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Loyola University Chicago Libraries

History

Locate core research resources in history

HIST 397: Honors Colloquium: Historical Research

This course focuses on primary and secondary source-based research.

Getting Started: Searching the Library Catalog

The library catalog is a great place to start your research. Here are some tips to make searching more effective:

  1. Make sure that you sign in. This allows you to see your access options for library materials, save searches, set notifications on saved searches, and save items to your favorites.
  2. Use Boolean operators if you're doing a keyword search. For example:
    • Civil War AND slavery AND soldiers - the catalog will return only materials that mention all three search terms.
    • Revolution AND (French OR American) - the catalog will broaden your search to include materials that discuss either the French Revolution or the American Revolution alongside other instances of the term 'Revolution.'
    • Reformation AND England NOT Henry VIII - the catalog will reduce your search results by returning materials that mention Reformation and England but do not mention Henry VIII.
    • Make sure that you enter Boolean operators in all caps: AND, OR, NOT
  3. Use truncation and/or wildcards. For example:
    • Entering the search term coloniz* will return results for colonize, colonized, colonization, colonizer, etc.
    • Entering the search term wom?n will return results for woman, women
  4. Group your terms using parenthesis to do multiple searches at once. For example:
    • ("18th century" OR "19th century") AND "industrial revolution"
  5. Narrow your results to a specific genre, place, or time. For example:
    • "World War II" AND Europe
    • "civil rights" AND "United States"
    • "medieval" AND "architecture" AND "12th century"

How To Read Call Numbers

This is an explanation of how books with Library of Congress call numbers are sorted.  This gives a better understanding of Library of Congress shelving.

  1. The first line is always a letter line and is filed alphabetically.
  2. The second line is a whole number line and is filed numerically.
  3. Sometimes the second line has a decimal and continued on the same line or the third line.  Anytime you see a decimal point, always take each space separately.
  4. Other lines may include volume numbers, copy numbers, dates, or a combination.
  5. No dates come before a date.

Ten Library of Congress call numbers in order on a shelf. On the first line, 'LA' before 'LB'. On the second line, '2327' before '2328'. On the combination letter number line 'B' before 'C'. For the numbers after the letter on the combination line, '.55' before '.554' and '.554' before '.63'. For the last line, '1987' before '1991'.

Primary-Source Materials at Local Institutions

As a student at Loyola, you have access to a wide range of wonderful library and archival collections in Chicago. These catalogs allow you to search across institutions to locate primary-source materials:

These local research institutions have strong collections of materials on Chicago history and more:

Let me know if you have questions, and enjoy exploring the rare and unique materials at these institutions!

Choosing a History Database

Select a history-focused research database using the lists linked below:

Databases by Region

Databases by Period

General Databases

Newspapers, Databases, and other Collections

Images printed in Newspapers and Periodicals, as well as other audio and video recordings.