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History - Home
Recommended Databases and Search Tools
Articles
Books
Dissertations
Reference Works - Europe and the World
- Dictionary of the Middle Ages. 1982. Print.
- Encyclopedia of African History. 2005. Online.
- Encyclopedia of the Age of Imperialism, 1800-1914. 2008. Print.
- Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. 2003. Online.
- Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350-2000. 2001. Print.
- Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. 2002. Online.
- Medieval Germany. 1992. Online.
- Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia. 2005. Online.
- Modern China: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Nationalism. 1998. Online/Print.
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004. Print.
- Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance. 2003. Online.
- Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World: 1750 to the Present. Online.
- Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation. Online.
- Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Online.
- The Routledge Dictionary of Modern British History. Online.
- Women in World History: A Biographical Enyclopedia. Online & Print.
Welcome
The purpose of this guide is to recommend print and electronic resources for research in History at the J.N. Desmarais Library. I also am available to assist in your research throughout the academic year. If you would like to arrange for an individual research consultation, please e-mail me with a requested date and time, and a description of your topic.
Introductions
History: A Very Short Introduction. Online. 2000
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. Print & online. 2002.
What is History? 40th anniversary edition. Print. 2001.
Reference works - North America
- The Canadian Encyclopedia. Online.
- Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Online.
- Encyclopedia of American Indian History. Print.
- Encyclopedia of American Urban History. Online.
- Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples. Print.
- Encyclopedia of US Labor and Working-Class History. Print.
- Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media. Print.
- Oxford Companion to American History. Print.
- Oxford Companion to Canadian History. Print.
- Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History. Online.
- Virtual Museum of New France. Online
- Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia. Print.
Subject Librarian
More Help
In the library: The Library User Assistance Desk to your immediate left as you enter the library is a good place to start.
By email: Email the librarian responsible for your faculty for a reply during regular working hours.
Research consultations: Book a research consultation with the librarian responsible for your faculty by Zoom or phone.
By chat: With our "Ask the Library" service. For more information, see About Ask a Librarian.
For Distance Education students: Telephone: 1-800-661-1058, ext. 2 or email: bibdesmaraislib@laurentian.ca
Books, Theses & Films
Requesting films not at Laurentian
Watmedia (Provincial DVD Catalogue). To order a film from Watmedia, contcat LUFilmLibrary@laurentian.ca and specify the date it is required.
Laurentian Theses
If you are looking for theses or dissertations produced by Laurentian graduates, check out our LUZONE Research Repository which has theses and dissertations of Laurentian masters and doctoral candidates since 2013.
Articles, Style Manual & Citation
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is the recommended manual for history. Also recommended is A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Dissertations (known as "Turabian" after its first author) which introduces students and researchers to Chicago. See our Citation Style Guide and this quick guide on the Chicago website. An excellent survey of styles, including Chicago, is available at Purdue University's Online Writing Lab.
Zotero
Zotero, a free, browser-based citation manager, is the recommended tool to collect, organize, cite and share your research.
Recommended Starting Databases
- America: History and Life ?
- Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America ?
- Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly (CPI.Q) ?
- Historical Abstracts ?
- Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance ?
- Labour Studies Index ?
- ViVa: A Bibliography of Women's History in Historical and Women's Studies Journals ?
Newspapers and Magazines
Information on current and historic newspapers and magazines is available in this research guide.
Related Databases
Primary Sources
Archive Collections
This University
Sudbury
Ontario
Canada
- Library and Archives Canada
- Archives Canada: Your Gateway to Canada's Past
- Canadian Museum of History
British Columbia
United States
North American Sources--General
- European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750
- Google Newspapers (Canadian and US)
- Hein Online Sessions Law Library This library contains the session laws of all 50 U.S. states as well as Canada, Australia, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and the D.C. Register. All states are current within 60 days of the printed publication, and all states are available back to inception!
Canada
General
- Canadian Censuses (1825-1921)
- Canada Yearbook Historical Collection, 1867-1967 (from Statistics Canada)
- Canadian Pamphlets and Broadsides (in U. of T.’s Fisher Library) Items printed in Canada, by Canadian authors, or about Canadian subjects, mainly of a non-literary nature, pre 1930.
- Canadiana Online
- Champlain Society Digital Collection The collection over 100 of the Champlain Society's volumes dealing with exploration and discovery over three centuries
- Empire Club Speeches
- Historical Debates of the Parliament of Canada 1867-c1995. Updated by Debates (Hansard) 1996-
- Linked Parliamentary Data Project (Hansard 1901- Present)
- Laurentian's Microfilm Collection Inventory
British Columbia
- British Colonist, 1858-1910 (Newspaper)
Prairies
- Peel's Prairie Provinces A resource dedicated to assisting researchers in their exploration of western Canadian history and the culture of the Canadian prairies. Contains both an online bibliography of books, pamphlets, and other materials related to the development of the Prairies, as well as a searchable full-text collection of many of these items.
Ontario
- Globe & Mail (Historical) (Newspaper)
- House Hansard (Debates of the Ontario Legislature, 1979-)
United States
- The American Presidency Project
- A Century of Lawmaking for the New Nation: US Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1875
- Chronicling America : Historic American Newspapers (1836-1922)
- The Library of Congress Digital Collections (curated materials from texts and images through AV)
- Making of America Project A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction available from Cornell University as well as the University of Michigan.
- The National Archives DocsTeach (primary sources collected by era)
- New York Times (Historical) 1851-2011
International
- Defining Gender. Source material from British and European archives (1450-1910)
- Internet History Sourcebooks: A collection of public domain document organized by the following sections: Ancient History, Medieval History, Modern History, Byzantine Studies plus Other History Sourcebooks: African, East Asian, Global, Indian, Islamic, Jewish, Lesbian and Gay, Science and Women's History
- Medieval Travel Writing The chief focus is on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China and South-East Asia.
- Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue. Printed record of the English-speaking world from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of the First World War.
- World History Matters. Center for History and New Media, George Mason University.
France
- Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert (in English)
- Gallica Digital Library (BNF) A massive and ongoing retrospective digitization project from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, of copyright-cleared titles (70 years and older, in accordance with French law) primarily in French but also including English, German, and other languages. Only limited text-recognition has been performed on the images in this collection, which is searchable down to the level of book title, and tables-of-content and index where present.
Great Britain
- British Hansard, 1803-2005
- British History Online. Founded by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliment Trust in 2003. Contains nearly 1,300 volumes. Some parts require a subscription.
- Cambridge Digital Library. Digitized material and research from the University of Cambridge and beyond.
- CELT Corpus of Electronic Texts. Irish history, politics and literature.
- Early English Books Online. Facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Contains every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom between 1701 and 1800.
- Eighteenth Century Journals. Bringing together rare journals printed between c1685 and 1835, thie resource illuminates all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life.
- Empire Online. Full text access to primary source documents from the British Empire between 1492 and 2007.
- History of Parliament Online
- House of Commons Parliamentary Papers.
- Mass Observation Online. Digitized archive from Mass-Observation, a UK social research organization founded in 1927 to document the activities of ordinary Britons in everyday life from 1937 through to the mid-1950s.
- Old Bailey Online. Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913. Contains 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.