LibGuides: HIST 103: Home

Search Strategy

Here is a good, basic formula for getting started with your research:

Begin by narrowing down your topic and developing an initial research question.
Use the keyword brainstorming worksheet to help you tweak your research question, identify keywords and related terms, and keep track of what you find.
Search in a library catalog (Summon, OBIS, OhioLINK and/or WorldCat) to find books and reference sources. These sources will:
- provide BACKGROUND and CONTEXT
- REVIEW and SUMMARIZE earlier work
- help you FOCUS your topic and
- provide CITATIONS to important books, journal articles, conference papers, interviews, etc.
Next, search research databases to find articles. The library has hundreds of databases; those listed on this guide are good places to begin.
You may also wish to use Google Scholar to search the Internet. This is a great tool for doing cited reference searches.

Summon

Search approximately 300 million books, scholarly articles, newspaper articles, data, digital audio, digital video, digital images, government documents and more. It draws from the library catalog (OBIS), many of the full text and article indexing databases, as well as digital repositories from colleges, universities, research centers, and other open-access archives on the web.

New York Times Pass

Institutional access to the NYTimes.com is provided to all current Oberlin College students, faculty, and staff.

If you are new to campus or have not previously registered for Oberlin's institutional NYTimes access

While on campus and connected to the Oberlin’s network or while using the VPN, visit accessnyt.com.
Create an account (claim a Pass) using your @oberlin.edu email address.
You have successfully claimed a Pass when you see the Start Your Access screen.

Once registered you’ll be able to access NYTimes.com by logging into your account from any computer/tablet/device you use.

Students: when registering you will be asked for your date of graduation from Oberlin; your status will stay active through that date, with no need to reactivate/re-authenticate.

Faculty/staff: you will have to re-authenticate annually, 364 days from when you last registered/authenticated for your NYTimes.com Pass. You may not reactivate your Pass until your previous access has expired.

To reactivate your Pass:

While on-site and connected to the Oberlin’s network (or while using the VPN from off campus) visit accessnyt.com.
Make sure you are logged into the NYTimes.com account with which you activated your last Pass.
You will be granted a new Pass and see the Start Your Access screen.
The new Pass will be good for 364 days.

Please contact the research help desk with any questions - reference@oberlin.edu.