you of access to a copy of what you want or need).  The unified catalog enables you to find with a single search books and other items at any of the 37 member libraries.
(Note: It generally takes between three and five days for a physical item to be sent from one Summit Library to another so please plan ahead.)

In addition to Books, CD’s, DVD’s the Summit Catalog is also one of the many ways that you can locate useful journal articles.  In order to find an article through Summit, type a keyword, a subject, or an article title in the Search Box near the top of the Summit page (an ‘Advanced Search’ is also available).  Select the “Full text articles” box (next to the Search Box or on the left side of the page).  The Results List will be initially sorted by ‘Library & Relevance’, but you can also sort by Author, Title, and Date.  Click the title link of the article or the “View Now” or “View Full Text” link to see more of the article and then download a pdf of it.  (You can also click “Find It @ Your Library”, select ‘Central Washington University’ and find out what access we have to that article here.)

If the article, book, DVD, CD, etc. that you wish or need to acquire appears to not be available through Summit please consult one of our talented Help Desk Librarians.  It is quite possible that we have access to the article through one of our other databases, or that the book, article, etc., can be gotten through Interlibrary Loan.

WorldCat
WorldCat is an essential service run by the imaginatively named Online Computer Library Center (OCLC).  OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs.

WorldCat aspires to be a library catalog for the entire world; it contains all the records cataloged by the more than 72,000 OCLC member libraries around the world.  WorldCat offers millions of bibliographic records and includes records in 400 languages.

The more than 179 million records cataloged by OCLC member libraries include books, manuscripts, websites and internet resources, maps, computer programs, musical scores, films, slides, videotapes, DVDs, newspapers, journals and magazines, sound recordings, articles, chapters, and papers.  The dates covered in WorldCat range from before 1000 BCE to literally earlier today.

The Basic Search is useful when you know precisely what you are looking for.  The Advanced Search is the default search and works well for most everyone.  There is also an Expert Search available in which you can write your own Boolean Search Expressions.

Assistance is available from WorldCat at this link, and from Brooks Librarians at this link.

Newsstand [ProQuest]
Coverage of over 1200 newspapers, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, plus other important U.S., international and minority interest papers. 

WorldNews Network
The World News (WN) Network was founded with the goal of being the most comprehensive, one-stop news resource on the Internet.  Currently World News has over 130 million pages indexed covering news about, among many other topics, Film, Sport, Entertainment, Science, Business, Health and every Region on Earth.

World News Network presents news from more than 1000 reputable sources including mainstream providers (BBC, CNN, Reuters, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, etcetera) and more regional and local sources (The Independent, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Times of India, etcetera). This aggregation from other sites provides a wide variety of perspectives and different interpretations of breaking news events.

Information is available in two ways through the WN site.  News links that open in a new tab go directly to the headlined article on its original site.  Links that open in the same tab provide you with a link to the article on its original site, there are also links to the left and elsewhere on the page to information that helps you put the news article in context, as well as links to other version of the story or to related stories.

PILOTS
PILOTS: Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress.  It is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It provides citations and abstracts to the international literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health complications of traumatic events. Coverage: 1871-Current

Academic Search Complete

A scholarly, multi-disciplinary database containing more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed, scholarly journals, and with indexing and abstracting for more than 9,300 journals.  Academic Search Complete is an EBSCO database, and like most EBSCO databases it includes a "Choose Databases" link near the top of the page that enables you to search multiple EBSCO databases at the same time (an EBSCO multi-disciplinary database that is good to search at the same time as ASC is "MasterFILE Premier").

If the article whose title and abstract you found is not available in the Academic Search Complete database try clicking on "Search for Full Text".  If that option does not provide you with the full-text of the article please consult a librarian or submit an Interlibrary Loan Request.  Many articles are readily available in another database or through Interlibrary Loan and we are here to help you get the information you need!

ArticleFirst
The Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) provides this index of more than 27,000,000 of the articles published since 1990.  The articles are from over 16,000 journals, covering nearly all fields of knowledge.  The items indexed include every article, news story, letter, or other item listed on the table of contents page of the journal.  This database also provides, for most items, a list of libraries that have the journal title – information that makes finding the article in the Brooks Library Collection, or through Interlibrary Loan, much easier.

