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History - Home
The Skinny
Articles
Books
Dissertations
Reference Works - Europe and the World
- Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Print.
- Encyclopedia of African History. Online.
- Encyclopedia of the Age of Imperialism, 1800-1914. Print.
- Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. Online.
- Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350-2000. Print.
- Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. Online.
- Medieval Germany. Online.
- Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia. Online.
- Modern China: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Nationalism. Online.
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Print.
- Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance. 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.
By telephone: 705-675-4800, or toll free at 1-800-661-1058, ext. 2
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 ?
- ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials ?
- Bibliography of Native North Americans ?
- 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.
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 Discovery Portal (Digital collections of libraries, archives and museums from across Canada)
- Champlain Society Digital Collection The collection over 100 of the Champlain Society's volumes dealing with exploration and discovery over three centuries
- Early Canadiana Online (ECO) (Rare books, magazines and government publications from the 1600s to the 1940s)
- 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
- Our Roots Canadian local histories in French and English.
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, GMU)
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 (some parts subscription) A digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.
- Cambridge Digital Library
- CELT Corpus of Electronic Texts (University College Cork)
- Early English Books Online digital 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 Works published in the UK during the 18th century plus thousands from elsewhere
- Eighteenth Century [British] Journals. Parts I and II. This collection consists of rare newspapers and journals illuminating all aspects of 18th-century social, political and literary life. Individual series in the portal may be searched individually or concurrently. Series I contains periodicals from the Hope Collection of the Bodleian Library; Series II includes newspapers and periodicals from the Harry Ransome Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, and Series III draws on the British Newspaper Library and Cambridge University Library. Collectively, these materials offer effective coverage of the important issues of the period, and are invaluable to the study of all aspects of the 18th century, including crime, sport, advertising, the theatre; fashion; politics, revolution; agriculture; social issues, and society life.
- Empire Online Provides full text access to primary source documents from the British Empire between 1492 and 2007.
- Historic Hansard, 1803-2005. Digitised editions of Commons and Lords Hansard
- History of Parliament Online
- House of Commons Parliamentary Papers From 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688
- Mass Observation Online British Social History, 1937-1972
- Old Bailey Online A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court between 1674 and 1913)