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HIST 150: Memoirs of World War II Germany (Fall 2025)

Directions

There are Eight searches your team has to complete.

After you finish each, call over the librarian. If your answer is correct, I'll show you the next question. First team to win gets a prize!

1) Find an academic article!

Using the European History subject database, Historical Abstracts, find an article about Memoirs written by Nazis  
The article needs to be peer reviewed.

  • Hints:
    • Use the database for European history articles, listed on this guide.
    • Limited to peer review.
    • There are multiple articles you might find that fit this criteria.

2) Find a Book!

Using our library catalog, find a book about the Childhood in Germany during World War II.

Hints:

    • Use the main library catalog
    • Limit to books and ebooks on the left
    • keep the search simple
    • you can use "world war II", but for books "world war" AND 1945 works better
    • You may need to go to the second page of results

3) Find a Primary Source / Memoir in the Catalog

Use the main library catalog to find personal narratives written about internment camps in WW2 Germany

  • Hints
    • Use quotation marks, ex "internment camps"
    • use boolean like AND
    • limit to Books
    • instead of WW2, use "world war" AND 1945 
    • remember the catalog calls memoirs "personal narratives"
    • you may need to scroll down a bit on your results list to find the results

4) Identify the Modern Language Librarian

I'm the History library!  Who is the modern languages librarian and when do they have office hours on Oct 5?

HINTS

5) Find a book review

Using the library catalog's reviews feature, find a review for a book about women in Germany in world war II

  • HINTS
    • Start your search like you normally would to find book or articles:
      • search a few keywords connected by AND
    • After you get your results, go to the left and under "material type" limit to "reviews"
    • For this search, you can use "world War II"   or you can use "world war" AND 1945

 

6) Find a primary source: historic Magazine article in the catalog

Using the library catalog find a magazine article published between 1940 and 1945 about German politics.

Hints

  • use advanced search
  • limit the publication dates
  • after you search, use the filters on the lift to limit to Magazine articles
  • There are multiple answers

7) Find memoirs in worldcat!

Using this pre-prepared search in WorldCat, find personal narratives written by refugees during the war. 

Hints

  • the hard part of the search is already written, and this link is saved on the guide
  • using AND you can add extra search terms to narrow my pre-loaded search.
  • There are many options, but you shouldn't need to scroll far.

8) Everyone in your group needs to make an ILL account

Finally, have everyone in your group sign up for an ILL account

**Be sure to register as a student, not faculty or staff (for some reason, that is the default setting). 

If you don't have a major, just list yourself as History department for now.

Call over the librarian when you're done!

 

Bonus

As part of the University's national accreditation, library classes this year need to submit assessment forms.

This is not required, but it would really, really help me out if you could fill out this very quick survey. I will not see the comments, and the feedback is anonymous. Thanks!