History: HIST 395 Topics in History (Coronado)

At this point of your research journey, you are starting to explore possible topics. A helpful strategy for deciding on a topic is to conduct what we call "presearch."

Presearch is the act of doing some research on your topic before actually deciding on the topic. Find some background information on your topic to see what has already been said and if there is enough information for you to draw on to write a paper on it. You can conduct presearch through the same avenues that you would for finding sources for a paper, in our catalog, our databases, and through websites. Even Wikipedia can be a good source for presearch, as it gives you background information and context for an event/issue/etc. to help you see what the scholarly conversation is around that topic already, and what you might contribute to that conversation.

For history papers, something else we need to consider in our presearch process is the likelihood of finding primary sources for that topic. While scholarly sources may be more plentiful, primary sources depend on what the library has access to, and what you have access to on the internet or through other avenues. 

As part of your presearch process, look at the list of primary source databases we have here at CCSU and explore a few to see what primary sources exist for your potential topics: Primary Source Databases