Howdy! Welcome to the medieval and early modern studies guide of select library resources.
The purpose of this guide is to help get you started with your research. Included topics are:
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After you pick a topic for your paper, it is time to start doing research. Research involves finding a variety of sources on or about your topic. Finding sources means you have to search for them using web browsers, the library's catalog, or databases.
Keyword searching is using organic language to locate sources on your topic. Think of how you search in Google or other web browsers. This is searching using keywords. This is a perfectly acceptable way to search for information, but there are some other search techniques that are more targeted and can help you find better resources.
Title searching is looking for a specific book. It is best to put book titles into quotes to ensure the web browser, catalog, or database looks for exactly what you want; for example, "War and Peace" or "Oxford History of England". When searching for an exact title do not type in "the", "a", or "an" as books are not indexed under those articles but the second word of the title.
Author searching is looking for anything by a specific person. Invert the author's name: "Maxwell, Leona" or "Graham, Thomas". In the library world, we organize people by their last name, not their first name.
Subject searching is a targeted search to "resources about [fill in the blank]." Subject terms are official keywords for a person, place, event, and/or historical time period.
As you search, you will find that some words/terms bring back results while others do not. Keep a list of words or names you've used when searching. Mix and match different terms to find different sources. Use the Boolean operatives, "AND" "OR" "NOT" whenever advanced searching is an option and consider using the * wildcard when a word as multiple endings. To use the wildcard function, determine what the root of the word is, for example: history, historical, historian, would look like, histor*.
Periodicals refer to sources that are published on a schedule: yearly, quarterly, bi-yearly, monthly, weekly, or daily, and are either journals, magazines, or newspapers.
Journals are a resource that has an editor who contacts experts in the field of the journal's topic to ask for submissions to be reviewed. This is called peer-review/academic/scholarly and is a check-and-balances procedure to help eliminate the publishing of incorrect information. Journals are geared for experts or scholars within that specific subject.
Magazines are a resource that also has an editor but the articles are not reviewed by peer experts prior to publication. These are called popular resources as they are intended for a general audience who have an interest in a specific subject, but do not want a lot of subject-specific jargon while reading.
Newspapers are a resource published on the most consistent schedule of all periodicals, usually being produced daily or weekly. They are for a general audience and cover a wide variety of subjects and items of interest written by professionals (journalists) and non-professionals who submit opinion pieces.
**Please note, newspapers were first printed in the 16th century in Venice, so there will be scant primary newspaper articles for topics in this subject area.**