Introduction to the study of history: Searching literature by subject - step by step

Begin: define your subject well.
Try and make your subject as specific as possible. When your subject is specific you have a better idea of what you are looking for and it's easier to know if what you find is relevant. Which means you won't have to read every item in your search results. Who are the peopel involved in what you want to write about? What does your subject mean? Define the words. Where is your subject most prevalent, geographically? Why did your subject happen? Why is that inteesting? and how did it happen? and why is thát interesting?

Also try and think of an aspect to your subject. Do you want to write about the economics of a subject or the social impact? Don't forget to check the databases of the other disciplines when doing so.

Step by step .

1. Think of search terms.
Thinking of the right ones is the trick here. Try to imagine how an author describes his work.

2. Choose the relevant search engines and databases.
A couple of multidisciplinary ones and a few subject specific ones. 

3. Do the searching
Combine steps 1 and 2

4. Evaluate
Is what you found relevant for your paper? Can you trust the source?

The right search terms are the most important conditons for an effective search.

General tips:

1. Think 'in terms of' the article to be found. What words are likely to be used in the article you hope to find?
2. As a result of your findings, correct your search terms a few times in the initial phase of your search

Keep in mind the different kinds of terms:

• synonyms
• broader terms
• narrower terms
• related terms
• antonyms
• persons or organisations related to your subject
• translation into languages relevant for subject and discipline
• Think, for each of these categories, of the different forms (single, plural etc.) spelling variations and possible abbreviations/acronyms)

You don't have to think of terms all by yourself. Use the tools:

• words from an introductory article in Wikipedia for instance
• words from search result pages in search engines 
• keywords from previously found sources (especially the so-called 'author keywords')
• dictionaries, for translations and for looking up the meaning of words
• thesauruses, for finding related terms that you may not have thought of (e.g. this general thesaurus for the English language)

In the special LibGuide page on formulating a search question you will find more information on how to generate search terms

While you were looking for the book review of the book by Kershaw you already saw PiCarta. You can use PiCarta for many different scientific disciplines. That's why we call it a multidisciplinary search engine. The most important multidisciplinary search engines are:

• (Mainly for articles in English:) general, multidisciplinary scientific search engines like Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science of Microsoft Academic Search;
• (Also for non-English material:) Worldcat;
• (Also for popular science material and/or trade magazines:) EBSCO Academic search and Nexis Uni;

Every search engine has its own strenghs and weaknesses. You will be more efficient and more complete if you get to know them all. Going through the various help pages in the engines themselves and looking up the LibGuides we have to offer will help you find out the scope, coverage and other options available to you.

You have also already used Historical Abstracts. You can use that to find books and articles as well. This is what we call a subject specific search engine. For history in this case.

There is a collection of search engines just for History  There are different types of search engines and databases in this list, as you can tell, when you use the pull down menu.  The most important for historians is the bibliography. Can you see how many bibliographies are available for historians?

The biggest bibliography for historians is the Historical Abstracts. If you look carefully you will see that it covers a large period of time and most of the world, except the US and Canada.

Some bibliographies are centred around a region like the DBNG (The Netherlands) Sabine (Utrecht) others are built around a period in time like the IMB International Medieval Bibliography. Depending on your subject you will have to choose which bibliographies to use. 

Other types of search engine which may be useful are:

• encyclopedias (Cambridge Histories online for example)
• biographies (Biografisch Portaal van Nederland, American National Biography)