Video Lectures

Note: Because databases have been revised, the interface may appear slightly different. Any reference to BU Books and More is the Commonwealth Library Catalogue.

Building a Bibliography: An Introduction

Building a Bibliography: Scholarly Books

Building a Bibliography: Scholarly Journal Articles

Building a Bibliography: Tips from a Pro

What is a boolean?

What is a truncation and Wildcard Symbols?

FINDING JOURNAL ARTICLES

Finding Journal Articles: Defining features of Journal Articles

Finding Journal Articles: About Databases

Locating America History and Life (AHL) and Historical Abstracts (HA) at Andruss Library

Searching AHL/HA without "Fields"

Searching AHL/HA with Subject Field

Searching AHL/HA by Keyword

Searching AHL/HA by Title

Reading the Records from AHL/HA

Inter-Library Loans for Unavailable Articles

Placing Limits in AHL/HA

Subject Search Terms in AHL compared to the Library of Congress

Explaining Booleans, Truncations, and Wildcards in AHL/HA

Demonstrating Booleans, Truncations, and Wildcards in AHL/HA

Journal STORage: What is JSTOR? Introduction

Taking a Tour of JStor

Reading the Results in JStor

FINDING MONOGRAPHS

Finding Books: An Introduction

Finding the Book Library Catalogue at Commonwealth University Libraries

Finding Books at Commonwealth University Libraries

WorldCat: Finding the Database and Keywords

WorldCat: Using Limit Fields with Keyword Search

WorldCat: Reading the Record

WorldCat: Limiting Results

WorldCat: Subject Headings and Advanced Search Limits

WorldCat: Back Door into Subject Headings

FINDING PRIMARY SOURCES

Andruss Library Tutorial (primary sources) for History Majors

Finding Magazines through Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, Part 1

Finding Magazine Articles through Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, Part 2

Finding Magazines at Bloomsburg University

External Links

Andruss Library At Bloomsburg University

Commonwealth University Libraries (a.k.a. Andruss Library)

Brightspace (formerly BOLT)

Fake News: Media and News Literacy (Andruss Library)

Finding A Book at Andruss: Library Research Tutorial (GLRT)

Bloomsburg University Newspapers in Microform

Alphabetical

Association of College and Research Libraries Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

American Jewish Committee Archives

Australian History (National Library of Australia)

Avalon Project

The British Newspaper Archive (paywall obstructs access)

Cambridge Digital Library

Center for History and New Media

Chronicling America: Historica American Newspapers (Library of Congress)

Cold War Internationl History Project (Wilson Center)

Connected Histories: British History Sources, 1500-1900

Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (ACRL Framework Toolkit)/p>

Exploring and Collecting History Online (GMU)

Famous Trials (University of Missouri-Kansas School of Law)

German History in Documents and Images

German Propaganda (especially posters) Calvin

The Hidden Brain Broadcast (NPR) by Shankar Vendantam

Holocaust Primary Sources Bibliography at USHMM

Hyperwar: WWII on the WWW

Irish History (CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts)

Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) Jewish News Archive

Journal of Digital Humanities

Leo Baeck Institute Digital Collection

Locating London's Past

London Lives 1690-1800

Nuremberg Trials (Library of Congress)

Online Collections Recommended by BU Andruss Library Staff

Proceedings of the Old Bailey: London's Central Criminal Court, 1674-1913

Trading Consequences (History of Commodity Trade)

University Archives

Finding Primary and Secondary Sources

Primary sources are documents, document collections, artifacts from the past. They can include though are not limited to: diaries, memoirs, letters, government documents, literature, paintings, film, photos, sculpture, architecture, and so forth. Primary sources can be found in archives and published as single documents or in collections either in print form or electronically (cd-rom and the web). To learn more about the differences between documents, edited collections, and archival collections, view these two videos:

Documents are Primary Sources

Documents Developing a Collection for Research Projects

Secondary sources are interpretations of the past; the authors, amateur and professional historians, advance a thesis or tell a story drawing upon primary sources and what other historians have interpreted.

Historiography is the history of historical interpretation over time since the event occurred, the individual lived, or the idea developed.

"Historians, ancient and modern, have always known ... that any work of history is vulnerable on three counts: the fallibility and deficiency of the historical record on which it is based; the fallibility and selectivity inherent in the writing of history; and the fallibility and subjectivity of the historian."

Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking into the Abyss (1994)

News Stories about Research in History

National Archives and Records Administration: Can we depend upon the NARA to preserve records essential to U.S. History? Three related sources: ICE Detainee Records Schedule Nears Completion (21 June 2019); The National Archives is Deleting Records about Trump's ICE Policies (11 February 2020); Erasing History: The National Archives is Destroying Records about Victims of Trump's ICE Policies (6 February 2020)

Untold Stories briefly explains the importance of conducting oral histories. (Pulse of the Planet, 15 January 2016)

Hidden History discusses how oral histories are the only way to record the past, especially of everyday people. (Pulse of the Planet, 14 January 2016)

Looting from other Disciplines to do Research

How to detect fake news stories

The Psychological Dimension Behind Climate Negotiations (NPR, 7 December 2015) discusses how climate change negotiations illustrate that human beings behave irrationally.

Archaeologists Dig to Complete Revolutionary War History (NPR, 5 December 2015)

Historic Chemistry Lab with Links to Thomas Jefferson Discovered Behind Wall (NPR, 19 October 2015)

Big-Data Project on 1918 Flu Reflects Key Role of Humanists (Chronicle of Higher Education, 27 February 2015)

More American than you Might Think Believe in Conspiracy Theories (NPR, 4 June 2014)

Military Conflict Decisions: Why Weakness Leads to Aggression (NPR, 10 March 2014)

Change a Word or Two and You'll Change the Whole Debate (NPR, 14 February 2014)