Research and Writing in the Disciplines

Research Sources for History & Anthropology

Subject Databases

Both disciplines, history and anthropology, are well covered in the following databases

Primary sources:

Many primary sources for history are becoming available on the web in digitized collections such as the Library of Congress's American Memory site.

Writing

While History and Anthropology are both Social Sciences and hang a lot of importance on the same values of the Social Sciences, they also have expectations of their own that must be considered when writing for these fields. Here is what readers in these fields are looking for:

• Analysis and inclusion of primary sources. These fields rely really heavily on understanding what was happening at a given time, so materials from the time should be included in writing unless your teacher specifies something different.
• Situating a topic in the time it happened. In these fields you should always try to imagine and convey the issues of the cultural situation surrounding the event.
• Multiple disciplines for evidence. In both of these fields you are expected to draw on scholarship from other disciplines to help build a complete sense of an issue.