Orienting Yourself and Anchoring Your Work: Strategies We Recommend

1. Build on a Lead You Have Already: The 'Item in Hand' Approach.

Key Resource: Google Scholar

Why:  You already know the value of examining footnotes and bibliographies for related scholarship or for identifying primary source material. 

Sometimes, though, you want to look beyond the item in hand -- not look at its antecedents but at its intellectual descendants -- the scholarship produced later and after, that has cited your item in its bibliography and footnotes. Following citation trails (Cited By) is an essential scholarly practice and Google Scholar is excellent for this kind of work. 

2. Check for a subject bibliography as a way to direct your reading.

Key Resource: Oxford Bibliographies Online

Why: Selective rather than exhaustive and combining a bit of description with a little bit of evaluation, OBO entries help you identify some of the most important and influential scholarship on a broad social, political, cultural or interdisciplinary disciplinary topic.

Your very focused research question may not have a bibliography, but its larger dimensions - or its theoretical implications or something intellectually "adjacent" to it are likely to have some representation. 

(Often, though, the issue in information-seeking isn't scarcity of material but overabundance. OBO entries can help you solve the dilemma of knowing who to read first, what to read for, or simply which voices in the conversation you should give some fuller attention to.)

Example Entries: 

3. Deploy Language Strategically to Surface Backgrounds, Contexts, and Agenda-Setting Materials

Key Resource: HOLLIS 

Examples:

  • history is a way to get at full-length studies not just of countries or events, but also of ideas and concepts and broad subjects. 
  • historiograph*  can surface materials that address and synthesize approaches historians have used over time. 
  • handbook or companion: this is a key academic format, regardless of discipline and denotes a published book that republishes ground-breaking work, or commissions scholarly essays that summarize standard approaches and important or consensus views. Other terms to try: reader or anthology or even essays.
  • debate or controversy (or controvers* to pick up variants), or contested or disputed often help you surface works that identify the "stakes" of a particular argument, action, phenomenon, etc. So will words like proponents, advocates or their opposites: opponents or critics or challenge*. Watch for insider language as you read.  For instance, political scientists favor the term puzzle.
  • theory or theoretical or philosophy or philosophical might help you find works in larger contexts or examined via a "lens" of some kind.  You can truncate these terms, too, by the way: theor*, philosoph*

 

Searching Beyond HOLLIS, JSTOR, and SCHOLAR

Historical Abstracts with Full Text 

The gold standard for world history, 1450-present. The companion database for North America (US and Canada).

Bibliography of British and Irish History 

Considered the most comprehensive source of secondary literature on British  and Irish history, from the Roman period to the present.

Social Science Premium Collection

An essential database for Social Studies concentrators, and one you should definitely check for political, legal, and sociological dimensions of your topics. It can feel large -- like HOLLIS --because it looks across social science disciplines, but it has a robust set of filters (again like HOLLIS) which you can use to add depth, nuance, precision to a search. 

Finding Primary Sources in HOLLIS

Remember that our catalog is old -- in the best sense of the word. You'll find a treasure trove of primary source documents there from all periods, in all languages, and from most parts of the world.

Some tips:

THINK ABOUT TIME FRAME. 

One easy way to find texts and other items that are roughly contemporaneous with your course readings is to modify a HOLLIS search you've run, using the date limiters that appear on the right hand side of the screen.

LOAD YOUR LINGUISTIC DICE.

​Adding the word sources to a keyword search can sometimes be useful in surfacing republished collections of original documents and other primary materials. Reader, anthology, documents or documentary also can work well. ​

Remember, however, that this technique presupposes that someone has done the work of identifying, selecting, describing, and otherwise curating a set of materials. Major figures or groups, and major historical moments and concepts are more likely to generate this publication type. 

THINK IN TERMS OF GENRE.

​Instead of adding a general word like sources, you can seek primary materials in HOLLIS in other ways.  For instance: you can run your keyword search and then scan the  Form/Genre filter on the right side of the results screen. 

Form/genre is commonly where you'll see primary sources of these types: correspondence (the official way of describing letters); diaries; exhibitions (typically designating the catalog of a museum show) ; speeches; interviews; memoirs; notebooks; personal narratives; pictorial works (a traditional way of identifying a collection of images); maps; photographs.

