Libraries
 

J400: Political Prisoners in the 20th Century

Here's a selection of resources you'll find helpful for your research papers and related assignments. Don't forget that you can contact your librarian, Celestina Savonius-Wroth (cewroth @ indiana.edu) or Ask a Librarian any time you need help with your research.

 

1. Primary sources vs. secondary sources: which is which?
How do you distinguish between sources that give immediate, first-hand evidence about the subject, and sources that are interpretive, retrospective or analytical? This handout, with a very nice table giving examples of each, will help you understand the difference.

 

2. Evaluating sources
How do you tell if something is a "scholarly" source? Why does this matter? Here are some general guidelines and suggestions.

 

3. Finding secondary sources

       Books
  • IUCAT: online catalog of the Indiana University Libraries
    • Tip: Use the Advanced Search. Use history or politics and government as subject search terms, or for more specific searches, political prisoners, political persecution, detention of persons, or civil rights, then add additional keywords, such as the name of the country or regime you're researching. Limit the language to English unless you can read other relevant languages.
    • Wondering what a "monograph" is? Mono=one, graph=write --technically, it's "a detailed written study of a single specialized topic" (Oxford English Dictionary), usually, but not always, by a single author. If a book has an editor instead of an author, and the table of contents lists a different author next to each chapter or section, it's probably NOT a monograph. If there are study questions and lots of flashy side-bars, it's also probably NOT a monograph!
  • IU WorldCat : this is IUCAT plus WorldCat, the Google of library catalogs
    • Tip: search IU's collections and most of the libraries in the US all at once. Also includes more and more journal articles and other research materials.
  • Google Books/ Hathi Trust 
    • Tip: Google Books is especially useful for searching within a book if you have a very specific search term, such as an unusual name. Hathi Trust is the library version of Google Books --same content, but a cleaner interface.

Scholarly/professional journals, working papers, reports


Reference Works (for background, factual information, suggestions for further reading)

  • Bibliography
    • Bennett, James R., Political prisoners and trials: a worldwide annotated bibliography, 1900 through 1993. Jefferson, N.C.:
      McFarland, c1995. (IUB Wells Library, Reference Reading Room, Z7164.L6 B46 1995)
  • Biographical sources (hint: double-check information from Wikipedia against these sources)
  • Encyclopedias
    • Encyclopaedia Britannica
    • Blackwell Reference Online and Oxford Reference Online: two online collections of reference works
    • Browse the Wells Library Reference Reading Room for print encyclopedias like: Zeleza, Tiyambe, ed. Encyclopedia of twentieth-century African history. London ; New York: Routledge, 2003.(IUB Wells Library, Reference Room, DT29 .E53 2003 --also available in Wells Research Collections and Neal-Marshall Black Culture Cent. Lib.)

Book Reviews

  • Search Academic Search (EBSCO) for reviews of recent books. Use the Advanced Search and select "Book review" as the Document type.

  • JSTOR is also a good source for book reviews, especially for books that were published at least 4 years ago, and were important books in their field. You'll find reviews in the key journals, by specialists in the field.

  • You can also try Book Review Index Online and Book Review Digest Retrospective

    3. Finding primary sources
    Your research projects in this course will be based on prison diaries, collections of letters from prison or other first-hand accounts of an individual political prisoner's experience. You'll probably discover this source while doing your preliminary research in secondary sources, but you can also search IUCAT or IU WorldCat. Use the search terms political prisoners biography, then add additional keywords to narrow your results --for example, the name of the country. Other keywords that might be useful: imprisonment; false imprisonment.

    You may also wish to look for US Government publications and international and intergovernmental publications.

     

    4. Popular press --magazines and newspapers
    If you're interested in what ordinary people knew about your prisoner or the regime, you can search these databases for articles in the popular media (mostly US and UK)

    5. Internet resources as primary and secondary sources
    Internet sources such as the web sites of organizations (eg, Amnesty International, Assistance Association for Political Prisoners), educational or academic web sites (eg, South African History Online) and free/cooperative reference sources (eg, Wikipedia list of Heads of State who were later imprisoned, Dictator of the Month) can all be very useful, if you approach them with a critical mind, and verify the information from other sources before basing an argument on what you find. The History Department's J300/400 page has excellent guidelines for evaluating web resources.

     

    6. Citing your sources
    The J300/400 page has a section on citation.