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History - Home

Welcome

The purpose of this guide is to recommend print and electronic resources for research in History at the J.N. Desmarais Library. I also am available to assist in your research throughout the academic year.  If you would like to arrange for an individual research consultation, please e-mail me with a requested date and time, and a description of your topic.

Introductions

History: A Very Short Introduction. Online. 2000
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. Print & online. 2002.
What is History? 40th anniversary edition. Print. 2001.

Subject Librarian

NGerolami's picture
Name: Natasha Gerolami, MLIS, PhD
Position Title: Bibliothécaire agrégée / Associate Librarian
Email Address: ngerolami@laurentian.ca
Extension: (705) 675-1151 poste 3325
Office Location: Bibliothèque J.N. Desmarais Library 30-250

More Help

In the library: The Library User Assistance Desk to your immediate left as you enter the library is a good place to start.

By email: Email the librarian responsible for your faculty for a reply during regular working hours.

Research consultations: Book a research consultation with the librarian responsible for your faculty by Zoom or phone.

By chat: With our "Ask the Library" service. For more information, see About Ask a Librarian.

For Distance Education students: Telephone: 1-800-661-1058, ext. 2 or email: bibdesmaraislib@laurentian.ca

Books, Theses & Films

Documentary film collections

Requesting films not at Laurentian

Watmedia (Provincial DVD Catalogue).  To order a film from Watmedia, contcat LUFilmLibrary@laurentian.ca and specify the date it is required.

Ebook collections

  • Ebook Central ?

    Description: close to 40,000 ebooks in multiple subject areas

  • Gale Virtual Reference Library ?

    Description: Over 80 reference ebooks in multiple subject areas.

  • Intelex Past Masters: Full-Text Humanities ?

    Description: Description: Encompasses the largest collection of primary source full-text electronic editions in philosophy in the world. Includes significant collections in the history of political thought and theory, religious studies, education, German studies, sociology, the history and philosophy of science, economics, and classics. Features definitive editions of the full corpora of the seminal figures in the history of the human sciences, including published and unpublished works, articles, essays, reviews, and correspondence. Publishes collections in English and English translation, German, French, Latin, Danish, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. Also includes The English Letters Collection (letters or correspondence and in some cases the notebooks, diaries, and memoirs of the most significant figures in English cultural history, politics, religion and the arts), the Women Writers Collection, and the Pickering & Chatto Women's Studies Collection. --Publisher’s description

  • Oxford Scholarship Online ?

    Description: 22,909 ebooks in multiple subject areas as of April 2024.

  • EBSCOHost eBook Collection ?

    Description: Over 7,500 ebooks in multiple subject areas

  • Scholars Portal - Ebooks ?

    Description: Over 345,000 ebooks in multiple subject areas. Select Full Text Only to find only those ebooks with full text.

  • Springer LINK ?

    Description: SpringerLink currently offers 2,777 fully peer-reviewed journals and over 151,000 books online.

  • Taylor & Francis E-books ?

    Description: More than 15,000 e-books in multiple subject areas.

Dissertations and Theses

  • ProQuest Dissertations and Theses ?

    Description: This database includes 2.7 million searchable citations to doctoral dissertation and Master's theses from around the world from 1861 to the present day together with 1.2 million full text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. Full text has been added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works. Those not available full-text may be ordered privately; they are not normally available through interlibrary loan.

  • Theses Canada ?

    Description: "Canadian universities participate in the program voluntarily by submitting approved theses and dissertation to Theses Canada." Published by Library and Archives Canada.

  • Dissertations & Theses @ Laurentian University ?

    Description: This database gives access to the dissertations and theses produced by students at Laurentian University

  • DART-Europe E-Theses Portal ?

    Description: "The DART-Europe E-theses Portal is a searchable database of electronic research theses held in European repositories. The theses listed are open access - publicly available, in full, without charge." - publisher's info.

  • EThOS — British Library e-theses online service ?

    Description: EThOS is the UK’s national thesis service which aims to maximise the visibility and availability of the UK’s doctoral research theses. There are approximately 380,000 records relating to theses awarded by over 120 institutions. Around 120,000 of these also provide access to the full text thesis, either via download from the EThOS database or via links to the institution’s own repository.

  • Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD) ?

    Description: OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. - Publisher's description

Laurentian Theses

If you are looking for theses or dissertations produced by Laurentian graduates, check out our LUZONE Research Repository which has theses and dissertations of Laurentian masters and doctoral candidates since 2013.

Articles, Style Manual & Citation

The Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style is the recommended manual for history. Also recommended is A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Dissertations (known as "Turabian" after its first author) which introduces students and researchers to Chicago. See our Citation Style Guide and this quick guide on the Chicago website.  An excellent survey of styles, including Chicago, is available at Purdue University's Online Writing Lab. 

Zotero

Zotero, a free, browser-based citation manager, is the recommended tool to collect, organize, cite and share your research.

Recommended Starting Databases

  • America: History and Life ?

    Description: Covers literature on the history and culture of the U.S. and Canada from prehistory to the present. The index includes 1,700 journals from as far back as 1910. Access is limited to 6 concurrent users.

  • Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America ?

    Description: A bibliographic database covering all aspects of Indigenous peoples in North American culture, history, and life. This resource covers a wide range of topics including archaeology, multicultural relations, gaming, governance, legend, and literacy. BIPNA contains more than 141,000 citations for books, essays, journal articles, and government documents of the United States and Canada. Dates of coverage for included content range from the sixteenth century to the present.

  • Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly (CPI.Q) ?

    Description: The CPI provides access to articles from a comprehensive list of Canadian and international journals, magazines, selected sections of the Globe and Mail, Canadian biographies and other reference content from Gale™, all with a Canadian focus. Indexing from 1980 to present; Full-text articles from 1983 to present.

  • Historical Abstracts ?

    Description: Historical Abstracts covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. This authoritative database provides indexing of more than 2,300 academic historical journals in over 40 languages back to 1955. Access is limited to 6 concurrent users.

  • Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance ?

    Description: Covers secondary sources pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Citations for books and journal material (articles, reviews, review articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts and discographies) are included, as are citations for dissertation abstracts and essays in books (including entries in conference proceedings, festschriften, encyclopedias and exhibition catalogues).

  • Labour Studies Index ?

    Description: Open-access index of recent publications in Canadian labour studies including books, book chapters, journal articles, reviews, commissioned reports, and theses. Indexes comprehensively the journals Labour/Le Travail, Relations industrielles/Industrial Relations and Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society. The Index is produced by Desmond Maley and Dan Scott, J.-N. Desmarais Library, Laurentian University.

  • ViVa: A Bibliography of Women's History in Historical and Women's Studies Journals ?

    Description: ViVa is a current bibliography of articles about women's and gender history. Articles published in English, French, German and Dutch are selected from more than eighty European, American and Indian Journals.

Newspapers and Magazines

Information on current and historic newspapers and magazines is available in this research guide.

Related Databases

  • Cairn ?

    Description: European French-language database with over 500 full-text journals in the humanities and social sciences. The English-language interface provides access to a subset of content.

  • Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly (CPI.Q) ?

    Description: The CPI provides access to articles from a comprehensive list of Canadian and international journals, magazines, selected sections of the Globe and Mail, Canadian biographies and other reference content from Gale™, all with a Canadian focus. Indexing from 1980 to present; Full-text articles from 1983 to present.

  • EBSCOhost Platform Databases ?

    Description: Multidisciplinary platform containing many databases in different disciplines, such as the humanities, social sciences, education, arts and natural sciences.

  • Érudit ?

    Description: Canadian database with over 150 full-text journals in the humanities and social sciences. Also includes theses and research reports from Quebec university institutions.

  • Francis and Pascal ?

    Description: Free access multilingual social sciences and humanities databases. English and French searching options available.

  • Google Scholar ?

    Description: "Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature... across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites."

  • Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984 ?

    Description: Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective™: 1907-1984 offers a broad range of subject coverage in the humanities and social sciences with high-quality indexing of more than 1,300,000 articles in nearly 1,100 periodicals, dating as far back as 1907, as well as citations of over 240,000 book reviews.

  • JSTOR ?

    Description: JSTOR includes the archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references. Note: Normally the journals in JSTOR are five years from current; further, all JSTOR journals are available through the "Get it @ Laurentian" link from other databases. JSTOR should NOT be used as at the first resort.

  • MLA International Bibliography ?

    Description: Covers literature from all over the world--Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. Folklore is represented by folk literature, music, art, rituals, and belief systems. Linguistics and language materials range from history and theory of linguistics, comparative linguistics, semantics, stylistics, and syntax to translation. Other topics include literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts (film, radio, television, theater), and history of printing and publishing. Since 1926.

  • Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 ?

    Description: Provides indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines, including full coverage of the original print volumes of Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. This important resource offers a wide range of researchers access to information about history, culture and seminal developments across nearly a century" - publisher's website.

  • Web of Science ?

    Description: A comprehensive research platform that brings together many different types of content including journal articles, patents, websites, conference proceedings, and open access material. Web of Science is located within Web of Knowledge. This resource offers access to journal articles in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Web of Science contains over 100 years of research, fully indexed and cross-searchable.

Primary Sources

North American Sources--General

Canada

General

British Columbia

Prairies

  • Peel's Prairie Provinces  A resource dedicated to assisting  researchers in their exploration of western Canadian history and the culture of the Canadian prairies. Contains both an online bibliography of books, pamphlets, and other materials related to the development of the Prairies, as well as a searchable full-text collection of many of these items.

Ontario

United States

International

  • Defining Gender. Source material from British and European archives (1450-1910)
  • Internet History Sourcebooks: A collection of public domain document organized by the following sections:  Ancient History, Medieval History, Modern History, Byzantine Studies plus Other History Sourcebooks: African, East Asian, Global, Indian,  Islamic, Jewish, Lesbian and Gay, Science and Women's History
  • Medieval Travel Writing The chief focus is on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China and South-East Asia.
  • Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue. Printed record of the English-speaking world from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of the First World War.
  • World History Matters. Center for History and New Media, George Mason University.

France

  • Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert (in English)
  • Gallica Digital Library (BNF) A massive and ongoing retrospective digitization project from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, of copyright-cleared titles (70 years and older, in accordance with French law) primarily in French but also including English, German, and other languages. Only limited text-recognition has been performed on the images in this collection, which is searchable down to the level of book title, and tables-of-content and index where present.

Great Britain

  • Mass Observation Online. Digitized archive from Mass-Observation, a UK social research organization founded in 1927 to document the activities of ordinary Britons in everyday life from 1937 through to the mid-1950s.
  • Old Bailey Online. Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913. Contains 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.