Summer Research

History com Editors, “Westward Expansion,” HISTORY, accessed May 27, 2022, https://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/westward-expansion.

Welcome to the EHS ECE and Honors American Studies Program LibGuide. This LibGuide will help you navigate research resources and components of your summer project for the course.

National History Day Theme

2023_nhd_theme_narrative.pdf

Definitions of a frontier:

a line or border separating two countries
extreme limit of settled land beyond which lies wilderness
extreme limit of understanding or achievement in a particular area.

Introduction to Research: When you think about frontiers, one of the first topics that likely comes to mind is the American West or Expansionism. (Native Americans, Cowboys, or the American Frontier) After you delve into the topic, there are hundreds of other topic ideas for research within this theme.

Databases

Begin by browsing topics of interest within the databases below. Remember a frontier can be a place, but it can also be an idea. Begin exploring databases for a topic that sparks your interest. It's important that you have a real curiosity and interest in this topic. You will be spending a lot of time deeply learning the concept.

ProQuest elibrary: Use the Research Topics to investigate various topics of interest. You may begin by scrolling to the bottom to browse, use the related research topics listed to help find other topics.

Other areas to consider:

Famous People
Social and Political Sciences
Historical Events

Britannica- Use Britannica to complete preliminary research into various topics. This resource will give you brief background information into various topics.

IMPORTANT: This does not need to be the topic that you ultimately decide to create for your final project. However, this will introduce you to the theme and the databases.

Concept Mapping:

A concept map is a tool you can use to define and narrow your topic. It allows you to visualize the relationships between different concepts. For example, if you are writing a term paper on the American Expansionism but you aren't sure what aspect you would like to focus on, creating a concept map can help you think about the topic possibilities. Watch the video below to see how to create your own concept map!

Research Documents

Summer Video Task - Before After Work

Research Question Generator

Source Types for Historical Research

What is different about college level history research?

Historians know about the past because they look at what relics have lasted through the ages which are called primary sources. For some periods and cultures (20th century America, for example), there are tons of primary sources—political documents, newspapers, teenagers’ diaries, high school year books, digitally-recorded phone conversations, etc. For other periods and cultures, however, historians have very few clues to work with; that’s one reason we know so little about the Aztecs.

They also consult other historians’ ideas. These ideas are presented in secondary sources, which include textbooks, monographs, and scholarly articles. Once they’ve studied both primary and secondary sources, historians link together all these bits of information— which answers a question about some past event or phenomenon.