Techniques for Situating Sources in the Context of Other Scholarship
- Find scholarly background articles on the topic (encyclopedias, handbooks, etc.) Check the resources classified as "Background" on the databases list
- See if there is an Oxford Bibliography or Annual Review (most likely to be successful if your topic has a social science methods connection) on your topic
- Review historiography or literature review sections of journal articles and books
- Consult book reviews
- Find sources located in the endnotes and bibliography from works you've already identified
- Use cited reference searching in Google Scholar or Web of Science to find works that have cited works you've already identified
- Use a broad search tool like Summon or Google Scholar to look for your topic and keywords like "historiography" or "literature review" or "bibliography."
- Find a dissertation on the topic.
Bibliographies, Encyclopedias & Lit Reviews
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Oxford Research Encyclopedias This link opens in a new window
Designed to be an authoritative resource of reference content in a wide array of academic fields, including the humanities, social sciences, and science.
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Cambridge Histories This link opens in a new windowHistorical 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.
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Oxford Bibliographies This link opens in a new window
Authoritative guide to reliable peer-reviewed resources and scholarship in African Studies, Buddhism, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Latin American Studies, Linguistics, Medieval Studies, Political Science, and Renaissance and Reformation. Bibliographies are selectively curated and annotated by expert academics and offer high-level overviews that provide non-experts with a point of entry into unfamiliar areas of study.
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Bloomsbury Cultural History This link opens in a new window
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.
Dissertations
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I This link opens in a new window
Citations and abstracts for dissertations and theses on all subjects from around the world. Previews and full text available for some titles.
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Open Access Theses & Dissertations This link opens in a new windowFreely available masters theses and doctoral dissertations from around the world.
Find Book Reviews with Search.Libraries
Visit Search.Libraries to find book reviews. From your results page filter to resource type - book review.