HIST 353 History of the American Revolution: Finding Articles

What's wrong with Googling your topic? Google gives you 25,000,000 hits when you look for your topic.

Is a database better? Yes! It's easier to focus your search to your particular topic and limit your results to academic research.

First of all, start with a strategy:

     - write the topic down in the form of a sentence or question

     - identify the key concepts of the question

     - try to think of at least one or two synonyms for each of these concepts

     - if the database you are going to use has a thesaurus (index of subject headings), go there and search for the concepts and synonyms you have thought of. If related terms are suggested, review these, and possibly select and search a few.

   - search each of your concepts separately (you can have 2 or more related terms in a concept)

   - use the Boolean operators (and, or, not) to combine the results that you get in the previous step

If you are having trouble thinking of search terms, try making a table asking who, what, where, how, or when.

Use the following databases to find scholarly and peer-reviewed articles on your topic.

Find journals and newspapers subscribed to by St. Thomas. Enter all or the beginning of the title (e.g., New York Times or Harvard).