History: Research Paper Basics: HIST 194

Before you start your research, take the time to jot down all the things you already know about your organization, including:

• The organization's name
• What do you know about what they do?
• Do you know how long this organization has been around?
• What have you heard about this organization? Where did that information come from?

Starting at sandiego.edu/library

Search for:

• Your organization's name, by acronym and full name, and any alternative or prior names your organization might have
• Names of important individuals associated with your organization
• Major events or initiatives associated with your organization

Narrow to peer-reviewed to see peer-reviewed articles, but also keep in mind that biographies are a great source of information about the people behind major organizations, especailly organizations with a long history.

Visit the organization's website to view the way they present themselves to the outside world and to learn more about them:

• Look for an About Us page for historical information
• Are there founders named or important people working with this organization?
• When was the organization created, and what is their self-stated purpose?

Spend time with the website before another round of brainstorming:

• Who or what do you want to know more about?
• Are there questions you have about the organization, their people, or their work, that the website doesn't answer?

Credo Reference is a huge database of encyclopedias and dictionaries and other reference materials, and has features to help you make connections between people and organizations.

Click into the database and select Visual Exploration from the landing page.

Enter people's names, events, organization names, into the search box to see possible connections.

Choose a subject specific database from the Databases A-Z list linked from the library home page if your research into an organization is taking you down a particular disciplinary road. For example:

• Are you researching an organization with a many-storied past? A History database might be helpful!
• Is your organization involved in educational initiatives? Try an Education database!
• Does your organization have a focus on mental health? PsycInfo and SOCIndex are great resources for information on psychology and sociology

Choose different subjects from the dropdown menu on the Databases A-Z page to see the ones recommended by Copley librarians.

Read the annotations to help you decide whether to use them, then click through to try it out.

Use the following questions to help focus your research questions before delving deeper into your organization:

• Who?
  • Are there specific people you can name and focus your attention on?
  • Is there a specific population you might address? Consider age, gender or sexuality, race or ethnicity, social or economic groups, and other ways humans might group other humans
  • What is the organization's work?
  • Whom does it affect?
  • Identify stakeholders and their opinions
• When?
  • Is there a time period or era you might narrow to?
  • Century. Use the phrasing 21st century / 20th century / 19th century (etc) to search for materials about a specific century
  • Decade. Use the phrasing 1960s / 2010s (etc) to search for material related to a decade
• Where?
  • Where did your organization begin? End? Where do they do their work?
  • Consider all the ways to geographically delineate the world:
    • Country, Region, State, City, Neighborhood, etc
• How?
  • How does one aspect of your topic affect another?
  • How do other researchers view your topic? How might you incorporate their views to make your own research stronger and richer?
• What? Why?
  • What is the issue or problem you're addressing? Is there something to pinpoint and solve, or are you uncovering an issue?
  • Why should your exploration, research, writing, and presentation matter to others?