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Historical Research: East Asian Civilization

A guide for Hillary Maxson's HIST 115 (East Asian Civilization) class, Fall 2018

What you are looking for

You will need to find articles, books or other scholarly sources that provide a background information as well as scholarly arguments about your theme. This tab provides links to some of the best databases for finding these secondary sources. Ideally you will find 10+ secondary sources about your topic. Try to put them into groups according to their main focus or type of argument.

You will be looking for sources that provide two things: 

  • Basic facts about your topic
  • Arguments about an aspect of your topic, for example why/how it happened, or why it is significant

Keyword ideas:

  • Use Wikipedia to find your topic; write down important names, dates, etc. 
  • Proper names of places (e.g. Korea)
  • Proper names of people (e.g. Sun Wukong)
  • Names of events (e.g. “Rape of Nanking”)
  • Topical words (e.g. Tea, Buddhism)
  • Subject words (e.g. History, Culture, Memory, Representation)

Databases for Scholarly Secondary Sources

Pacific Library - Boxer Search 
Pacific's library search includes millions of items, including both electronic and print material. All of our books and e-books are here, as well as about 80% of the journal articles that we have paid access to. This is the quickest way to get into sources that you can access immediately, without having to guess whether you'll be able to get the full text. Tips: 

Historical Abstracts

This database is source for historical journal articles published outside of America. It is limited just to historical research, so you will get fewer false hits here than in other databases. The major downside to this database is that we don't have full access to all of the journal articles that are in it. If you find something here that you can't access, See if you can get it through Pacific using the tips here. 

Google Scholar

This database gathers sources from many other databases into one centralized location. It will find nearly any academic book or article that has been published. The downside is that it is so large, that the items you really want to find may be buried under dozens of irrelevant sources. Also, there may be many articles that you cannot actually open. Tips: 

  • Are the articles you are finding too old? Change the date range using the tool on the left side:
  • If you find one really good article/book, you can find others like it by clicking on the "Cited By" or "Related Articles" links:
  • Become a Google search expert by using their advanced operators
  • Can't figure out how to open the actual journal article or book? See if you can get it through Pacific using the tips here. 

 

JSTOR 
This database is especially good for topics in history, political science, English and the humanities. Its biggest negative is that most of the sources in it were published 3+ years ago. Use the Advanced Search for best results! If you scroll down on Advanced Search page, you can pick specific topics to search within. Example: 
 

Project Muse
This database is very similar to JSTOR but it covers a slightly different set of journals. It's especially good for humanities research. The "Research Area" box on the left side lets you narrow down by subject area. Example:

Dissertations and Theses (Proquest)
This database is an amazing resource for dissertations (which are the final papers of Ph.D. and Master's students, typically 50-250 pages long). This is a great place to find cutting edge research on recent issues. These sources are generally very difficult to find except through this database! Example:

Many More Options...

Many other specialized databases are available through the library. See the "Databases" link on the Library Home Page, then look under the subject "History."