B352: The High and Later Middle Ages

Here are some resources and tips to help you with your B352 project.

If you get stuck, feel free to contact the History librarian, Celestina Savonius-Wroth, cewroth@indiana.edu, or use our Ask a Librarian service.

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On this page: General tips - Finding books - Finding articles - Background information - Citing your sources

Illustration (from Wikimedia Commons): Robert Kilwardby, ca. 1215-1279, Archbishop of Canterbury 1272-1278

General searching tips

You'll find some helpful hints on this page: Basic Database Searching Techniques

Here is an example using these concepts for a search on monasticism in England during the Middle Ages:
Monasticism OR Monastery OR Monk
AND
English OR England
AND
Medieval OR Middle Ages

You can use synonyms and alternate keywords to broaden or narrow your search.
To broaden your search on monasticism, you might add these terms: Church OR Religion
To narrow your search on England, you might use the term Sussex instead.
Be creative! Try different combinations until you get good results.

Finding book chapters on your topic

Use IUCAT to search the IU Libraries collections. You may find it helpful to use the Advanced Keyword search, which allows you to combine keywords with subject terms and to limit your results to materials in English. Some general subject terms:

civilization medieval
middle ages
europe history 476-1492

WorldCat is like IUCAT but it covers most of the libraries in the US. Use it if you can't find anything in IUCAT--most books you find in WorldCat can be borrowed on Interlibrary Loan (look for the Request materials from ILL link in the WorldCAT record).

Google Books/ HathiTrust Digital Library searches will work best for very specific keywords (a specific individual, the title of a medieval work, etc.--don't forget to put phrases in quotes). You can get back from Google to IUCAT by using the "find in a library" link, then check the IUCAT record for useful subject headings. Remember that you'll only find full text of older works that are out of copyright (although you may find excerpts of more recent works).

Finding Scholarly Articles on your topic

Note that some of these databases will give you full-text access to articles. Other databases only give citations, and you'll need to use IU-Link to locate the actual articles. If IU-Link doesn't lead to a full-text copy, you can request the article through Interlibrary Loan very easily for free.

Here's how a live demo of to use IU-Link in a search database:

Academic Search Premier (EBSCO) - Provides access to scholarly journal articles for almost every academic discipline, along with magazine articles. Provides full-text access to most articles. You can also limit your search to scholarly articles only.

JSTOR - Provides searchable full-text access to important scholarly journals in the humanities, arts, sciences, ecology and business.

Historical Abstracts - Provides citations to history-specific articles, from the late medieval period onward. Not much full-text coverage; remember to use IU-Link to locate a copy of the article.

International Medieval Bibliography - The IMB indexes articles in journals, conference proceedings and collections of essays in a variety of languages.

Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance - Database of interdisciplinary journal literature pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700).

Background Information

As we all know, you can't believe everything you see on the internet. There are lots of hobby sites on "medieval" topics that are fun to browse, but may or may not contain historically accurate information. Look for web sites that are hosted at universities (.edu sites) or created by libraries and museums.

Be cautious when using Wikipedia articles. Follow up the footnotes: do they lead you to serious research on the topic (books, articles in scholarly publications)? Check information you find in Wikipedia against other sources such as these published reference databases and encyclopedias:

Oxford Reference Online

Blackwell Reference Online

All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World (2011)

Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy from 500 to 1500 (2010)

Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (2002)

Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia (2004)

Note: Don't cite Wikipedia articles or encyclopedia entries as "research" for your final project. Use them to get an overview, and to locate the more in-depth scholarship that you will need for your research (look for suggestions for further reading at the end of each encyclopedia entry).

Citations

Keeping track of your research as you go along will save you time and trouble. Several software programs and browser extensions are available to make this easier. The IUB Libraries' Bibliographic Software page has information about products that are either provided by IU or free on the internet.

Here's a quick guide to citing in Chicago style.

Last updated February 4, 2013