Welcome to the Tisch Library guide to researching HIST 193 / RCD 179: Family Histories and American Culture. This guide is organized by types of resources:

• Reference sources - These sources provide important background and contextual information on your subject. Reference sources include bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks. A reference source usually provides an overview of a topic without arguing for a specific perspective on the topic. You can use this type of source to help narrow your research topic, find data to support your thesis, and identify keywords and main ideas to use as search terms.
• Secondary sources - These sources provide in-depth information on a topic while also arguing for a specific perspective on the topic. Secondary sources include articles, books, and podcasts. Secondary sources are useful for in-depth analysis of your topic and for learning about scholarly perspectives on your topic.
• Primary sources - These sources provide the raw data for your topic. Primary sources may include artwork, correspondence, diaries, interviews, literary texts, material artifacts, newspapers, speeches, statistics, and videos. Primary sources are useful for providing evidence on your topic.
• Family history resources - These are primary and secondary sources which will support research into family histories.
• Genealogy - This will take you to a new guide with additional resources for genealogies.
• Writing a history paper - resources to help you get started on writing history papers.

If you don't find what you are looking for or need help navigating this guide or any of the resources it contains, don't hesitate to contact the author of this guide or Ask a Librarian.