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History Senior Thesis Resources

An evolving guide of resources for thesis writers in history

Searching for Books

  • Work on developing good keywords and search phrases related to your topic
  • Use Library of Congress subject headings in your searching. One of the easiest places to find LCSH is within catalog records in CLIO, by clicking on them, you can explore a range of materials across disciplines that can be useful to you research. There are also lists of official subject headings at the Library of Congress website.
  • Remember to incorporate boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT in your searching to refine your results by limiting, broadening, or omitting words or short phrases in your initial searches. 
  • Use the Virtual Shelf Browse tool in CLIO to get an idea of the materials shelved in the area of the stacks where your book is located

Call Numbers in History

Browse the Stacks!

Topics in the history discipline frequently, though not always, fall into the following classifications in the Library of Congress classification system. You can go to the library stacks and browse the shelves for books with call numbers beginning:

CB - History of Civilization
D - World History and History of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
E-F - History of the Americas
HC - Economic History and Conditions
HD - Industries. Land use. Labor.
HN - Social History and Conditions. Social Problems. Social Reform.
HQ - The Family. Marriage. Women.
HT - Communities. Classes. Races.
HX - Socialism. Communism. Anarchism.
JV - Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International Migration.
JZ - International Relations

Ebook Databases

This is a list of general ebook databases, it is not comprehensive. Keep in mind that you other general and subject area specific databases also contain ebooks and that there are many more subject-specific ebook databases available to you in CLIO. For an expanded list please visit the  A-Z databases list and narrow your search to ebooks. 

Books in the public domain

Public domain is a concept of copyright law that you find yourself faced with in the course of your work. Various types of materials exist within the public domain. Books published before 1923 specifically are in the public domain, which means that the intellectual property rights (i.e., copyright, trademarks, etc.) for the works have expired. You still need to cite them in your bibliography, but you can sometimes find freely available copies of them on the Internet and here are some resources for materials in the public domain.