Please ask the Reference Help Desk, on the 1st Floor of the Brooks Library, or at (509) 963-1021, for any assistance you might wish in searching this index or searching for citations found in the index.

Bibliography of Asian Studies
As of 10/19/2012 this on-line version of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) contains 787,165 records on all subjects (especially in the humanities and social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia, published worldwide from 1971 to the present.  New records are added frequently.  This online BAS includes the full data of all of the printed volumes of the BAS as well as entries compiled since 1997.  The most important 100+ periodicals in Asian Studies, as identified by the BAS staff, are indexed as immediately as possible, but the total number of indexed journals is many times that amount; full information about the years of coverage of each and every journal is provided through the Journal Title Browse function.  In addition, various special projects have contributed substantial numbers of additional records to the database (among them journals on Southeast Asia dating as far back as 1779).

This is an index only.  To locate resources from this index, search the CWU Library Catalog and Summit for the book or journal title.  Please ask the Reference Help Desk, 1st Floor Brooks Library or (509) 963-1021 for aid in searching this index or searching for citations found in the index.

eHRAF World Cultures
eHRAF World Cultures – the digital version of the Human Relations Area Files – is a cross-cultural database that contains more than 350,000 pages of descriptive information on cultures, diversity and ethnic groups of the world.  The annually-growing eHRAF database is unique in that the information is organized by cultures and ethnic groups and the full-text sources are subject-indexed at the paragraph level.  The diversity of information includes full-text books, journal articles, and dissertations.

This database supports CWU curricula across a variety of disciplines -- anthropology, social studies, history, sociology, geography, language, multicultural studies, political science, human development, arts, and medicine - if you are in one of these programs this database will be your friend!

Please ask the Reference Help Desk, 1st Floor Brooks Library or (509) 963-1021 for aid in searching this resource, and / or try the tutorial materials available from the homepage of eHRAF (look under "Using HRAF" on the left) or at this link.

Essay & General Literature Index
This is a bibliographic database that cites essays, articles contained in collections of essays, and miscellaneous works published in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada.  The database now includes nearly 86,000 essays drawn from almost 700 collections.  Essays from more than 300 volumes and more than 20 annuals and serial publications are added annually.  Full bibliographic information on the collective titles indexed is included.

The focus is on the humanities and social sciences, with subject coverage ranging from economics, political science, and history to criticism of literary works, drama, and film.  Citations include articles published as early as 1985.  Each citation links to a list of other works in the collection, others by the author, and others on the subject, as well as to an entry for the source collection.  Works of literary criticism are searchable by names of fictional characters and by the titles of literary works.

The database is searchable by personal and corporate author, title, subject, and keyword, and also by Dewey and LC classification numbers, publisher, publication year, ISBN and ISSN, series, and country of publication.

For aid in locating the full text of articles found within this index, please stop by the 1st Floor Reference Help Desk or call the desk at 509.963.1021.

Humanities Index
Print Location: Ref Index AI 3 H83 1974-

Indexes topics on performing arts, archaeology, classical studies, folklore, history, literature, philosophy in over 450 journals.

JSTOR

Our subscription to JSTOR (short for 'Journal Storage') contains every issue of over 600 core scholarly journals in the arts, humanities, the social sciences, as well as the natural and applied sciences.  These journals have been digitized back to the first issue published (in some cases that is the 1600s).  JSTOR also contains citations (bibliographic records) for more than 1,500 leading academic journals, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work.  (This is why "Include only content I can access" should not be checked, even if you are in a hurry.  Articles not available in JSTOR are often available in our other databases or through Interlibrary Loan.)

As always please consult the Reference Desk or the nearest librarian if you have any questions about finding articles in JSTOR or elsewhere.

PAIS International: Public Affairs Information Service
The PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) International database covers a wide range of current and past public policy issues, emphasizing factual and statistical information.  Business topics are covered, with emphasis on economic factors, industry surveys, business-societal interactions and similar issues, rather than details of business operations.

The PAIS International database is continually updated with information about over half a million journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference papers, web content, and more from over 120 countries throughout the world.  (Newspapers and newsletters are not usually indexed.)  A useful 'Advanced Search' is available, as well as a way to search for Figures & Tables.

