Doing History Research

History 31: France in Algeria, France and Algerians (1830-present)

Simon Elichko (they/them)

Social Sciences & Data Librarian

Workshop Agenda:

  • Getting a book from the library stacks
  • Strategies for finding secondary sources that are relevant and interesting
  • Learning about research support on-campus
     

Getting a book from the library stacks

After you return with your book:
 

  1. Go to tripod.swarthmore.edu.
     
  2. Search for your book to find its page in Tripod.
     
  3. Open a new browser tab.
     
  4. Go to worldcat.org.
     
  5. Search for your book to find its page in Worldcat.

Tripod and Worldcat


Useful sites for finding books that you can read for free

Tripod: Books and other resources provided by the TriCollege Libraries. Includes links to online access and info about physical copies.

 

Worldcat: Books (+ more) owned by libraries all over the world

 

How do you request a copy of a book that's not owned by the TriCollege Libraries?  Follow the link in Tripod to Borrow Beyond TriCo.

Subject tags
 

Included in Tripod and Worldcat to describe what each book is about.

Subject tags can help you find books that substantially discuss a certain topic.

Look the Tripod page for your book.

What are some of the subject tags used to describe it?

Finding secondary sources that are relevant and interesting

We'll modify two things:

Where you search
If you usually search Google Scholar, you might find better results using Tripod and databases like Historical Abstracts and JSTOR.

(See the History 31 research guide for links.)

 

How you search

By choosing different keywords (or even just changing how they're combined), you can get very different results.

Compare these two searches in Tripod - which has more relevant results?

 

Search 1:
France Algeria colonies


Search 2:   search limited to subject tags
France OR French  AND  Algeria*  AND  coloni*

What we changed:

Searching subject tags (instead of all words)
 

France OR French  <---  allows noun or adjective

AND  Algeria*         <---  allows singular, plural, adjective

AND  coloni*           <---  colonial, colonies, colonizer(s)

Algeria
OR
Algerian
OR
Algerians
 

citizenship
OR citizens
OR immigration
OR immigrants

France

OR
French
OR
Francophone

How to do this search (in Historical Abstracts, Tripod, etc.)

(Algeria OR Algerian OR Algerians) AND (France OR French OR Francophone)

1. Try this search in Historical Abstracts.

2. Then try it with other search terms (keep the structure the same).

AND (citizenship OR citizens OR immigration OR immigrants)

Choosing better keywords:

Tools for Finding Secondary Sources
(links on Hist 31 research guide)

Research Tool Content included Are sources tagged by topic? Matches your search term in...
Historical Abstracts Articles from History journals Sources have tags indicating their topics Summary of each article
Tripod Books, articles, videos Sources have tags indicating their topics Summary of each article or book
JSTOR Articles from journals, books (curated selection) No Every word in the article or book
Google Scholar Articles from journals, books (widely varied quality No Sometimes the summary, sometimes the full article

Get advice on your research:
Simon Elichko  (Social Sciences Librarian)
 

  • Office hours Wednesdays 11-1 (at McCabe Research & Info Desk)
     
  • Appointment scheduler: Linked from History 031 Research Guide
     
  • Email selichk1@swarthmore.edu

Image credit: Walid Amghar