HIST 497/597: Selected Topics in European History (Malone)

This guide will help students gather sources to cite in their "Day in the Life" diary assignments in Dr. Malone's HIST 497/597 course. It provides links to resources where students can find secondary scholarly articles, books, and primary sources about Great Britain during the World Wars. 

Use the links on the left side of the guide to find lists of resources divided into separate pages for different kinds of information. Many of the resources are part of the University Libraries electronic collections; if you are working at a computer off campus, you will likely be prompted to log into them with your Ball State username and password. Some resources in this guide are freely available on the Internet. 

It is often useful, before you being searching for information, to think of potential search terms. Most library resources will not work well if you type a question or sentence into their search interface. Rather, they work well when you use individual words or very short phrases. 

You can usually begin by identifying your topic's main ideas; they will become your first search terms. In the case of your "Day in the Life" assignment, you might want to think about the attributes of the character you are creating: Their role in the war, their age and sex, the social class they belong to, the experiences or events you plan to depict, where they will be, etc. You can also think of synonyms for those initial terms, so that you will have alternate search terms ready when you begin looking for information. 

Imagine a classmate whose character will be an air raid warden in London during the Blitz. As they prepare to look for sources, they might identify search terms lie these: 

• Air raid wardens, ARP wardens, Air Raid Precautions, Civil Defense Service, civil defense workers
• Blitz, bombings, air raids, attacks, Battle of Britain 
• London, cities, urban, England, Britain, United Kingdom 

You might notice the terms in each group are not all one-to-one interchangeable. Some are more or less specific than others. This is not only fine, but can be helpful. Alternating between words that are more or less specific can help you narrow or broaden your searches, as needed.