HIST 112 - World History Since 1450

Research guide to assist researchers in location books and journal articles relevant to their course topics.

Library Research Guide

Encyclopedias and Historical Companions

Trying to understand the basic facts and context of your historical event or person?

Look for books, like encyclopedias, or journal articles written for students or a researcher exploring new content and needing an overview of the existing scholarship. These works discuss themes, changes in commonly held beliefs, and seminal (commonly referenced) works.

Books

Locate books, such as encyclopedias, that provide an over of historical events or people, in Search It in a couple of ways:

1. Locate titles by searching for:

2. Search for your topic and one of the terms: encyclopedia, companion, handbook . You may need to broaden your topic to a time period or concept, like: genocide instead of the Holocaust or Rwanda.

Below are a sample of titles relevant to World History.

Journal Articles

Once you understand your historical event or person, search for scholarly journal articles for more details or to focus on a more specific event or person. You will need to try several searches with different search terms.

For instance:

Rwanda AND genocide AND women
Rwanda AND Tutsi AND 1994

Book Reviews

Book reviews help gauge how other historians receive a new book. Typically, a book review will highlight the contributions to existing scholarship and identify any "bad history." 

If your search results are filled with a lot of articles with the same title, you may be seeing book reviews instead of research-based articles.

You can remove book reviews in most databases by limiting your search results to Articles or Academic Articles (the exact terms will vary in different databases.)

Searching for items on a topic in K-State Libraries

 Use Search It's Advanced Search for more control over your search.

The link to the Advanced Search appears next to the Search Box once you have entered Search It. It is not available from the Libraries' home page. (Pro-tip - click on the magnifying glass icon in the Search It box on the home page to open Search It without entering any search terms.)

Screen shot showing link to Advanced Search next to the Search It search box.

1. Enter keywords in Search It's search box.

2. Click K-State Libraries only option to search for items owned by K-State Libraries.

Search It screen displaying keyword search in KState Libraries only

3. Item record shows if an item is available and where it is shelved. If not available, either because checked out or due to the Hale fire, you may request a copy through Interlibrary Loan.

Screen shot of the information page for a book in Search It
4. Virtual Browse at the bottom of the record shows items shelved nearby the item you found. They have similar call numbers, so will usually be about a similar topic.

Screenshot demonstrating Virtual Browse feature in Search It