Film & HistoryHIST 133J: Creation of the Am. PoliticianHIST120: Introduction to Environmental HistoryHIST134: History of American Indian LawHIST166J: Asian American WomenHistory 127J: Witchcraft and Society in Colonial AmericaProfessor Beverly Gage: Liberalism/Conservatism & Communism/AnticommunismSlave South, 1650-1865
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U.S. History and American Studies 

A guide for conducting U.S. History and American Studies research at the Yale University Library.
Last update: Nov 23rd, 2009 URL: http://guides.library.yale.edu/ushistory  Print Guide  RSS Updates

History 127J: Witchcraft and Society in Colonial America             Print Page
  
 

Two Essential Books on Research

  • The Craft of Research - Booth, Colomb, Williams
    ISBN/ISSN: 0226065669
    This book walks you through all the steps of a research project. Especially helpful, I think, is chapter 3, in which the authors discuss how to formulate a research topic and explain the all important "so what?" question. The link above takes you to an e-book version of the 2nd edition (in which the "so what?" question is discussed on page 49).
  • The Chicago Manual of Style
    ISBN/ISSN: 0226104036
    This is the book that students ought to consult for citation formats for history papers. The library subscribes to an online version, which you can access at the link above. The section you're probably looking for begins as 17.210
 

Great Reference Books

 
 

Step Two: Get Started on Your Literature Review

Databases in order to find scholarly articles relevant to your research:

  • JSTOR  Five years out-of-date on average, but still invaluable.  Use the book reviews to quickly get a sense of a scholarly conversation.
  • America History and Life  American History and Life is fabulous. It indexes far more journals than JSTOR, and also includes books and dissertations. It's the essential database for historical literature reviews.  Also try this trick.  When in the EBSCO interface, click "choose databases" and search all databases simultaneously.
 

Primary Source Databases

  • Salem Witchcraft Papers  
    Collection of primary source documents from the Salem Witch Trials.
  • America's Historical Newspapers  
    A large collection of digital newspapers from the 18th through 19th centuries.
  • Early American Imprints  
    Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 has been hailed as the definitive resource for researching every aspect of 17th- and 18th-century America. This digital collection contains virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America over a 160-year period.
  • Burney Collection (17th & 18th Century British Newspapers)  
    The largest single online collection of English news media from the 17th and 18th centuries
  • Early English Books Online  
    Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains 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 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.
  • Pennsylvania Gazette  
    A digital archive of the Pennsylvania Gazette, from 1728-1800.
 

U.S. History Librarian

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