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Nations and Nationalism in World History

Tips for finding primary and secondary sources

Find books (and other material) by searching WorldCat@SU II

Create a list of search terms for your topic then use WorldCat@SU to search the catalog and multiple article databases at once.

Tip #1:  When you find a good book, open View Description (located in the full record) to find the subject headings, and use relevant subject links to locate more material on your topic.

Tip #2: Add the word "sources" to a subject search to find primary sources. For example: nationalism sources OR germany sources OR easter rising sources.

Other keywords that help identify primary sources are: letters | correspondence | diaries | documents | interviews | photographs | manuscript | speeches | notebooks | narratives | oral history

Tip #3: Identify key individuals within nationalist movements and search for books by or about them.

Find primary sources online

Tip #1: To find primary sources online, construct a keyword search related to your topic with terms such as japan nationalism sources OR europe history documents. Here are a few sites to get you started:

Tip #2: Identify key individuals within national movements and search for documents, speeches, etc. by them.

Find journal articles

Academic Search Complete is a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database. Start your research for articles here!  Tip #1: When you view a full record for an article, read the abstract (summary) to quickly decide if it is useful for your research.  Tip #2: Use the subject links from the full record to find additional articles.

Explores the independence movements of southern African nations through this digitized collection of thousands of documents and other primary sources.

JSTOR is a multi-disciplinary database which provides scholarly, full-text content. While coverage goes all the way back to the 19th century, be aware there is no current content for many journals. 

Project MUSE is another multi-disciplinary, full-text, scholarly journal source.

Search strategy in Academic Search Complete

In Academic Search Complete, use the drop down menus next to the Search box to construct your search like the example in the box below. If you are searching on a mobile device, you will need to switch to Full Site view in order to access this option. Limit your results to Academic Journals in order to identify scholarly sources.