HTST303

A bibliography is a list of books, articles, and other sources relevant to the research topic at hand.  In addition to the bibliographies found at the end of  books, journals and encyclopedia entries, there will often be be separately published bibliographies on your topic. 

For many historical topics there are published annotated bibliographies.  In addition, the bibliographies in theses or dissertations are generally current close to their date of publication and the annotations provide insight into the use of a particular source.

To find published bibliographies you will do one of two things:

• do a subject keyword search of the catalogue using "bibliography" AND "history" AND a keyword related to your subject ( i.e. medieval), or
• if you already have a relevant book look it up in the library catalogue, get its subject terms and do a subject browse, "bibliography" will be added to the subject term for any published bibliographies, for instance: United States--History, Military--20th Century-- Bibliography

To find more recent published items that may not be covered in print bibliographies, you can use Web of Science or Google Scholar to create a limited reverse bibliography.  Use this resource to search a book or article relevant to your topic and find items that have cited it.  The assumption is that if an article sites your source it is likely to be on the same topic.

Historiography is the study of the writing of history.  Historiographies can do the same job as a bibliography, so if a bibliography does not exist for your topic try searching for a historiography instead.

To find a relevant historiography do a library catalogue subject search for "historiography" and a keyword describing you topic (i.e. canada).