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HIST 491C: History and the Diplomat (Spring 2025)

Begin Your Research

Use this guide to locate library databases, books, journals, and web sources to help you locate primary and secondary sources for your research papers.

  • Reference Resources: Use reference materials like encyclopedias to learn more about events, people, and other information. 
  • Newspapers: A selection of historical newspapers including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Times of London.
  • Primary Source Databases: Declassified documents, letters, memoranda, images, leaflets and other primary sources produced by governments
  • Secondary Source Databases: Find scholarly articles and book reviews on your topic from library databases.
  • Open Digital Archives: Images, propaganda, maps, government reports, and other documents made freely available online from archives around the world.
  • Government Documents & Treaties: Government documents, including treaties, foreign policy and international agreements from the US, UK, French and German Foreign Offices. 
  • Help with Citing: Information on Chicago citation & on using Zotero for in-text citing and creating bibliographies.

Having Trouble?

If you're having any trouble finding what you're looking for, please make a research appointment with a research librarian, chat us, come up to the desk and ask a question, or send us an email. You're not alone - we are here to help you.

Subject Database Guides

Most Important Consideration: Find a topic that interests you!

It is my personal view that great projects grow from one of more of these three emotions: passion, anger, confusion.

Passion: "I love this topic so much, I want to spent my time learning all about it."

Anger: "Other scholars are so wrong about this topic, I will spend my time telling the world how wrong they are."

Confusions: "This makes no sense, I need to figure this out."

 

EXAMPLE: