This guide is designed for masters and Phd students in the Department of History.
Writing Guides
Begin with:
Other guides:
- Developing strong research questions
- Mapping your thesis : the comprehensive manual of theory and techniques for masters and doctoral research LB2369.W49 2011, Floor 4
- Research literacies and writing pedagogies for masters and doctoral writers
Literature Review Writing Guides
Theses
- Dissertations and Theses Global - Discover dissertations and theses published by educational institutions from around the world, from 1743 to the present (some full text available from 1997 - present)
- Foreign Doctoral Dissertations - 700,000 doctoral dissertations from outside the U.S. and Canada
Help Guides
Open Electronic Resources
BC Open Textbook Collection
Search Omni, the library's main search box to find books, journal articles, newspaper articles, videos, and many other types of published literature. Omni searches almost all of our collections and databases, simultaneously. If you know the title of a specific book, journal article, or journal, just type in the full title in the search box. For help, use the Omni Search Tips guide.
If you are keyword searching using Omni, always remember to use caps for Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
- Combine keywords with AND, ex: self AND society
- Combine synonyms with OR, (child* OR youth OR teenage) AND history
- Enclose phrases in quotation marks, "Vietnamese conflict"
- Use truncation * (asterisk) at the end of a root word to find all forms of the word, ie: mineral* (will retrieve minerals, mineralogy, mineralogical, etc.)
- When you get your results, use the filters on the left side of the screen to refine your search.
Search subject-specific databases in History to find journal articles and primary source content. They offer many advanced search features, only contain scholarly literature and search results are more precise. Consult the following:
Important note: If the library does not have what you need, you can order books and journal articles from other libraries through RACER but you need to register before you can start using it.
Google Scholar
Most researchers regularly search Google Scholar because it is convenient, but please remember to connect to it via the Carleton Library to seamlessly connect to the full text of journal articles that are part of the library's collection.
Cited Reference Searching
Why is this important? It is most often used for finding articles that cite a particular work. Many databases provide citation counts for individual articles.
- Keeping track of who has cited a given work can help you gauge the impact that article has in the discipline
- To find citation counts for history, use Historical Abstracts or America, History and Life. You can also search Web of Science, or Scopus
- If the article has been cited, the database will provide a link to the citing articles
- For more info, consult the Cited Reference Searching Help Guide
Search Alerts
Why use them? Search alerts are a current awareness service that helps researchers stay current with what is being published in their field, via email.
Begin with:
- Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources overview guide
Searching for primary sources:
Search your topic (or historical person of interest) using Omni the library's main search box to find primary sources (or reproductions) in our collection. Keyword searches that include the following terms will identify primary materials most of the time
Search example: nurses AND war AND diar*
- 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 e-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
Primary Sources on the web
- Archives and Primary Sources Databases
- Archives of Ontario
- Digital Public Library of America
- Internet Archive
- Hathi Trust Digital Library
- Library and Archives Canada
- Library of Congress Digital Collections
- National Archives (UK)
Other libraries:
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.
Citing primary sources: archive and non-archive
Plan to attend a workshop that demonstrates the common features of several citation management tools. Send an email to citation@library.carleton.ca to register for a workshop, or arrange for one-on-one consultation.
Consult the Citation Management Help Guide for more information. There are many free citation management systems available. The library provides support for the following:
Databases
Sage Research Methods is designed to support researchers with writing a research question, choosing a method, gathering and analyzing data, to and writing up & publishing the findings.
- Tip: Browse by discipline, look for 'History' to find a number of handbooks and case studies.
Useful Books
- A practical guide to studying history: skills and approaches
- Research methods for history
- The content of the form
- The information-literate historian : a guide to research for history students
- The Routledge companion to historical studies
Nvivo Software
Nvivo is qualitative data analysis software intended to help researchers organize and analyze data, identify trends, and cross examine information in a variety of ways. Consult the NVIVO service web page for more information about this tool and training workshops.
Publishing Guides
- Getting published in the humanities: what to know, where to aim, how to succeed
- Write it up : practical strategies for writing and publishing journal articles
- Writing for Publication (how to guide & online modules)
Self Archiving
- CURVE is Carleton's institutional repository which collects, preserves and provides open access to the academic research output and creative works of Carleton faculty and scholars.
Open Access and Scholarly Communications
Graduate Student Open Access Award
- $1000 award encourages Carleton graduates to make their work more widely available on the internet by publishing research in open access journals
ORCID
Journal Metrics/Rankings
Journal-level metrics (bibliometrics) is used to measure the impact of a journal as a whole. They can also be used for:
- preparing your portfolio
- assessing the impact and quality of a journal relative to a particular discipline or field through ranking
- tenure and promotion in academia
- publication venue choices
- collection building and assessment
Consult other Help guides for:
