Irish Studies Program

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

You can grab these details from your textbooks as well as online through general encyclopedic-type sources.

Armed with names, dates, and other details from the background sources, you'll dive into Primary & Secondary Source search tools. This page will highlight Secondary Source tools and the following Key Resources page will outline how / where to find Primary Sources.
 

* 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.

Be sure to review the "Search Strategies for Databases" page under Guides in the left menu. It will highlight proactive ways to increase the relevancy of your search results and make you a more efficient researcher.