Orange Coast College - History Research Guide

This guide will help you start your research on a history topic for your research paper or presentation.

Reference Books
Reference books are a good place to start your research. The following list of books will help you narrow down your topic, find additional search terms, and get a general overview of your topic before you begin your research. This is not an exhaustive list, so be sure to look at the books shelved near these titles for additional books.

Try the following subject headings in the simple subject search screen (you will then want to scroll down the index for additional related headings)

   History, Ancient
   History, Modern
   History—Philosophy
   Vietnamese Conflict (for materials dealing with the Vietnam War)
   World War, 1914-1918 (for materials dealing with World War I)
   World War, 1939-1945 (for materials dealing with World War II)

To conduct an advanced keyword search, try some of the following search terms. Remember: Select “as a phrase” in the first drop down menu for terms between quotation marks and Search in: “Subject” in the second drop down menu.

   “world war” AND causes
   "world war” AND atrocities
   “world war” AND “united states”

You might also try:
Select “all of these” and “Keyword” in drop down menus and search
history asia? , history africa? or add any other country after history.

Note: The ? symbol placed at the end of the term is a truncation symbol that tells the computer to search for all words that start with the first part of the letters included. For example, asia? will search for asia, asian, & asians.

Searching Electronic Resources for Articles and eBooks
You will find magazine, journal, and newspaper articles; essays; and full-text ebooks on history topics in most of the databases at OCC Library. This is a list of the most pertinent sources. Go to the library’s Web page and click on the link “Electronic Resources” to get the full list of databases at OCC Library.


	Off-Campus Access: Log in to MyOCC or Blackboard to access these resources off-campus. If you are having problems logging in, please go the MyOCC Username & Password page or call MyOCC Technical Support at (714) 432-5072.

Britannica Online - Online dictionary and encyclopedia and more. Good for providing a general overview of your topic.

Expanded Academic ASAP - Database of magazine and journal articles, most of which are available in full-text. You may also limit your search to scholarly publications.

Lexis-Nexis Academic – Magazines, journals, and newspapers from legal, business, medical, and government sources. Most articles are available in full-text.

CQ Researcher – A weekly publication of government documents on major current events and controversial issues in full-text. Provides summaries, pro/con arguments, outlook, chronology, and bibliographies.

eBooks - NetLibrary provides electronic full-text copies of over 3,000 published print materials.

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Periodicals in Print at OCC Library
The following periodicals are found in the Periodicals section of the library and are filed in alphabetical order by title. You may also want to consult the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature to locate articles from the time period you are researching and view the articles using the microform.

Searching the Internet for Web Sites
The following Web sites will help you find reliable Internet resources that are of good authority for your research paper or presentation.

Librarians’ Index to the Internet - This site was developed by librarians as a reliable and efficient guide to Internet resources. The Index is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 14,000 Internet resources that have been selected and evaluated by librarians.

DMOZ Open Directory Project – This human-edited directory of the Web breaks the topics into sub-topics and also provides “see also” references.

International World History Project: World History from the Pre-Sumerian Period to the Present: A Collection of World History Related Essays, Documents, Maps and Music. Site includes features such as Gread Speeches and Music, Free Downloadable E-Books, and Educational Videos.

PBS History – Browse topics on the Ancient World, Biographies, United States, War & Espionage, and the World. Site features include primary documents, timelines, further reading, film transcripts, and people & events.

Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages
A quick and useful guide to help you evaluate the Web pages you find for accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage. From Jim Kapoun’s article "Teaching undergrads WEB evaluation: A guide for library instruction” originally published in the July/August 1998 issue of C&RL News on pages 522-523.

Guides to Cite It! – Provides style guides for APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and others. From the University of Georgia Libraries.