Scholarly Background Sources
Background sources and scholarly encyclopedias are great for:
- choosing a topic
- connecting topics, people, places, events, etc.
- variant spellings, vocabulary, terminology
- bibliography
- Oxford ReferenceContains the texts of more than 100 reference titles published by Oxford University Press.
- Oxford Dictionary of National BiographyThe standard work for the biography of the British Empire, including its colonies Highly recommended. Excellent bibliography.
- Cambridge Histories OnlineProvides full text online access to the complete 300-plus volumes of Cambridge Histories reference series. Provides political, economic and social history, philosophy and literature of selected countries and subjects.
Secondary (and Primary) Books in the Catalog
The library homepage search box searches all library systems--the catalog, articles, and library websites.
Books are bigger and broader and include primary sources and secondary scholarship. Use the catalog to search for books, ebooks, archives and more. Everything but articles!
- Use the search filters under "Limit your results."
- The advanced search in the library catalog allows for more precision. The drop down menu allows you to search by Author, Title, Keyword, or Subject, or combinations.
How to Find a Book in the Olin Stacks
- Finding a Book in the Olin Stacks Tutorial
Learn about how books are organized and how to find a book in the Olin stacks.
Secondary Scholarly Articles
Secondary scholarly/peer-reviewed articles are much more specific. Search for them later in your research, not first.
- Historical AbstractsPublished since 1954, Historical Abstracts currently covers over 1,700 journals published worldwide in over forty languages. The database comprises over 720,000 entries from periodicals, with full-text links to over 135,000 articles and dissertations and masters' theses. Each year, the editors of Historical Abstracts add over 16,000 abstracts and citations, over 3,000 book citations, and over 1,200 citations of dissertations and masters' theses to the database from the current literature and publications. Additional bibliographical entries are also added to the database by editorial projects such as retrospective coverage of journal issues published prior to 1954.
- JSTORJSTOR is a fully-searchable database containing the back issues of several hundred scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, music, ecology and botany, business, and other fields. It includes the following collections: Arts & sciences I, II and III, General science, Ecology and botany, Business, Language and literature.
- Articles & Full TextProvides access to nearly 800 million items, including scholarly journal articles, newspaper articles, ebook chapters and audio/visual resources. Also draws from digital repositories from colleges, universities, research centers, and other open-access archives on the web. Can be a convenient place to start.
Selected Primary Source Collections in English Online
- Early English books online (EEBO)Covers 1450-1661.
- Eighteenth century collections online (ECCO)English-language and foreign-language books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera printed in the UK and the Americas, between 1701 and 1800.
- Times of London Digital Archive, 1785-2006Full-text and full-image articles from the Times of London for the years 1785-2006. It is a digital reproduction, cover to cover, of the paper in PDF files.
- The Making of the Modern World
Primary source books, serials, pamphlets, essays and more focusing on the development of the modern, Western world through the lens of trade and wealth.
Get Help: Ask a Librarian
- Ask a LibrarianGet help. Ask at a reference desk in person or email or chat with a librarian 24/7!
Virginia Cole
Ask a Librarian
- Ask a LibrarianYou can ask your research questions by not only stopping a reference desk in person but also calling, emailing, texting a question or using IM to chat with a librarian 24/7!
Use all the tools!
The best research uses everything, all the tools, and the best tool for the task. But not all tools are equal. Google and Wikipedia have their uses, but when it comes to scholarly research, rely on restricted tools/resources which are superior, have more content, and are free to Cornellians.
Restricted/Subscription/Academic Tools (Free to Cornellians!)
- Library databases
- Books/HathiTrust
- Online & print scholarly encyclopedias
- Newspaper databases & archives
- Journals (online & print)
Open to the World Tools
- Wikipedia
- Google Scholar/Google Books
- websites
Don't pay for stuff!
Never pay for an article or book or access to resources.
In most cases (except for textbooks), the Cornell Library has online journals, newspapers, magazines, ebooks and print books, or can get them for you at no charge to you!
Passkey can help you find it at Cornell, or Ask a Librarian.