LibGuides: Background and Reference: Home

What is a background source?

Background sources are written for a general audience and are intended to give an overview of a topic, fill gaps in the reader’s knowledge, and provide context for deeper understanding. Examples include Wikipedia, introductory textbooks, and reference works such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, and handbooks.

They can be a useful place to start your research and assist in selecting a topic for a research project, locating basic information and key facts, defining important words and concepts, and getting suggestions for additional sources to consult.

Typical characteristics of background sources:

intended to be informative
provide context, background, or summary information
present shared information and established facts; information is uncontested
offer suggestions for additional sources of information on the topic

Background and Reference Databases

Artifex Press
Digital catalogues raisonnés, which are definitive, comprehensive, and annotated compilations of all the known works of an artist. Catalogs are updated regularly for provenance, ownership, exhibition, literature, and publication history. Also includes documentary materials that round out artists’ work and life, such as essays, audio files, and time-lapse videos of artists explaining their techniques. Zoom technology allows viewers to examine art works in close detail, replicating the experience within a gallery.
Biography Reference Bank
Biographical information about over 500,000 people; includes images, full-text articles, and abstracts of biographical profiles, feature articles, interviews, essays, book reviews, performance reviews, speeches, and obituaries.
Bloomsbury Cultural History
Authoritative survey of cultural history topics. Each subject is looked at in Antiquity, the Medieval Age, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Age of Empire and the Modern Age and thematic coverage is consistent across all periods so that users can either gain a broad overview of a period or follow a theme through the ages.
Cairn.info
Cairn.info provides access to 600+ French language publications in the arts, humanities, social sciences, education, and public health, including books, journals, magazines, and encyclopediae. Access to abstracts and indexing is available for all resources; open, full-text access is available for many resources.
Cambridge Histories
Historical overviews and contextual essays from leading scholars on topics across a broad range of time periods and geographies. Chapters can be downloaded as PDFs and are printable.
Chicago Defender (1909 - 2010)
This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. Coverage: 1909 - 2010
Digital Dictionary of Buddhism
A compilation of Buddhist terminologies, temples, schools, persons etc that are found in East Asian Buddhist canonical sources. Since much of what East Asian Buddhists have written about is the Buddhism of India, Central Asia, and Tibet, the content of this database/translation glossary is pan-Buddhist in character. Dictionaries and other reference sources are in many different Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan).
Envirofacts
Search for environmental information by topic or location.
Environmental Conservation Online System (ECOS)
Endangered and threatened plants and animals are listed by region of the U.S.A. Information provided includes species' life history, habitat, recovery plan, resources for more data, images, video, audio clips, nd more. State and County lists are included.
Europa World
Covers political, economic, and historical information, including statistics, for over 250 countries and territories.
Gale Literature
Full-text database that includes author biographies and work overviews, literary criticism, and indexed books, essays, and articles on world literature, and well as full-text of poems, short stories, novels, essays, speeches and plays.
Gale Virtual Reference Library
Handbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias in a wide range of subject areas, including Arts, Biography, Business, Education, Environment, History, Law, Literature, Medicine, Multicultural Studies, Nation and World, Religion, Science, and Social Sciences.
Grove Music Online
Online music encyclopedia, offering comprehensive coverage of music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship.
History Vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle
Consists of manuscript and archival collections digitized in partnership and from a wide variety of archival institutions. This subscription provides access to a curated collection of NAACP Papers, federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers regarding the 20th Century Black Freedom Struggle.
Hobbies & Crafts Reference Center
Offers detailed "how-to" instructions and creative ideas to meet the interests of virtually every hobby enthusiast. Full text is provided from leading hobby and craft magazines, including Bead & Button, Creative Knitting, FineScale Modeler, Quilter's World, and many more. Database features include: full text for more than 1,200 magazines and books; access to more than 720 videos; over 160 hobby profiles; more than 3,000 recipes from various health organizations.
Leftists Newspapers and Periodicals (1845 - 2015)
ProQuest Leftist Newspapers and Periodicals is a collection of English-language publications spanning beyond the 20th century (1845-2015) covering Communist, Socialist and Marxist thought, theory and practice. Issues covered include workers’ rights, organized labor, labor strikes, Nazi atrocities, McCarthyism’s rise after WWII, Civil Rights, and modern-day class struggles. This collection includes 145 titles with over 150,000 digitized pages. Coverage: 1845 - 2015.
Literary Reference Source
Information on thousands of authors and works, including: plot summaries, synopses and work overviews; literary criticism; author biographies, interviews and images; and book reviews.
Middle English Compendium
Middle English Compendium has been designed to offer easy access to and interconnectivity between three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary, a HyperBibliography of Middle English prose and verse, based on the MED bibliographies, and an associated network of electronic resources, including a large collection of Middle English texts. Hypertext links offer quick connections between, e.g., an MED citation, bibliographical information about its source, and an electronic version of the source, if one is included in the collection.
Oxford Art Online
Best Bet
A suite of four comprehensive art encyclopedias. Useful for scholarly overviews and excellent bibliographies.
Oxford Dictionaries (French)
Authoritative and comprehensive English bilingual dictionary online for French.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The online version of the 60-volume print reference set Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). Provides essays about the lives of noteworthy and influential men and women who shaped all aspects of Britain's past, from the fourth century BC to the year 2001. Over 50,000 deceased individuals from all walks of life are included, along with over 10,000 portrait illustrations. It includes not just the great and good, but people who have left a mark for any reason, good, bad, or bizarre. In addition to native Britons, the work includes people born abroad who spent a significant part of their lives in Britain, visitors who were important observers of British life, Britons who lived in Europe and played a significant part in the lives of their new countries, British-born people active in the empire, along with critics of imperial rule, and Americans from first settlement to independence. Dates of Coverage: 4th c. B.C.E. -- 2001
Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is a guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books. The OED covers words from across the English-speaking world, from North America to South Africa, from Australia and New Zealand to the Caribbean. It also offers the best in etymological analysis, listings of variant spellings, and shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet.The online OED corresponds to the Second Edition (20 volumes in print).
Oxford Handbooks Online
An Oxford Handbook advances an original conception of the field through a definitive collection of essays, each of which provides a survey of the current state of scholarly debate and an original argument about the future direction of research.

