Finding Good Sources:

Often when you're doing research you will need reference sources, primary sources, and secondary sources. Each of these can be in print, electronic, and sometimes an audio or visual form. Want more detailed explanations of each resource type? Here's a great explanation from the University of Minnesota Libraries to get you started.

Databases marked with (PW) are SPA-restricted resources. This means you will need a password to log in off campus. You can access the list of passwords here by logging on with your SPA username and password. You should never share these passwords outside of our school community.

Books

Click on the Spartan head to search the SPA Library Catalog to discover books in our own collection and beyond.

Click on the WorldCat logo to search the catalogs of academic and public libraries. This is useful for identifying books you would like to request via interlibrary loan.

Databases and Web Resources

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS DATABASE PASSWORDS

Reference Sources

Reference sources provide background and context for your topic. These might include general or subject specific encyclopedias, specialized dictionaries, or handbooks. They come in a both print or digital forms. Many of the digital resources also contain primary source or secondary source documents. Click on the V to the right in order to expand this selection.

Britannica School (High School)

Encyclopedia content for high school grades plus multimedia, timelines, world atlas, country comparison, and primary sources.

Daily Life Through History (PW)

International in scope, enables students and researchers to discover the everyday details about past eras that make historical accounts relevant and meaningful.

Gale Resources in Context (PW)

Provides holistic topic perspectives by integrating a multitude of content, including: Reference articles; periodical and newspaper articles; primary sources; multimedia records, including charts, graphs, maps and tables; and video and audio content from NBC, NPR and many other respected sources.

Great Events and Great Lives from History (PW)

Great Events and Great Lives offer far-reaching view of history, and include worldwide coverage of important events, men and women in all areas of achievement from ancient times to the modern era.

Oxford Online Dictionary (PW)

The OED is the definitive guide to the English language. Look up the meaning of over 600,000 words, discover when a word was first used, and track how its meaning may have changed over time.

Oxford Research Encyclopedias (PW)

Developed in collaboration with international communities of scholars across all fields of study, Oxford University Press has developed new comprehensive collections of in-depth, peer-reviewed summaries

World History: The Modern Era (PW)

Covering history from the Renaissance to today. In addition to articles, includes media, visuals and maps.

World Religions (PW)

Covers religion around the globe, from prehistory to the present. Includes articles, media, visuals, statistics and timelines

Primary Sources

Primary sources give you direct first-hand information about your topic. They are from the same time as your famous person or historical event. Some examples of primary sources could include: Letters, news articles, witness reports, photographs or other images and certain kinds of objects, like statues, artwork or possibly daily use objects. Many archives and museums have digitized their collections and made them accessible online or through specialized databases and websites. Click on the V to the right in order to expand this selection.

Asia for Educators

A selection of primary sources compiled by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University.

History Study Center (PW)

Covers global history from ancient times to the present day. Contents include reference books, essays, journal articles, historical newspaper and magazine articles, maps, rare books, government documents, transcripts of historical speeches, images and video clips. Study Units offer editorially selected material on over 500 historical topics.

Internet History Sourcebooks Project from Fordham University

These sourcebooks offer collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts related to Byzantine, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, East Asian, and African history. You will also find many documents especially relevant to women's history and LGBT studies.

Library of Congress Digital Collections

Primary source material including historical documents, maps, photographs and sound collections from The Library of Congress.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers (PW)

Includes: Chicago Defender (1910-1975); The Guardian (1821-2003); The Observer (1791-2003); Los Angeles Times (1881-1988); Minneapolis Tribune (1867-1922); The New York Times (1851-2008) with Index (1851-1993).

Newspapers.com

Newspapers.com has over 300 million pages of historical newspapers from more than 11,100 newspapers. The collection includes full runs and parts of runs of regional, state, and local newspapers from the United States and other countries. The majority of the collection covers the 19th and 20th centuries.

Visual History Archive

The Visual History Archive is the USC Shoah Foundation's online portal that allows users to search through and view video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide.

World Digital Library

The WDL makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures and significant historical documents on one site, in a variety of ways. Content on the WDL includes books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, journals, prints and photographs, sound recordings, and films.

Scholarly/Secondary Sources

Scholarly, or secondary, sources give you a scholar’s well-researched opinion about the significance of your person or event. They re-examine or discover new primary sources and build on one another’s research. Some examples of secondary sources could include: Scholarly monographs, peer-reviewed articles, and information from respected websites. Click on the V to the right in order to expand this selection.

EBSCO Host (PW)

Portal of several large EBSCO databases covering all subjects and ranging from popular magazine articles to scholarly peer-reviewed journals.

History Study Center (PW)

JSTOR(PW)

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that includes full-text content of more than 1,400 academic journals, as well as thousands of primary sources.

Project MUSE (only available at SPA)

Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social science content for the scholarly community. MUSE is the trusted source of complete, full-text versions of scholarly journals from many of the world's leading university presses and scholarly societies, with over 120 publishers currently participating. UPCC Book Collections on Project MUSE, launched in January 2012, offer top quality book-length scholarship, fully integrated with MUSE's scholarly journal content.

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