Welcome

Your assignments at university are an invitation to join a scholarly conversation by exploring topics in depth, formulating a unique research question, examining the research of others along with primary sources, building an argument, and drawing your own conclusions.  A good research topic is one that sparks your interest and allows you to ask new questions in order to find meaningful answers. This guide is intended to help you get started.

Pick a research topic

• Read your assignment instructions carefully
• Pick a research topic that interests you and meets the assignment criteria
• Identify the key concepts of your research topic
• If you need extra help, try these links:
  • Choosing an essay topic
  • Developing strong research questions
  • Do some background reading on your topic using Wikipedia; watch the Using Wikipedia wisely (video)

Use dictionaries, encyclopedias and handbooks to find definitions, introductions and overviews of your topic

• Encyclopedia of European social history from 1350 to 2000 
• Encyclopedia of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars: a political, social and military history 
• Encyclopedia of women in the Middle Ages 
• Encyclopedia of women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England 
• Europe since 1945: an encyclopedia
• ​Wiley-Blackwell Dictionary of Modern European History Since 1789

Begin with the Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources overview.

Searching for primary sources on Omni:

Search your topic (or historical person of interest) using Omni, library's main search box to find primary sources (or reproductions) in our collection. Add the following words to your keyword searches to help identify identify primary materials in the library's collection:

• Diar* (for diary or diaries)
• Correspondence
• Letters
• Memoir
• Personal narrative
• Recollections
• Reminiscences
• Journal
• Sources

 Other search tips:

• Use bibliographies and footnotes of secondary sources on your topic to help identify primary source material.
• Useful book: History beyond the text: a student's guide to approaching alternative sources
• Original documents can also be found by searching our archival collections or by contacting the Archives and Special Collections (ASC) staff for help. The library has many microform collections of primary sources as well. Please ask for assistance at the Research Help Desk.

Historical Newspaper Databases

• Historical Archives of newspapers

Primary Sources on the web

• Archives and Primary Sources Databases
• Digital Public Library of America
• Internet Archive
• Hathi Trust Digital Library
• Library of Congress Digital Collections
• National Archives (UK)
• New York Public Library Digital Collections
• RUSA Primary Sources on the web guide

Other libraries with significant primary source collections:

• Center for Research Libraries (CRL) - Carleton University Library is a member of the CRL consortium. It regularly acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives, and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions through your RACER account.
• Archive of European Integration (AEI)
• Early Comics Archive
• EuroDocs
• European History Primary Sources
• Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports - This is a collection of translated media reports from around the world. Many are first-hand reports of events as they occurred providing an archive of transcripts of foreign broadcasts and news for the second half of the 20th century.  1974-1996