Note: Oberlin users can access economics, politics, and free content only.
Oxford Reference
Featured
Hundreds of dictionaries, general reference, language reference, and subject reference works from Oxford University Press.
Oxford Research Encyclopedias
Designed to be an authoritative resource of reference content in a wide array of academic fields, including the humanities, social sciences, and science.
PLANTS Database
Standardized information about vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S., from the US Dept of Agriculture.
Portail Persée
Portail Persée is a French-language resource providing open, full-text access to French scholarly publications (journals, books, conference proceedings, serial publications, primary sources, etc.) in the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences.
Roget's International Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases
Roget's International Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. Peter Roget's classic structure coupled with Mawson's modernization, with 85,000 hyperlinked cross-references; thus fulfilling their goal of "each word being related to its neighbors and each part to the whole." Additionally, over 2,900 proverbs and quotations from classic and modern authors illustrate the 1,000-plus entries.
Routledge Handbooks
Up-to-date overviews of classic and current research across the Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, Psychology, Engineering, and Built Environment from Routledge and CRC Press.
Routledge Resources Online: The Renaissance World
New
Peer-reviewed scholarship that supports teaching and learning about the Renaissance from a global perspective. Detail entries provided background and context on topics from subject areas, including Art and Architecture, Economy and Commerce, Environment, Literature and Drama, Politics and Governance, Religion, and Society.
Sage Knowledge
Dictionaries, encyclopedias, guides and handbooks from a range of social science fields.
Science Reference Source
K-12 focused science reference database covering biology, chemistry, earth & space science, environmental science, health & medicine, history of science, life science, physics, science & society, science as inquiry, scientists, technology and wildlife.
Very Short Introductions
Provides concise introductions to a diverse range of subjects, written by experts in the field who combine facts, analysis, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make challenging topics highly readable. Subject categories include: Arts and Humanities, Law, Medicine and Health, Science and Mathematics, and Social Sciences.
World Book Advanced
More than 1.3 million pages of primary source documents, books, documents, selections fully integrated with the encyclopedia content. Research and teaching tools include timelines, citation builder, and saved research. Part of the World Book Web suite of online research tools that includes encyclopedia articles, primary source collections, educator tools, student activities, pictures, audio, and video, complemented by current periodicals and related Web sites. WBW uses a powerful search engine that integrates encyclopedia articles, media, primary source documents, e-books, maps, and more in a single search. Other special features: Timeline builder; Citation builder; Classroom activities, lesson plans, and discussion guides for every grade level; and Content correlated to state and provincial standards.