Library Research Guide
Welcome to the Libraries' MLANG 280 Class Guide! This guide is designed to help you find high-quality resources for your group presentations. If this guide does not have the information you are looking for, don't hesitate to Ask A Librarian for help any time during the Libraries' service hours.
Wondering how to find and cite images? This site has most of the answers.
Wikipedia and Google can be starting points as you research your topic.
Turn to scholarly or academic sources to learn more about the historical and social contexts.
Primary sources provide the historical evidence and insight.
Wikipedia is useful for its concise, easy to read overview of historical events and locations. More importantly, Wikipedia articles will link you to websites for museums, memorials, and social organizations. Good Wikipedia articles cite academic sources like books and articles that you can find at K-State Libraries. Start with Wikipedia, but don't end here.
Google searches are another good way to explore existing information. Try different search terms (synonyms, French vs. English) to see how that changes the websites and sources you discover. You may find an archive, a news/newspaper website, or other valuable resource. When searching Google, evaluate the sites:
You can limit your Google search results to certain kinds of websites.
Type your major concepts/people/places/events, then add site:.edu
For example:
Drancy site:.edu
This search will only bring back websites that end in .edu - U.S. college and university websites.
Other site searches:
Academic sources use established research methods to better understand the world around us. Most academic sources rely on practices like peer review to ensure that the findings published follow research standards and ethics.
Find Academic Sources by going to the Articles and Books page of this guide.
Primary sources are the documents, photographs, oral histories, films, and other records that were created at the time of your historical event. In the case of oral histories and autobiographies, they may have been created many years after the event, but are the recollections of people who lived it.
Find databases and collections with primary sources by going to the Primary Sources page on this guide.
When researching historical events that occurred in non-English speaking countries, your search terms will produce different results. You are more likely to get English-language pages if you search in English (e.g. Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation) than in French (e.g. Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation).
Even if you do not speak or read French, try using French search terms to see the different search results you will find. You may discover a website, an archive, or a map that you would not have found otherwise.
