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, click on Choosing an essay topic
- Do some background reading on your topic using Wikipedia
- Using Wikipedia wisely (video)
Use guides, dictionaries, and encyclopedias to find authoritative definitions, critical perspectives of major historians and useful bibliographies.
- Bibliography of imperial, colonial, and Commonwealth history since 1600
- The Cambridge encyclopedia of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives
- Conflict between India and Pakistan : an encyclopedia
- A dictionary of modern Indian history, 1707-1947
- Dictionary of the modern politics of South-East Asia
- Digital Dictionaries of South Asia
- The encyclopedia of India
- Encyclopaedia of Indian army
- Encyclopaedia of Hindu civilization, customs and traditions
- Encyclopedia of women in India
- India in English fiction, 1800-1970; an annotated bibliography
- Historical and cultural dictionary of India
- Historical dictionary of India
Search Omni, the library's main search box to easily find peer-reviewed journal articles on any topic. Remember to refine your search by selecting the following options: Peer-Reviewed Journals, Articles and Subject (optional) to obtain high quality, academic literature.
You can also search databases by subject to find journal articles. They offer many advanced search features and search results tend to be more precise.
Key Databases for Journal Articles:
Additional Databases:
- Bibliography of British and Irish History
- British History Online
- C19, The Nineteenth Century index
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online
- Eighteenth Century Journals
- Empire Online
- Google Scholar
- The Guardian (1821-2003)
- Humanities Index (previously British Humanities Index)
- Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003
- JSTOR
- The Observer (1791-2003)
- Periodicals Archive Online
- Project MUSE
- ProQuest Databases
- State Papers Online: The Government of Britain, 1509-1714
- Times Digital Archive (Times of London)
Dissertations and Theses
Begin with the Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources overview.
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.
- 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 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
- 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.
- Bhagat Singh Internet Archive
- Digital Library of India
- Digital Colonial Documents - India
- Empire Online
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online
- Eighteenth Century Journals
- Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports
- Gramaphone Recordings from the Linguistic Survey of India (University of Chicago)
- House of Commons Parliamentary Papers
- The Indian papers of Colonel Clive and Brigadier-General Carnac, 1752-1774
- Mutiny at the Margins: the Indian Uprising of 1857
- Punch Magazine Cartoon Archive
- South Asian Literary Recorings Project (Library of Congress)
- South Asian Migration Histories (British National Archives)
- Women in World History--Primary Sources on South Asia
Government Information
Maps and GIS
- Atlas and survey of South Asian history : India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan
- Digital Sourh Asia Library
Atlases, maps and GIS data available.
- Historical Atlas of South Asia (University of Chicago)
- Historical Maps of India
- South Asia Historical Digital Maps (David Ramsey Collection)
Images
Searchable database of illustrations, maps, photography
The material in the CIViC Archive is comprised of digital images and mutimedia (audio-video) recordings.
An initiative of Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (MPP) to make available old and rare images. 7000 images in the first phase, divided into Old and rare images, and Historic ephemera.
Essays and pictures describe life and culture in the Indus Valley (India and Pakistan) during ancient times. This site includes photograph collections of many archeologically significant sites.
Contains some videos as well.
Searchable collection from the Center for Art and Archaeology in Gurgaon, Haryana, India, has over 125,000 photographs in the collection. The images fall into the broad categories of architecture, sculpture, terracotta, painting and numismatics.
Audio and Voice Recordings
- British Voices from South Asia
- India: A People Partitioned
- Partition Voices
- Stories on the Partition of India (BBC Radio)
Films/Videos
- Colonial Film Database
- Digital Himalaya: Film and Video (Yale)
- Watmedia - If you wish to borrow a video listed in Watmedia, please use the Interfilm Video Request form - do not submit requests directly to Watmedia.
- Digital Library of India
- Digital South Asia Library (University of Chicago)
- Internet Indian History Sourcebook
- Library of Congress -- South Asia
- Savifa-Dok: Digital Repository South Asian Studies
- South Asia Country Profiles and Timelines (BBC News)
- South Asia Links (Washington & Lee University)
- South Asian Studies Virtual Library (Columbia University)
- World Digital Library - Central and South Asia
- Afghanistan Digital Library - The objective is to retrieve and restore the first 60 years of Afghanistan’s published cultural heritage and make available over the Internet as many Afghan publications from the period 1871–1930 as it is possible to identify and locate.
- Beyond the Taj - Architectural Traditions and Landscape Experience in South Asia (Cornell)
- Bengali Periodicals and Newspapers
- Digital Colonial Documents
- South Asian American Digital Archive (Saada)
- Gandhi Heritage Portal
- Centre of South Asian Studies: Archive (Cambridge University)
- The 1947 Partition Archive
- 1947 Partition.Org
- Hidden Story of Partition and its Legacies (BBC)
- The Road to Partition, 1939-1947 (British National Archives)
- Punjab Digital Library
