History 97C-1

Unsolved Mysteries of the Early Modern European World

Winter 2007

Library Research Guide

 

Ellen Broidy

Librarian for Anglo-American History

ejbroidy@library.ucla.edu

825-1324

 

This guide is designed as an introduction to print ("real") and online ("virtual") resources critical for accessing materials about two great “mysteries” of the early modern world, the characterization of Richard III (hero, villain, something in-between) and the debate over the authorship of plays attributed to William Shakespeare. The guide is extremely selective, both in terms of the sources cited and the research strategies recommended. In other words, there is a lot more out there; hopefully, this will provide some useful suggestions for completing your first and final writing assignments.

 

I.         UCLA Library Website http://www.library.ucla.edu

 

The website/homepage is the front door to UCLA’s print and electronic collections as well as useful information about the Library and links to subject guides.

 

II.                Using the UCLA Online Catalog -  http:www.catalog.library.ucla.edu

 

The online catalog (or OPAC) provides access to UCLA’s vast collections. It lists our holdings by author, title, keyword(s) and Library of Congress Subject Headings.

 

 Here are some examples of search strategies for the first and last writing assignments:

 

1.  Richard III

 

            Author search:

 

            Search for other relevant works by authors on your syllabus (e.g., Pollard, A.J.)

 

Keywords:

 

King Richard III (add term sources to locate primary materials)

 

Library of Congress subject heading:

 

Great Britain – history – Richard III

 

England – civilization – 1066-1485

 

2. Shakespeare

 

            Title search:

 

Search for a title of a book on your syllabus (e.g., Who wrote Shakespeare), display the full record in the OPAC, click on appropriate subject heading(s).

Keyword:

 

Shakespeare authorship

 

Library of Congress Subject Headings:

 

Shakespeare, William 1564-1616 authorship

 

Remember, I said the guide was selective so experiment!

 

III.              Significant print collection

 

Statutes of the Realm

**K24 .G79s (double oversize; shelved at north end of the 4th floor)

 

Volumes contain all Acts of Parliament for England, Wales and Scotland from 1235 (the Magna Carta) to 2004. Vol. 10 is an alphabetical index and vol. 11 is a chronological index.

 

IV.              Digital Primary Sources

 

The UCLA Library provides access to extraordinary digital resources, some of which are digitized (and fully searchable) versions of important primary materials. Among the most useful for this course are:

 

Early English Books Online (EEBO)

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.

 

EuroDocs Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe: Selected Transcriptions, Facsimiles and Translations

 

British History Online

This is a gateway site to primary and secondary source materials on Medieval and Early Modern Britain. It is organized both topically and geographically. It includes primary source material published by the History of Parliament Trust, the Centre for Metropolitan History and the Institute of Historical Research, among others.

 

V.                 Secondary Sources

 

The assignment also requires you to produce a short bibliography of secondary works on your chosen topic.  Here, too, you will be able to make use of print and digital resources.

 

a.       Books and other print sources

 

For books (monographs), return to the UCLA Catalog and once again try using keyword and/or subject searching to identify relevant materials. If you have already read something by a particular author, you might want to do an author search to see if that author has written anything else on your topic.

 

b.      Scholarly articles

 

Historical Abstracts

The "world's leading historical bibliography" covers the history of the world from 1450 to the present.  Database contains citations to over 1,700 journals as well as books, and dissertations.

 

JSTOR

Full text of core scholarly journals from their beginning to approximately five years ago. Browsable by discipline and full-text searchable across all disciplines.

 

MLA International  Bibliography (Modern Language Association)

Indexes journals, dissertations, collected works in the fields of literature, language, linguistics, and folklore from 1923 to the present.

 

History Cooperative

Fully indexed, searchable digital versions of key journals in History, including American Historical Review, Journal of Social History, Journal of World History.

 

Project Muse

Project MUSE is a unique collaboration between libraries and publishers providing 100% full-text, user-friendly online access to over 300 high quality humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from 60 scholarly publishers. You can search by subject or browse a journal title.

 

Journals of interest in Muse include:

 

English Literary History (ELH)

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Journal of the History of Ideas

Shakespeare Quarterly

 

World Shakespeare Bibliography

 

Annotated entries for books, articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, reviews of productions, audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly and popular materials related to Shakespeare and published or produced since 1971.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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