In HOLLIS, the form/genre label --powerful as it is -- has been inconsistently applied  So also tconsider adding genre terms to a straight keyword search. 

SCOUR FINDING AIDS.

​Manuscripts that are held by Harvard libraries, like Houghton, will usually have an online finding aid linked to their HOLLIS records. Finding aids are detailed item-by-item descriptions of everything in a particular collection. Typically, finding aids will also provide contextual information, like biography, scope/content notes, preferred citation methods, etc. Finding aid URLs appear below the title in a HOLLIS manuscript record. 

THINK BACKWARD FROM A SECONDARY SOURCE.

​Remember that the secondary literature you find  (scholarly journals, other biographies, and books) will themselves be built on primary source materials.  Canvass the bibliographies and footnotes. If the primary documents exist in a published form (rather than being unique to an archive you may not have access to), consider tracking them down at Harvard (if you're close to Cambridge) or (if you're not) at a library near you.

Digitized and Online Primary Source Collections

Themed collections

Current and historical news sources

News footage/reels

Declassified, governmental, and intergovernmental documents 

  • DNSA (Digital National Security Archive): Declassified government documents covering U.S. policy toward critical world events – including their military, intelligence, diplomatic and human rights dimensions – from 1945 to the present. Each collection is assembled by foreign policy experts and features chronologies, glossaries, bibliographies, and scholarly overviews.
  • U.S. Declassified Documents Online:This database brings together the most sensitive documents from all the presidential libraries and numerous executive agencies in a single, easily searchable database, including: intelligence studies, policy papers, diplomatic correspondence, cabinet meeting minutes, briefing materials, and domestic surveillance and military reports.
  • FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States): produced by Department of State's Office of the Historian, this series is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activities. 
  • United Nations Digital Library
  • UK Parliamentary Papers
  • ProQuest Congressional (for U.S. hearings and committee work)

Tools for finding archival collections

  • Archive Grid: a site for identifying collections in museums, libraries, and other institutions
  • WorldCat: a catalog of library catalogs with global reach

Two databases you should always try


     

Getting Around Paywalls on the Web

  • Set up a Check Harvard Library Bookmark. It works like a browser extension that you click on when you need it. Directions are available here: https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/check-harvard-library-bookmark.
  • Tweak your Google Scholar Settings: One simple change can turn Scholar into what's effectively a Harvard database -- with links to the full-text of articles that the library can provide. Here's what to do:  Look to the left of the GS screen and click on the "hamburger" (); then click on .  Look for "Library Links."  Then type Harvard into the search box and save your choice.  
  • And when all else fails, remember that you can cut and paste the title and put it into HOLLIS to double-check.  If we don't have it, you'll be prompted to request that we get it for you.

Zotero: Looking Toward the Thesis

This free, open source citation management tool makes the process of collecting and organizing citations, incorporating them into your paper, and creating a bibliography or works cited page stress-free and nearly effortless.

It's worth the small investment of time to learn Zotero. A good guide, produced by Harvard librarians, is available here: http://guides.library.harvard.edu/zotero.

Searching Non-English and Non-Roman Materials in HOLLIS

NON-ENGLISH

There are times when you'll want to limit your search results in HOLLIS by languages.  If you feel most comfortable reading scholarship in English (or if you don't work in a  language other than English), the easiest way to eliminate foreign language results is simply by using the LANGUAGE FILTER, which displays on the right side of hour HOLLIS results screen. 

Sometimes  though, students want results in a language than HOLLIS. You can use the filter post-search, of course to drill a linguistic set. 

You can also rig up a search from the start that. Here's how: 

  • From the HOLLIS advanced search screen, change the field in the first box from keyword to CODE: Marc language. 
  • Enter the first 3 (English letters) of the language you want to search in -- e.g.,  spa  for Spanish language (not esp). 
  • On the next line(s), add your keyword terms and run the search.

Click the image below to see this trick in action. 

image of the advanced search visualizing the code:marc language search combined with keywords.

 

NON-ROMAN