Library Research Guides: HIST W335 History of Genocide: Home

About this guide

In a rush? Use the tabs below to quickly access recommended search tools and resources.

Ready to dive deeper? Use the tabs on the left to explore and learn more about a wide variety of search tools and strategies to locate books and ebooks, background information, primary sources, and secondary sources. Finally, access helpful guidance on academic paper writing.

If you have a question, use the buttons below my picture to get in touch or ask the library.

Quick start resources

IUCAT This link opens in a new window
IUCAT, the online catalog for all titles available through IU Libraries, is the often the best place to start a search for books and ebooks, and also includes government documents, videos, and sound recordings.
- Use broad search terms to give IUCAT the best chance of finding relevant titles.
- Use the red Request This button to have print materials delivered to the most convenient library for pick-up.
- Use the filters like Subject and Publication Year on the left side of the page to narrow your search results.
- When you find one title that looks promising, use the hyperlinked Subject headings to locate additional titles.
- Watch this brief video tutorial on searching and accessing books and ebooks in IUCAT.
IUCAT, Indiana University's online library catalog, provides comprehensive access to millions of items held by the IU Libraries statewide, including books, recordings, US government publications, periodicals, and other types of material. Users can access IUCAT from any Internet-connected computer or device, whether in the libraries, on campus, or off campus.

If you are just starting a research project and need to know some basic information to get started, encyclopedias and historical dictionaries are great tools.

Oxford Reference
Reference resources from the Oxford University Press. Includes English dictionaries and thesauruses, English language reference books, bilingual dictionaries, quotations, maps and illustrations, timelines and subject reference sources.
Gale eBooks
Database of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources.
Encyclopedias and specialized reference resources in: Arts, Biography, History, Information and Publishing, Law, Literature, Medicine, Multicultural Studies, Nation and World, Religion, Science, Social Science

History Encyclopedias in IUCAT
This link takes you to a list of hundreds of encyclopedias that are available as e-books

Most databases allow you click a box with a name like "scholarly articles," which does a reasonably good job of limiting your results to high-quality, academic articles.

America: History & Life
Bibliographic database focusing on the history and life of the United States and Canada, indexing more than 1,800 journals published, dissertations and reviews.
In addition to the principle English language sources in the field, it includes some (about 10%) in other languages, as well as some state and local history journals. All aspects of historical inquiry are represented: diplomatic, ecclesiastical, agricultural, cultural, economic, political, military and others. The index also provides citations to book and media reviews from about 100 journals and references to abstracts of dissertations in the field. All abstracts are in English.
Historical Abstracts
Index to journals, chapters and theses about world history, 1450 to present.
Covers modern world history (excluding the United States and Canada which are covered in the database America: History and Life) from 1450 to the present. It currently indexes about 2,300 journals in 40 languages, with indexing also for some books and dissertations. Most of the article citations include abstracts of 75-100 words.
JSTOR
Provides searchable full-text of historical runs of important scholarly journals in the humanities, arts, sciences, ecology, and business.
JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization established with the assistance of The Mellon Foundation, provides complete runs of hundreds of important journal titles in more than 30 arts, humanities, and social science disciplines. These scholarly journals can be browsed online and searched, and the page images can be printed for those available in full-text. The IUB Libraries subscribe to current content for only some titles available through JSTOR. Includes access to the following collections: Arts & Sciences, Business, Hebrew Journals, Ireland Collection, Lives of Literature, Public Health Collection, Security Studies Collection, Sustainability Collection.

All journals in JSTOR start with the first volume. Many include content up to a "moving wall" of 3-5 years ago, although some journals have a fixed ending date for their content in JSTOR. Please check individual journals for exact dates of coverage.

For information about access to this resource for IU alumni, contact the Indiana University Alumni Association.

Although IU has access to newspapers from around the world, most of our large collections of historical newspapers center on the United States. Check out the "Old News" link below for non-American newspapers.

Chronicling America
Access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages. Search historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Digital archive of historical newspapers. Each issue of each title includes the complete paper, cover-to-cover, with full-page and article images.
Newspapers.com World Collection
Contains full runs and portions of runs of well-known, regional and state titles in addition to small local newspapers.
Includes access to newspapers from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom & Ireland, Australia, and Panama.
NewspaperARCHIVE
Digital access to more than 1000 historical newspapers from communities within Indiana.
Includes digitized copies and content of the follwing local Indiana Newspapers: Bloomington Evening World (1907-1923), Indiana Daily Student (1867-1923), Madison Herald, Indianapolis State Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette,Terre Haute Star and Indianapolis Sun.

Old News: Historical Newspapers and Periodicals
by Scholars' Commons Staff Last Updated Oct 10, 2024 661 views this year

Primary sources take many forms and you can find them in all sorts of places, both online and in person, but you need to make be sure the source is legitimate. The websites below are just a few places to find primary sources. Go to the sources for researching genocide page for more options or contact me if you need help.

Genocide Archive of Rwanda
The Genocide Archive of Rwanda is the first of its kind in Rwanda. Its collections include testimonies, audio and video materials, photographs, physical objects, documents and publications as well as interactive mapping data.

Note: includes RTLM recordings broadcast during the genocide
Guide to Holocaust Websites
List created by Professor Mark Roseman. Largely primary sources, but also many secondary sources.

Holocaust and the Concentration Camp Trials: Prosecution of Nazi War Crimes
Access to documents related to the investigation and prosecution of war crimes committed by Nazi concentration camp commandants and camp personnel.
Documents include: correspondence; trial records and transcripts; investigatory material, such as interrogation reports and trial exhibits; clemency petitions and reviews; photographs of atrocities; newspaper clippings; and pamphlets. Many concentration (and later extermination) camps and sub-camps are represented in this collection, including Mauthausen, Dachau, Belsen-Bergen, Buchenwald, Treblinka, Sobibor, sub-camp Gros-Raming, sub-camp Gusen I, sub-camp Ebensee, and others.
Human Rights Studies Online
Human Rights Studies Online is a research and learning database providing comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010.
The collection includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than thirty additional subjects.
USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive
The USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive allows users to search through and view the 51,537 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide currently available in the Archive that were conducted in 61 countries and 39 languages. Initially a repository of Holocaust testimony, the Visual History Archive has expanded to include testimonies from the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China and the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide. Please note: authorized IUB users may register for an account with their iu.edu email address. Users must accept vendor terms of use to complete registration process.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Digitized Collections
Includes interviews, objects, newspapers, books, and many other types of material. You can also limit results based on events, cities, camps, and ghettos.