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HIST 470 (Dr. Stephan)

This guide lists resources that will be useful to students researching Civil War topics for Professor Scott Stephan's HIST 470 course during the Fall 2019 semester.

Finding letters, diaries, and other primary sources published in book format

To find primary sources that have been published as books, it helps to know a few key search terms: 

  • "Correspondence." Use this term to find letters and other forms of correspondence. 
  • "Diaries." Use this term to find diaries and journals. 
  • "Biography." Use this term to find biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. 
  • "Sources." For historical documents. 

Use these as subject terms in your searches. Wherever you look for books, there will likely be an advanced search page with pull-down menus that will let you change from a default option like "all fields" or "keywords" to "subject" or "subject terms." 

Combine these terms with others that reflect your research, for instance the name of a historical figure or event. 

The Ball State University Libraries offer two resources for book searches: 

  • WorldCat. WorldCat combines the holdings of our library and tens of thousands of others. Items not available at Ball State can be requested via interlibrary loan. WorldCat's search page has a feature that will let your restrict your searches to Ball State, if you like. 
  • OneSearch. You can also search for books in our collection via OneSearch. It will help to use "book/ebook" option in the content type filter, as OneSearch contains a variety of other materials too.