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World Civilization II - HIST102 - Granger

Developing keywords using sources of background info

Start by pulling out the key person, text, organization, or event from your research topic and searching for information on them. A simple keyword search in the library's Research Starter databases or on the internet can lead you to credible sources that contain the basic facts about that topic. If your topic can be referred to in multiple ways, try different searches for each.

For example:

If your topic is Magnolia Leaves: Poems, Mary Weston Fordham, you could search for Magnolia Leaves: Poems, and then for Mary Weston Fordham. You may need to search different databases, one for literature and then one for biographies.
If your topic is Mother Mary Lange, you could try searching for just Mary Lange to see if you get different results.

As you read your credible background sources, look for additional keywords about your topic. Feel free to use Wikipedia as a starting point to learn new terms or ideas and follow their citations.

Example: In the Wikipedia article for the Dutch East India Company, you can learn that this company was officially called the United East India Company. That's another phrase you could try searching!
Example: Toussaint L’ouverture is also known as Toussaint Louverture (with no apostrophe), François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, or Toussaint Bréda.

Research Starters and Background Info databases

These databases can help you refine your topic or find additional keywords. Other research starters can be found on the Library's databases page by selecting "Research starters" from the top left.

Choose a database that seems most relevant to your topic. Not all of these will work for all topics.

Biography In Context
A Gale database that covers historically significant figures to present-day newsmakers by offering authoritative reference content alongside magazine and journal articles, primary sources, videos, audio podcasts, and images.
It contains more than 650,000 biographical entries covering more than 400,000 international figures from all time periods and areas of study The database is continuously updated with full-text articles are drawn from hundreds of periodicals and newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, Daily Mail (London), and Globe and Mail (Canada).
Credo Reference
If you receive a "Connection refused by search.credoreference.com, please try again later" error message, please refresh your browswer to continue to Credo Reference.To avoid seeing this error, it is best to clear your browser's cache.

This is an online collection of over 950 titles with particular emphasis on subject encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, and reference handbooks as well as short reference videos, art images, and additional images across all subject areas. As subject coverage is diverse, this is a good place to begin a topic search before formal research.
Gale In Context: College
A Gale online resource that presents material on topics such as history, science, political and social issues and popular culture in support of students for papers, projects and presentations.
It is designed to reinforce critical thinking and problem solving skills. This database provides access to full-text newspapers and periodicals such as The Economist, The New York Times, National Geographic, Newsweek, Popular Science, and Smithsonian. This site places an emphasis on images, video and audio selections with archival film clips and broadcast video from sources such as BBC News, New York Times and NPR.
Literary Reference Center (EBSCO)
An EBSCO database that provides full text resources on thousands of authors and their works across literary disciplines and timeframes.
Includes biographies, plot summaries, informational texts on numerous literary genres, themes and forms, essays from leading publishers, literary magazines and book reviews. It also offers poems, short stories, classic texts, and author interviews. A good place for literature research with helpful research guides and a citation tool.
Modern World History Online
This database provides an overview of world history from the mid-15th century to the present.
It contains timelines, videos and slideshows, biographies, maps and graphs of historic explorations, empires and kingdoms, and wars plus links to many primary source documents such as constitutions and charters, weapons treaties, annexations and territorial agreements, and peace treaties and truces. A good place to search world history topics by region or era.
World History In Context
A Gale resource that provides a media rich overview of world history that covers the most-studied events, periods, cultures, civilizations, religions, conflicts, wars, ideologies, cultural movements, and people.
Covered topics reach back to the ancient world and extend to today’s current headlines to deliver a chronicle of the great cultures and societies that have formed the history of the human race. This site places an emphasis on images and video with access to more than 1,700 primary source documents as well as reference materials such as the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, Gale Encyclopedia of World History, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, and the Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. It also contains more than 2,000 maps and atlases, images, videos, and audio selections, from sources like archival newsreels, Critical Past, The History Channel, BBC News, and NPR with full-text coverage of periodicals and journals.

Reference Books

These virtual reference books and encyclopedias cover more targeted topics. Consider browsing through their tables of contents in addition to or instead of searching.

Great Events from History: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Events by Stuart Timmons; Eric C. Wat; Lillian Faderman; Yolanda Retter; Horacio Roque Ramirez
ISBN: 9781587652639

Publication Date: 2006-12-30

Chronicles important historical events that have identified, defined, and legally established the rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities.
Great Events from History: LGBTQ Events, 2nd edition by Salem Press
ISBN: 9781682175910

Publication Date: 2018-02-28

This new edition in the Great Events series chronicles important historical events that have identified, defined, and legally established the rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. In the last ten years alone, the world has witnessed significant events that have broken down barriers, both socially and legally, making enormous strides to end discrimination against the LGBTQ community. Just some of these events include: 2011 - ""Don't Ask, Don't Tell"" is repealed. 2012 - Barack Obama becomes the first sitting US president to publicly support the freedom for LGBT couples to marry. 2013 - The US Supreme Court rules that legally married same-sex couples are entitled to federal benefits 2015 - The Supreme Court rules that states cannot ban same-sex marriage. 2016 - Pentagon lifts the ban on transgender people serving openly in the US military.
Great Events from History: the 17th Century by Larissa Juliet Taylor, ed.
ISBN: 9781587652257

Publication Date: 2005-11-30

Included in this set are milestones in the geopolitics of the 17th century - from the Thirty Years' War to the War of the League of Augsburg, and from Europeans' arrival in Australia to the establishment of the Louisiana Colony.
Great Events from History: The 19th Century, 1801-1900 by John Powell
ISBN: 9781587652974

Publication Date: 2006-12-30

These four volumes provide coverage on the most important developments from 1801 through 1900, including the struggle to end slavery, the Boxer Rebellion in China, and the expansion of democracy in the Western world.
Great Lives from History: The 19th Century, 1801-1900 by John Powell
ISBN: 9781587652929

Publication Date: 2006-10-30

In this expanded four-volume set of the ""Great Lives from History"" series, the lives of important men and women in all areas of achievement who flourished between 1801 and 1900 are profiled in extended biographical essays. The lengthy essays provide in-depth coverage and annotated bibliographic resources with worldwide focus including strong coverage of non-Europeans and women. A total of 737 essays covering 757 major figures comprise the set, including 123 women. Among the 189 sidebars, quotations from primary source documents supplement the text throughout.
Milestone documents in world history: exploring the primary sources that shaped the world by Brian Bonhomme (Editor), Cathleen Boivin (Editor)
ISBN: 9780979775864

Publication Date: 2010

Key documents from all important world cultures are included, from the ancient Near East and ancient Egypt to the Greek and Roman Empires, medieval Islam, Renaissance Europe, and modern Africa and Asia. Constitutions, speeches, letters, acts, treaties, and legal cases are all covered.

Last Updated: Mar 28, 2025 11:23 AM
URL: https://library.raritanval.edu/granger102
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