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Research Guides@Tufts

History of the Mexico-US Border and its Peoples

How to Use This Guide

Welcome to the Tisch Library guide to resources for History of the Mexico-US Border and its Peoples. Use the table of contents to find books, articles, and other resources that will help you with your research. 

If you have any questions about this guide or other library resources, Ask Us!

Background Research

What is background information? You probably already use Wikipedia, which is a background source and includes lots of helpful information. But there's a lot more than Wikipedia!  Background information comes from places like dictionaries and subject encyclopedias (the "pedia" in Wikipedia) . Background sources provide context and answer straightforward questions. They include definitions, statistics, and other details. You can use this type of source to:

  • Define your terms
  • Help narrow your research topic
  • Find data to support your thesis
  • Identify keywords and main ideas to use as search terms.

The following resources can help you to gather high-quality background information.