When searching for background information on an unfamiliar topic, students often turn to resources like Google or Wikipedia.  While these sources can be useful for factual information (dates, how to spell a name correctly), they can be less reliable for finding accurate information and scholarly analysis of a historical topic.
 

The UST Libraries provide access to numerous background resources -- dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and companions -- which can provide you an overview of a historical topic.  These works range from the very general to the very specific. These works are more reliable that what you might find on the free web because their entries are written by  experts in that topic.

Another reason to use these resources is that most articles include a bibliography to identify the best books on your topic.  You can search for these titles in CLICsearch to see we have the book in the library collection.