HIS 130 - Introduction to History

Once you identify your subject for research, you'll want to discover some basic background information to answer the following questions:

• Who: names of significant people, movements, or organizations
• When: beginning and ending dates for individuals or events
• Where: watch for place name changes in the past
• What: significance of subject can affect how many records from the past still exist
• More Info: watch for further references or citations that you'll want to uncover for additional information

Armed with names, dates, and other details from the background sources, you'll dive into Primary & Secondary Source search tools. This page highlights Secondary Source tools while the previous page covers Primary Sources and the following page outlines specific books in the Zondervan Collection that may be of interest.

* Special thanks for the librarians at Loyola Marymount University (LA) with their creation of much of the content regarding primary source searching on this guide.

The series, Oxford History of the United States, is a major scholarly series that provides background, factual information covering U.S. history throughout time. In these volumes, you will discover content as well as cited sources you can search for in order to identify additional sources.