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European History

Getting Started -- European Hsitory

If you are new to conducting research:
Consider reviewing the Starting Your Research tutorial to learn the phases and processes of doing research

Start your research in European History with these key resources:

Types of History Research: Primary VS. Secondary

Your professor may require you to find scholarly sources  popular sources, secondary sources or primary sources on your topic.    Here's a very basic guide if you need more details:

Primary Sources: Primary sources are the raw stuff of history. Examples of primary sources:

  • diaries and journals
  • documents,
  • newspaper or magazine articles,
  • statistics,
  • novels, plays, or poetry
  • reports, autobiographies, memoirs, or books written during the time of an event

Some Primary Sources are also known as popular sources.

Secondary or Scholarly Sources: 

These are the peer reviewed articles and scholarly books that historians write after they have worked with the primary sources -- and consulted other secondary articles or books.  

Historiography: Historiography is the study of how historians have interpreted historical events throughout time. The student of the historiography of the English Civil war , for example, might want to compare how historians wrote about that event in the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries. .  One way of doing this comparative interpretation, is  by looking for bibliographies on a subject or using the keyword "historiography" combined with keywords from the subject of your research (such as "English civil war"" in our Library Search or a scholarly database such as Historical Abstracts.)

Other Useful Guides

Arts and Humanities Librarian

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Adam Rosenkranz
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Research, Teaching, & User Services - The Claremont Colleges Library
909 607-3986
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