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International Baccalaureate Student Visits

Find background information

Finding background information is an important part of any research project, and encyclopedias are great place to start. Your school library will have a variety of encyclopedias and other background resources, but you can also use Sage Knowledge or the encyclopedias and other books listed on the History Subject Guides to find useful information on your topic.

Find secondary sources (books and more)

Secondary sources are books and articles on a specific topic that are written by researchers (in this case, historians) without firsthand experience of the event or topic. Secondary sources may analyze, criticize, interpret or summarize data from primary sources.

Books

You can find books on your topic at your school library, but here's how to find books at the UA library.

  1. Use our library search to find books by typing in the keywords for your chosen topic. Use AND to separate keywords. For example, type "great depression" AND women to find books that talk about the impact of the great depression on women.
  2. Once you see your list of results, you can limit to books by checking the box next to books under Type of material.
  3. If the book is a print book, you'll need to write down the call number to find where it's located in the library. You will be able to access ebooks while you are on campus.
Journals

These databases include scholarly journal articles (and other sources) on a variety of history topics: