West Virginia Coal Miners
Coal Train
West Virginia Map
Historical & Cultural Context
con·text
ˈkäntekst/
noun
-
the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.
Research Strategy
Researching literature in context:
It is important to look for scholarly secondary sources describing the culture/history of the time period you are reading about, so...
- Decide what it is that you want to investigate
- Create a list of keywords relating to that question/topic
- Arrange your keywords to search in Primo & find a broad selection of sources
- Use History & English Subject Guides to search historical/cultural context on a deeper level & find articles in subject-specific databases
- Know what kind of information you will find in your sources (Some kinds of sources may need to be left out)
- Remember research is a process!
In the end, you may not use all the sources you've looked at, and that's OKAY! You want to choose the sources that BEST help inform your understanding of the topic you chose.
Databases
- Gale Literature Criticism This link opens in a new windowIncludes content from the print sets of Nineteenth-Century, Twentieth-Century, and Contemporary Criticism from 1971-2011. This is an extensive collection of scholarly and popular commentary from broadsheets, pamphlets, encyclopedias, books and periodicals.
- MLA International Bibliography with Full Text This link opens in a new windowCovers literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore from 4,400 journals and series worldwide. Coverage from 1926 to the present.
- WorldCat This link opens in a new windowA catalog of over 110,000,000 bibliographic records held by thousands of libraries.
- Newspaper Source This link opens in a new windowCovers hundreds of national and international newspapers, as well as television & radio news transcripts.
- New York Times This link opens in a new window
- Historic Issues: TimesMachine or New York Times Article Archive (register to access)
- Current issues: NYTimes.Com (register to access)
- Nexis Uni This link opens in a new windowComprehensive news, business, and legal information, entirely full-text.