PAIS is an index, it does not contain the full text of articles – but you do not care about that until you find a citation for an article you would like to read.  When you find citations for possibly useful articles you can search for the full text by doing a Journal Title Search.  You can also search for a full text copy through Google Scholar.  As always more assistance in acquiring the full text of an article is available at the Reference Desk.

Note: The PAIS database is provided to us by Proquest. In the upper left corner of the PAIS search page there is a link that will say “Searching:1 database”.  If you click that link you will see a list of the 9 databases that you can select and search through this interface.  In addition to PAIS you can also search:

• ERIC‎ (1966 - current),
• PAIS International‎  (1972 - current),
• Physical Education Index‎ (1970 - current),
• PILOTS: Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress‎ (1871 - current),
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I‎ (1639 - current),
• ProQuest Newsstand‎ (1984 - current),
• Social Services Abstracts‎ (1979 - current),
• Sociological Abstracts‎ (1952 - current), and
• The Wall Street Journal‎ (1984 - current).

(Three of these databases are fulltext. The Proquest Sitemap page can provide you with information about some useful options.)

Project Muse

Project MUSE contains scholarly journals from many of the world's leading university presses and scholarly societies. Currently MUSE includes: 274,848 articles and 479,457 chapters by 199 publishers, and probably has some useful information about your topic.

The Brooks Library has a partial subscription to Project MUSE, thus some items are available to you in Project MUSE and some items are only available elsewhere. You can do a Journal Title Search, a Book Title Search, a Summit Search, a Google Scholar Search, or contact the Reference Desk to access a fulltext copy of any citations that might be unavailable in Project MUSE.

Project MUSE can be searched by Keyword (options for narrowing your search will be to the left of your results), browsed by Research Area, by All Title, by Publisher, by Book Title, and by Journal Title. An option for displaying "Only content I have full access to" is usually available, but since we often have access to that content through another database, Summit, or Interlibrary Loan, you should probably search Project MUSE both ways.
 

Center for History and New Media
The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University - whose motto is "Building a Better Yesterday, Bit by Bit" - uses digital media and tools to preserve and present history online, transforming scholarship across the humanities, and advancing historical education and understanding.

The CHNM website is loosely divided into three conceptual areas:

• Teaching + Learning
  Provides free access to primary sources, high-quality online teaching modules, and offers instruction on critical thinking skills.


• Research + Tools
  Publications and applications for scholars, librarians and museum professionals. (These are the folks that came up with Zotero and Omeka.)


• Collecting + Exhibiting
  Digital collections of a wide-range of records, documents, and presentations of historical exhibits.

Also available are blogs, podcasts, essays on History and New Media, the Digital Campus Discussion, and much much more.

Magill's Guide to Military History
Print Location: Ref D25.A2 M34 2001

Five volumes of alphabetically arranged entries on wars, battles, and those people(s) connected to military history. What it doesn't look like it contains, however, are definitions of weaponry, theory, lingo, etc., that make up the lexicon of military history. For that type of information you should look at a dictionary of military terms. See the list in this subject guide.

Pocket Guide to Writing In History
Print Location: Ref D13 .R295 1998
This slim book may not carry the answers to all of life's questions, but it covers the discipline of history rather well. Topics covered include the correct way to write a book review, annotated bibliography, general research papers and historiographical papers. It also has an abbreviated section on Chicago Manual of Style citation formats for the types of resources historians frequently use. As if that weren't enough, it also gives tips on how to prep for an essay exam and cautionary information on avoiding plagiarism when you write.

Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy

Yale Law School hosts a wonderful primary source website, with materials in collections as far-reaching as 4000 b.c.e. to the 21st Century.  Included are the full text of laws, colony charters, acts, and declarations, presidential proclamations, treaties and formal negotiations affecting the United States judiciary system and governmental foreign policy in general. 

From this page, you can also access Project Diana: the Human Rights collection (which provides full text of major court decisions regarding human rights) and The International Military Tribunal for Germany--A Document Collection.  It contains materials from the Nuremburg Trials, including day by day transcript testimony of those tried for war crimes.

British History Online

A digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles. Created by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust.

Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)

The Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War, and seeks to accelerate the process of integrating new sources, materials and perspectives from the former "Communist bloc" with the historiography of the Cold War which has been written over the past few decades largely by Western scholars reliant on Western archival sources. It also seeks to transcend barriers of language, geography, and regional specialization to create new links among scholars interested in Cold War history.

Humanities Text Initiative

The Humanities Text Initiative, a unit of the University of Michigan's Digital Library Production Service, has provided online access to full text resources since 1994. The Humanities Text Initiative (HTI) is an umbrella organization for the creation, delivery, and maintenance of electronic texts, as well as a mechanism for furthering the library community's capabilities in the area of online text.

New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Some 600,000 digital images from within the NYPL's collections.  Browse by subjects alphabetically listed or by suggested disciplines.  Look at this website if you need images of postcards, posters, photographs, etc. of technological changes, specific people and historic events throughout America...not just New York.

Repositories of Primary Sources

A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar.

Revelations From the Russian Archives

This companion website to a 1992 Library of Congress exhibit contains documents made available by the Russian Archival Committee, covering "the entire range of Soviet history from the October Revolution of 1917 to the failed coup of August 1991." Exhibit topics include Joseph Stalin, the murder of Sergei Kirov, the secret police, Gulag labor camps, the Ukrainian famine, Chernobyl, perestroika ("Mikhail Gorbachev's program of economic, political, and social restructuring"), relations with the U.S. (including the Cold War), and more.

Unesco Archives Portal: Primary Resources Page

The UNESCO Archives Portal contains information on researching in (as well as managing) archives.  The Primary Resources Page provides links to websites with online exhibits and digital collections of primary documents.  The UNESCO / IFLA Directory of Digitized Collections link is a good place to begin your search.  Note:  not all links kept up to date.  You may need to search the internet on your own for the repository or collection.

H-Net Reviews

Reviews of books of interest to the humanities and social sciences.  The reviews are published online only, within the H-net discussion networks (listserves) and/or on the website.  It is likely that you will find not only the review, but also a discussion of the book amongst the listserve members.

New York Times Book Review
Print Location: Periodicals 2nd Floor (shelved by title)

Library has current issues which are kept until the microfilm arrives; older volumes (beginning in 1851) are on microfilm (MM-214) in Government Documents in the Microforms Area of the 3rd Floor.  From 1997 to the present, the NYT Book Review is available online in the CWU subscription to the Proquest database "National Newsapapers".  The database is available from off of the CWU Library homepage, under "Research"--"Databases by Title".

International Historical Statistics: Europe, 1750-1993
Print Location: Ref HA1107 .M5 1998
Topics include: population, vital statistics, labor, industry, agriculture, external trade, transportation and communication, education, prices. Statistics derived from numerous primary sources.

Europa: History of the European Union
Find out more about how the EU evolved from a community of six into a union of 27 countries.  Covers the shared history and cultures of these countries from 1945 to today.

EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents From Western Europe
Descriptive directory of links to Western European historical documents. Selected transcriptions, facsimiles and translations.

Infomine
INFOMINE is a wonderful resource featuring well organized access to important university level research and educational tools on the Internet.  INFOMINE is a collection of over 100,000 annotated and indexed links (26,000 librarian created links and 75,000 plus robot/crawler created links).  Substantive databases, electronic journals, guides to the Internet for most disciplines, textbooks and conference proceedings are among the many types of resources included.  The general categories are:

• BioAg,
• Business,
• Cultural Diversity,
• E-Journals,
• Government Publications,
• Maps and GIS,
• Physical Science, Engineering, CS and Math,
  
• Social Sciences and Humanities,
• and the Visual and Performing Arts.

Note: You can search in multiple categories at the same time.  This is good because knowledge is never ever in only one place.

The INFOMINE library contains links to and information about databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other information repositories.  You can search by Author, Subject, Title, Description, Full Text, and Keyword.  You can also choose the resource type that you wish to search, and if you want to search free sources, fee-based sources, or both ('both' is recommended because we might be able to help you find it for free elsewhere). 
Help in searching INFOMINE is available through this Site Map page.

