Monmouth College Hewes Library research guides

CATA 101: Researching an event

Below are listed library resources and research strategies pertaining to the research of a specific event in time. This guide is tailored to those students who are summarizing the events of a year (or other timeframe), or locating a specific historical event.

Step one: what happened when?

The first step is to discover what major events occurred within your timeframe. You may be covering the year 1967, the decade of the 1980s, or your entire lifetime. The Library's Reference Collection (on the Main Level) will be your weapon of choice; almanacs and chronologies will be most useful, including:

Chronologies

Chronologies are timelines of world history, showing you when major events occurred in all spheres of human endeavor: politics, science, the arts, everyday life, and more.

  • The people's chronology REF D 11. T83 1992
  • Day by day: the sixties (2 vol.) REF D 11.6 P27 1983
  • Day by day: the seventies (2 vol.) REF D 11.7 L4 1988
  • Day by day: the eighties (2 vol.) REF D 11.8 M45 1995
  • Chronology of the modern world: 1763 to 1992 (2d ed.) REF D 209. W59 1994b
  • Columbia chronicles of American life 1910-1992 REF E 169.1 G667
  • American decades (9 vol.) REF E 169.12 A419 1994
  • Great dates in American history REF E 174.5 G722 1994
  • Worldmark chronology of the nations (4 vol.) REF G 133. W93 1999

Almanacs / other annual publications

Annuals such as encyclopedia updates and almanacs (they aren't just for farmers anymore) are useful sources of current statistical information, and often include a summary of events from the previous year.

  • Americana annual REF AE 5. A55
  • Britannica book of the year REF AE 5. E364
  • World almanac and book of facts REF AY 67. N5 W7
  • Facts on file yearbook REF D 410. F3

Step two: learning more about an event

Once you have identified several events and trends that occurred during your year, you can focus on several of the major or interesting ones. More research will be required to flesh out these events and trends.

Books in Hewes Library

The Hewes Library Catalog, allows you to locate any item in Hewes Library: our books, videos, CDs, and more.

We recommend a mixture of HIP searching and browsing. Use HIP to identify some promising titles, along with their call numbers. When you locate these books on the shelves, explore the surrounding titles too. Spend some time. Look around. You may find something much better than what you went up there for in the first place.

Online databases

Magazine / journal articles

  • Academic Search Premier
    EBSCOhost's academic-specific database indexes 8,000+ periodicals in all disciplines. 4,600 titles are full-text or full-image, and 3,500 are peer-reviewed. Coverage: generally since 1980, but back to 1965 for some titles. Title list.
  • America: History and Life
    Indexes and abstracts 450,000+ articles from 2,000+ international journals, focusing on the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Coverage: since 1964, with 16,000 entries added annually. Title list available in-product.

Newspaper articles

  • LexisNexis Academic
    Indexes, abstracts and provides some full-text access to 5,600+ news sources both national and international. Title list.
  • Newspaper Source
    Provides cover-to-cover full text of 23 national and international newspapers, and selected full text of 180 regional newspapers. Updated daily. Title list.
  • Chicago Tribune 1849-1984
    Provides article images (.PDFs) of nearly every page and article of the Chicago Tribune, from its first issue as the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1849, through 1984.
  • New York Times 1851-2001
    Provides article images (.PDFs) of nearly every page and article of the New York Times, from its first issue as the New York Daily Times in 1851, through 2001: 3.4 million pages in all.

Contemporary popular magazines

An important part of historical research is the gaining of contemporary information: what was important? Who felt that was important? Some events gain importance over the years, and others don't seem like such a big deal twenty years later. To get the view from ground zero, check out some contemporary magazines. Here is a list of titles that may be helpful, and the format in which they can be found at Hewes Library:

  • Christian century (print and online) 1956 - present
  • Congressional quarterly weekly (print and online) 1975 - present
  • Harper's (print and online) 1942 - present
  • Newsweek (print and online) 1967 - present
  • Scientific American (print and online) 1919 - present
  • Time (print and online) 1967 - present

Human resources: your local librarians

Hopefully, the ideas and resources above will help you to get started in your research. If you have any questions, comments or difficulties, please contact a librarian at the Reference Desk: (309) 457-2301. Ask early and ask often: the more time that you give us to help, the more we can do for you.

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