Welcome

Your assignments at university are an invitation to join a scholarly conversation by exploring topics in depth, weighing the evidence, and drawing your own conclusions.  A good research topic is one that sparks your interest and allows you to ask new questions. This guide is intended to help you get started.

Pick a research topic

• Read your assignment instructions carefully
• Try to pick a topic that interests you and meets the assignment criteria
• Identify key concepts of your research topic
  • If you need extra help, click on Choosing an essay topic
• Do some background reading on your topic using Wikipedia
  • Using Wikipedia wisely (video)

Use dictionaries and encyclopedias to find overviews, authoritative definitions, critical perspectives and useful bibliographies.

• Encyclopedia of contemporary Latin American and Caribbean cultures
• Encyclopedia of Latin America
• Encyclopedia of slave resistance and rebellion
• Historical dictionary of ancient Mesoamerica
• Historical dictionary of United States-Latin American relations
• Notable twentieth-century Latin American women : a biographical dictionary
• Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures
• A Political and economic dictionary of Latin America

Writing Guides

• The information-literate historian: a guide to research for history students
• Notes on writing a History Essay (History Department guidelines)
• A short guide to writing about history
• Writing History: a guide for Canadian students
• Writing the research paper (video)

 

Begin with the Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources overview.

Searching for primary sources:

Search your topic (or historical person of interest) using 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.

• 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: Reading primary sources: the interpretation of texts from 19th and 20th century history
• Original documents can also be found by searching our archival collections or by contacting the Archives and Research Collections (ARC) 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

Primary Sources by country

• Archivo General de la Nacion
• Arquivo Nacional
• Archivo de Lucas Alaman - more than 300 Spanish language documents regarding colonial Mexico
• Biblioteca Digital Hispanica - digital collections from the National Library of Spain includes
• Bracero history archive
• Latin American and Caribbean Databank (World Bank)

Other libraries with significant primary source collections:

• Center for Research Libraries (CRL) - Search the Centre for Research Libraries catalogue by country to find historical newspapers for individual countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Items can be ordered through your RACER account. See also the Latin American Studies Topic Guide.