Internet Public Library
The Internet Public Library (ipl2) digital collections include many different resources organized by Subject, Newspapers and Magazines, Special Collections created by the ipl2, a variety of Pathfinders on diverse topics, and special collections for Kids and Teens.

ipl2 offers thousands of annotated, reviewed links covering all academic disciplines.  The available subject categories are:

• Arts & Humanities
• Business & Economics
• Computers & Internet
• Education
• Entertainment & Leisure
• Health & Medical Sciences
• Law, Government & Political Science
• Reference Resources
• Science & Technology
• Social Sciences
• Regional & Country Information

(You can, of course, search all categories simultaneously.)

The Newspapers and Magazines portion of ipl2 contains links to newspapers across the US and around the world, as well as to magazines and journals classified by subject category.  (All of the annotated links can be searched simultaneously.)

ipl2 also has some permanent exhibits - collections of unique, multimedia presentations.  From lighthouse photographs to the classics of Western music, there is something here for everyone!

The ipl2 Pathfinders are a particularly excellent place to begin your research.  The Pathfinders - extensive annotated lists of excellent resources for a specific topic - can be searched by Subject and Alphabetically.  Looking through a couple of Pathfinders that are similar to your chosen/assigned topic can be of immense help to you.

Much of the information you would find through the ipl2 resides on other websites or in other places and would be cited accordingly.  However some information is hosted on the ipl2 site and citation guidelines are provided.  (Additional assistance with citations is available from the CWU Writing Center and the Excellent OWL at Purdue University.)

And finally, a public library would not be complete without story hour.  The children's stories that they have available will not take you an hour to read - but they do make a nice study break.

Note: if you find a resource through the Internet Public Library that we should highlight in one or more of these Research Guides please let me know.  Thank you.

Internet Public Library Arts & Humanities Resources

Interesting and sometimes educational websites are featured on this annotated, topical gateway of websites.  Each website is recommended and annotated by a librarian working for the Librarians Internet Index as a quality resource.  You can also quickly group resources by domain type, so it is easy to see which sites are commercial, from organizations, and from the government.

Intute: History

"Web resources for the study of past events as concerned with human life, communities, values, and systems, including resources dealing with: English local history; British history; European history; and World history. Each resource has been evaluated and categorised by subject specialists based at UK universities.See also: Intute: Classics for resources that relate primarily to Mediterranean and near-Eastern civilization before the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th Century(CE). Intute: Archaeology for resources concerning physical remains. Relevant Area studies/Languages sections for resources that relate specifically to particular geographical regions. VTS: Internet historians (online tutorial about using the Internet for history)."

OAIster Catalog of Digital Resources
OAIster is a catalog more than 25 million records of open access digital resource.  The Catalog was built by harvesting information from open access collections around the world  The digital resources in OAIster include items such as digitized books and articles, born-digital texts, audio files, images, and movies.

The OAIster Catalog is searchable by title, author/creator, subject, language, keyword and several other forms of metadata.  Searching in the OAIster Catalog is by Boolean Search (And, Or, Not).  Like playing chess the best way to become good at boolean searching is to do a lot of boolean searching.  Here are the 'basic moves' for searching the OAIster Catalog:

Combining the search terms 'Cat' and 'Dog' (Boolean)
    Cat and Dog
    Cat or Dog
    Cat not Dog
Note: 'and', 'or', & 'not' are in drop-down boxes to the left of the search boxes.

Plurals, truncation, and wildcards
    Use + for plurals (s and es)
    Use * for truncation
    Use # for a wildcard character
    Use ?N for up to N characters

Adjacent terms (proximity)
    Cat w Dog    (Cat is followed by Dog)
    Cat wN Dog  (Cat is followed by Dog with at most N terms between)
    Cat n Dog     (Cat is next to Dog, either order)
    Cat nN Dog   (Cat is within N terms of Dog, either order)

The available Limiters are Year, Document Type, and Language.  A Basic Search and an Expert Search interface is also available.  You can also create an account that will enable you to save searches.

NOTE:  Sometimes OAIster may direct you to items that are access restricted.  The Librarians in the ARC or at any of the service desks can help you with accessing information that is ‘access restricted’ and with any questions that you might have.

World History for Us All
This website provides "a comprehensive model curriculum for teaching world history in middle and high schools." Features an overview of the integrative approach to world history, lesson plans arranged by "Big Eras," a glossary, and links to related websites. Some portions in development. A project of San Diego State University in cooperation with the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles.