HIST 150: Climate Change in Historical Perspective (Spring 2025)

Your topics vary widely, instead of specific databases, I suggest liking of type of materials you need, then using our specialized databases

• Language has changed over last century, and it is often difficult to determine which words would have been used 50+ years ago.

• Britain is a different country, their language is different, innit?  Be careful with word selection when picking keywords.

• Most primary source databases will have "thematic" filters to get you started. Before keyword searching, start there. See what curated documents come up. From those documents, see what terminology is being used by contemporaries.   

• Begin with basic searches and do not be too complicated.  DO NOT USE TOO MANY TERMS AT ONCE

• Be sure to use period-specific language.

• Do NOT search a bunch of terms. This will give more, not less, false its.

• Use the database limiting tools (publication date, place of publication, etc) to limit results. Do this instead of adding more search terms. 
• Use boolean (and or not) to make the best searches.

• Ancestral Puebloan civilization and climate change
  • documents left behind in translation
  • Look at footnotes of secondary works
• The Dust Bowl
  • historic newspapers. Keywords like "dust storms" and "environmental changes" (ex)
  • first hand accounts (ex)
  • Gov reports (ex)
• Architecture/infrastructure and climate change
  • Will need to narrow. Newspaper articles about climate change impact on architecture. 
  • Architectural magazines
  • if there is a specific infrastructure project of interest, contemporary sources about that project
• Archaeology and historical climatology
  • original datasets. Identify through these types of studies
  • Data may be in ISPCR and other data repositories but it depends on what you're looking for
  • Start with secondary sources to narrow down.
• Disease and climate
  • narrow to time and place, focus on specific outbreaks.
  • Newspapers -- search disease as keyword and combined with a second keyword like cold, damp, weather
  • and first hand accounts; 
• Art and climate history
  • use secondary sources to identify specific works influenced by climate (Ex)
  • writings, interviews with individuals whose work was influenced by climate
• Climate change and the rural South (climate change denial, sea level rise, etc.)
  • narrow to specific state and time period
  • look at news coverage from that area using historic newspapers. Search "climate change" and see how it is treated.
  • look at discussions in state legislature by keyword searching climate change in their website/archive
    • ex fun fact, this document is a reason I quite the ND state legislature 
• Climate justice and inequality
  • Will need to narrow a bit
  • NGO reports
  • newspaper coverage
  • Interviews with leading figures (identify with secondary)
  • search "Climate justice" AND inequality in ProQuest Congressional for congressional discussions
• Climate litigation and the SCOTUS
  • law journals and court cases in LexisUni
  • Newspaper coverages and discussions. Search "Supreme Court" AND "climate change" to start
• French Revolution and the Little Ice Age
  • start with secondary sources for starting points EX
  • translated works from the Revolution; see if they mention weather/climate/crops
• Climate change in music/pop culture
  • will need to narrow to a specific form/area of pop culture
  • use secondary sources to narrow
  • look at use in lyrics/ depictions in films/tv. and interviews with articles.
    • search the creators name AND "climate change" in newspaper and magazine databases to find interviews.
• Medieval Warm Period and Viking migration
  • Use secondary lit to identify works of interest
  • in the catalog and worldcat look at translated source books of documents
• Agriculture and climate change, Green Revolution
  • contemp publications about the green rev 
    • narrow to books, articles, magazines, etc
    • try similar searches in our newspaper databases
    • if you narrow to a specific region, period, industry, we can try to find specific agricultural reports