History
Writing Intensive Classes
For a description of basic information literacy skills required of all students before entering upon work in their major, click here.
Goals/Courses
Faculty may wish to differentiate among the skills important at the 100-, 200-, and 300-level, with yet other skills for honors project-level research. For example, goals for various courses might include the following skills, grouped loosely around locating information, evaluating credibility, interpreting arguments, reading closely, learning languages, reporting findings, and citing works consulted.
History 100 Level Courses
History 200 Level Courses
Scholarly Articles Databases | |
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Humanities Abstracts 1984+ | Abstracts of articles, book reviews, and more from over 465 sources in the humanities |
Historical Abstracts 1956+ | History after 1450, excluding U.S. and Canada |
America: History & Life 1953+ | American & Canadian history |
JSTOR | Back issues excluding the most recent 2-5 years |
Project MUSE | Current issues of journals in arts and humanities, social sciences and mathematics |
Scholarly Reference Sources | Call Number |
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Encyclopedia of Ancient History | click here |
Cambridge Histories Online | click here |
Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture | click here |
Biographical Dictionary of the People's Republic of China | click here |
And also, reference works from related disciplines such as: | |
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Encyclopedia of Philosophy | click here |
Encyclopedia of Islam (12 vols.) | click here |
History 300 Level Seminars
Journal Title | SC Neilson Per 2nd floor/Link |
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Journal of Japanese Studies | Per DS 801 .J7 / online |
Journal of Women's History | Per HQ 1101 .J67 / online |
Monumenta Nipponica: Studies on Japanese Culture | Per DS 821 .A1 M6 / online |
Past and Present | Per D1 .P37 / online |
U.S.-Japan Women's Journal | Per HQ 1101 .U538 / online |
Databases | Coverage |
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America: History & Life 1953+ | American & Canadian history |
Historical Abstracts 1956+ | History after 1450, excluding U.S. and Canada |
Databases | Coverage |
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Web of Science | Covers the humanities and social sciences as well as the sciences |
Catalogs | Coverage |
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Five College Library Catalog | For holdings in the Five Colleges |
WorldCat | For holdings outside the Five Colleges |
Dissertations & Theses Full Text [ProQuest] | Dissertations and theses full text |
Specialized History Databases | |
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L’Année Philologique [EBSCO] 1959+ | Classical studies, including history |
International Medieval Bibliography 1967+ | Medieval studies 450 to 1500 |
ITER 1859+ | Middle Ages and Renaissance 400-1700 |
Allied Discipline or Area Studies | |
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ATLA Religion Database 1949+ | Religious and theological scholarship |
Bibliography of British and Irish History 1901+ | Consolidates over 50 bibliographies listing books and articles |
International Political Science Abstracts 1989+ | Indexing and abstracts of journals in political science |
Hispanic American Periodicals Index 1970+ | Central & South America, Mexico, the Caribbean, & U.S. Hispanics |
Africa Bibliography | Social & environmental sciences; development studies; art & humanities. |
American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies 1956+ | East-Central Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet Union |
Bibliography of Asian Studies 1971+ | Western-language monographs, articles, and book chapters on Asia |
Handbook of Latin American Studies | Lists publications on Latin America, in the social sciences and the humanities. |
Index Islamicus [EBSCO] | List articles, etc. on the Middle East & the Muslim world, in the social sciences and the humanities. |
Resources Unique to Smith | Description |
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Sophia Smith Collection | Internationally recognized repository of manuscripts, photographs, periodicals and other primary sources in women's history |
Mortimer Rare Book Collection | Covers the history of printing from the fifteenth century to the twentieth |
Smith College Museum of Art |
400 Level Including Honors Project
In addition to working with a faculty honors project advisor, all honors project students are required to schedule a research appointment with a reference librarian/archivist/curator. Via the research appointment and consultations with the faculty advisor, the Honors student should have all of the skills identified above. In addition, she should:
Title | Neilson Call Number/Access |
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1911 Britannica | Ref AE 5 .E363 / online |
The New Catholic Encyclopedia | Ref BX 841 .N44 2003 / online |
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia | Oversize AE 5 .B5813 |
Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers | Oversize AE 25 .E534 |
Title | Neilson Call Number/Access |
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Dictionary of National Biography | Ref DA28 .O95 / online |
Assessment
Assessment of information literacy takes place regularly within the framework of History courses. Class discussions, examinations, and papers call upon students to demonstrate interpretive skills appropriate to the course topic and level. Their performance in this area is one factor directly and/or indirectly determining their grades. Through formal grading and informal feedback during office hours and research appointments, instructors and librarians help students develop critical awareness of their own abilities and how they are improving.
Assignments requiring students to demonstrate and take advantage of information literacy assume varying forms, depending on the skills involved. In general, introductory courses devote more explicit attention to developing and testing basic skills, while more advanced courses assume students have already learned some skills and can deploy them independently.
A 100-level course might straightforwardly include a specific questionnaire for which students have to examine library holdings both virtually and in person. Papers at the 100- and 200-level might call for critical comparison of conflicting accounts of an event. Particularly useful in enhancing information literacy are readings exposing students to a chain of historical writings, in which later authors draw on earlier ones or react against their conclusions. Some 200-level courses assign research papers requiring students to locate and analyze primary sources. Others pose historiographical questions for which students must weigh competing secondary interpretations.
Some 200-level courses require the compilation of an annotated bibliography, either as a task in its own right or as a preliminary to a substantive investigation. Such a bibliography might, for example, call for the use of at least one scholarly history encyclopedia, the use of the online catalog to identify several relevant monographs, and a selection of scholarly articles identified from Historical Abstracts/ America, History and Life, J-STOR and ProjectMUSE. Students would be prepared to defend the credentials of authors cited (both primary and secondary), if asked.
In 300-level seminars, a similar assignment might be undertaken as one step toward researching and writing a term paper. The student could be asked to indicate the source of each citation, how she came across the item, and its relative value to the argument within the paper. The range of sources could be drawn from the list above. At the 400-level, students’ proficiency in uncovering and evaluating sources is evidenced not only in their writing and bibliographies, but also in their oral defenses of their projects.
In all these cases, library staff are also available to assist students and faculty members in devising, completing, and assessing such work.
Ethical Issues
For Smith College's policy on the ethical use of information, click here.
Revised February 26, 2015