HIST 375: Twentieth Century Russia

Getting started: Reference books

Why Use Reference Books?

• Identify major themes in the historiography
• Provides a preliminary bibliography
• Save your time!

Suggested Titles:

Acton, Edward, Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, and William G. Rosenberg, Eds. Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914-1921. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997. REF DK265 .C68 1997

Minihan, James. The Former Soviet Union's Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004. DK33 .M54 2004

Rappaport, Helen. Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999. REF DK268 .S8 R337 1999

Try to find "One Good Book," and build your search from there

Why Use Books?

• The MOST important form of academic writing in the discipline of history
• Consider their bibliographies to be specialized databases just for you and your research

Book Catalogs:

McIntyre Library Voyager Catalog

UW System Universal Borrowing Catalog

Book reviews

Why Use Book Reviews?

• Evaluate the quality of the book
• Identify major themes in the historiography
• Compare books to one another
• Save your time!

Locating Book Reviews:

JSTOR
-- Advanced search recommended, limit to "History Journals" and "Reviews"
-- Entirely full text
-- No access to newest issues of journals (3-7 year lag)

Academic Search Premier (EBSCO)
--Contains recent academic journals and popular literature
--Some full text, some not
--More likely to have newer issues of journals than JSTOR, but fewer of those journals

Journal articles

Historical Abstracts
--The historical journal article index for world history (non-North American), 1450 - present
--Articles published from 1954 - present
--NO book reviews
--Some full text links

JSTOR
--Full text scholarly journal archives.
--Contains journal articles written prior to 1954; does not include the most recent articles

Finding an angle on your topic

Dissertation Abstracts
--A good place to look at the state of recent research on your topic
--Includes only abstracts, or summaries, of dissertations. The dissertations themselves must be requested through Interlibrary Loan.

Proper citation

Never forget that your footnotes and bibliography should be as clear as possible for researchers who wish to follow your footsteps. Please follow the History Department's Style Sheet.

In-text parenthetical citations are not acceptable!