Research Guides: HIST 490: Global Disability Histories (Fall 2024): Secondary Sources

Books

WorldCat
Materials held by thousands of libraries in the US and abroad. Books, websites, computer programs, films, slides, journals, magazines, papers, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, newspapers, sound recordings, videotapes, etc. Coverage: Before 1000BC-present.

TIPS

Start with keywords.
Limit to books & ebooks.
Pay attention to Subject terms!
- Once you find the subject terms for your topic, you can find every recent book on your topic
Any book in the catalog, even if it's at the Law library or Colonial Williamsburg Foundation library, can be picked up at Swem. Just use the request button in the catalog record.

Searching

Start by writing out your question or topic.
identify key terms
identify potential synonyms
Use AND OR NOT to create search phrases.
Conduct several searches, revising keywords backed on subject terms & commonly used language in the articles/books.

Examples

“How was deafness was conceptualized and experienced in Azerbaijan during the Soviet period."

Deafness, Azerbaijan, Soviet

Deaf* AND Azerbaijan AND soviet

Try search in both catalog & worldcat

If you don't get strong results, go a bit broader:

(Deaf* OR disabilit*) AND Azerbaijan AND (history OR Soviet)

America: History & Life with Full Text
Provides full text coverage of the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes nearly 200 journals and 100 books, selective indexing for over 1,700 journals, and abstracts in English of foreign language articles.
Historical Abstracts with Full Text
Covers all aspects of world history (excluding the US and Canada) since 1450. Includes journal articles, books, reviews, conference proceedings, dissertations, etc. published after 1954. About 250 History journals in this database are not findable in EBSCO's Academic Search database, making this the go-to database for finding world history articles.
EBSCOHost
Collection of databases devoted to a variety of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and science. See titles of individual databases for further information. Coverage: Varies by title.

Same processes as above!

Start by writing out your question or topic.
identify key terms
identify potential synonyms
Use AND OR NOT to create search phrases.
Conduct several searches, revising keywords backed on subject terms & commonly used language in the articles/books.

Example

Deafness, Azerbaijan, Soviet

Deaf* AND Azerbaijan AND soviet

Try in multiple databases, including EBSCO and PRIMO

Revised as needed. Broaden if results are too narrow:

(Deaf* OR disabil*) AND Azerbaijan AND soviet*

(Deaf* OR disabil*) AND Azerbaijan AND history

Once you've exhausted EBSCO, PRIMO, and JSTOR, you can try GoogleScholar