Research Tips from the Library Instruction Session for
Survey of African History - HIS 1940
Instructor: Jacqueline McLeod

Date: March 4, 2008

Library Instructor: Thomas Beck, 303-556-8371, thomas.j.beck at cudenver.edu

GETTING STARTED!

When studying the history of Africa as a whole, but especially when studying the history of individual African countries, it is important to remember that most of the countries we see on a map of Africa today are relatively new, from an historical perspective! When I say they are "new" from an historical perspective, I mean that most of these countries didn't exist before 1960 (there are some notable exceptions: Ethiopia is one of the oldest countries on Earth, and Egypt is the oldest!). By contrast, many countries in Europe and Asia are hundreds, or even thousands, of years old.

Why is this important? Part of your task in this course is to research both the current affairs and history of an individual African country, going back to the slave trade and beyond. Many of these countries did not exist until long after the slave trade was over, so how can you research the history of one of these countries in a time period (e.g. the slave trade) in which that country didn't exist? The answer is simple! You need to know what political and social entities (e.g. what ethnic groups, states, empires, etc.) existed before that country came into existence, and research those. How do you find that information? Start by looking for whatever books we have in our library catalog, Skyline, on the country you're researching.

LOOKING FOR BOOKS IN SKYLINE

Access Skyline on the Auraria Library Home Page, at http://library.auraria.edu (look for it toward the center of the page, under Find a Book). Once there, do the following:

1. Enter your search terms in the search box – These should be the title of a book or the name of an author, or a string of words that describe the kind of information you're looking for.
   Example: for information on the history of Liberia, enter liberia history.

2. Pick what kind of search you want to do, from the pull-down menu to the left of the search box
   
   Pick Title if you're looking for a book, DVD, etc. by its name.
   
   Pick Author if you want to search for books written by a certain person (but make sure you enter that person's last name first, then a coma and a space, and then their first name, or the search won't work properly).
   
   When searching for something other than an author's name or the title of a book, pick either Subject or Keyword.
   
   Picking Keyword will allow you to find any item in the catalog that has your search terms somewhere in its item record, regardless of what order those words might be in or in what context.
   Example: a search for "Liberia history" might pull up books entitled "The History of Liberia", "Liberia: A History" or "Teaching History", by Larry Liberia (I made all of these titles up, just as examples - especially the last one!).
   
   Picking Subject will allow you to find any Subject Heading in the catalog (and any titles under that heading) that is identical to your search terms.
   Example: a search for "history of Liberia" will pull up nothing, because that is not the exact name of the Subject Heading for the history of that country. The name you would need to find materials on this kind of history would be "Liberia - history".

3. Click on Go.

If your search in Skyline does not provide you with useful results, either change your search terms, or change the field you are searching in, or both.

If it does provide useful results, then please note the Title, Location, Call Number and Status of each item you wish to use. Bring that information to the Reference Desk, and the Librarians there will help you to locate those items!

REFERENCE COLLECTION

If you can't find all, or any, of the information you want by searching the catalog, there are a number of books in our Reference Collection that might be helpful to you. Two of these are:

CultureGrams is a set of books giving cultural, and to some degree political and historical, information on countries around the world. Find the volume entitled Africa, and search for your country of interest there. Be aware however, that CultureGrams is sometimes incomplete and not all African countries may be listed there! If you do find your country, please note (among other things) the names of the major ethnic groups therein.

Search for the ethnic groups you've found in CultureGrams and elsewhere in the Encyclopedia of World Cultures! Go to the volume for Africa and the Middle East and search for ethnic groups alphabetically. Ethnic groups, inAfricaandelsewhere, are usually much older than the countries in which they live. To understand the history of most Africancountries it is necessary to research the history of the major ethnic groups thatlive there, and the societies, states and empires they built.

NAMES!

It may be useful to say a few words at this point about Names! Specifically, the names of countries, empires and ethnic groups in Africa. These can often be changeable and confusing, and at times can cause problems when doing research.

When you look up ethnic groups in the Encyclopedia of World Cultures you will see that with the description of each group there is also (usually) a list of alternate names for that group. Ethnic groups can have many names, some of which they have given themselves and others they have been assigned by other ethnic groups. It's important to remember therefore that when you're researching a particular African ethnic group, that it may have more than one name and that you may have to search under some of those different names to find information about it.

The names of certain African countries have changed over time, while others have names that are the same or similar to other countries in Africa! Still others have names that are the same as ancient or medieval African states that were in another part of the continent and have an entirely different history and ethnic makeup. As with the case of African ethnic groups, these different names can cause confusion, and may require you to search under multiple names to find the history and current affairs of a single country.

Here are few examples of the kind of confusion I'm talking about:

1. The Republic of Ghana is named after an ancient empire that was not located within the confines of that modern state, but was found within the boundaries of another contemporary African state, Mauritania! The peoples of ancient and modern Ghana are not ethnically related, andshare no history of any consequence.
2. Modern Benin was originally named Dahomey at the time of its independence in 1960. Its name was changed to its present form in 1975. The ancient state of Benin was located in what is now Nigeria, and has no relationship to the modern state.
3. There are two African countries called Congo! These are the Democratic Republic of the Congo (aka Congo-Kinshasa) and the Republic of the Congo (aka Congo-Brazzaville). At independence Congo-Kinshasa was officially know as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it changed its name to Zaire in the 1970's, and then back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1990s.
4. Gambia is a small country in West Africa. Zambia is a much larger country in Southern Africa.

ARTICLE DATABASES AND INDEXES

What if you can't find books about your country by searching Skyline or looking in the Reference Collection? Then search for articles on that country on the Library's Article Databases and Indexes page! To do this, go to our homepage at http://library.auraria.edu and do the following:

1. Click on "Research Tools" on the left-hand side of the homepage, and then pick "Databases" from the resulting pull-down menu . There you will find roughly 170 article databases (in alphabetical order by the title of the database)
   .
   
2. Pick a Subject to search from the "List databases by subject" pull-down menu. Articles on African Affairs could potentially be found under the subject headings: "Political Science", "News", or "International Affairs", but I would suggest that you search under the headings "History", "African-American Studies" and "Countries" to begin with.
   
   
3. Under the three subject headings I've suggested, see the databases Historical Abstracts and Jstor for historical information on an African country or people, and Ethnic NewsWatch and Background Notes for current affairs.
   
   
4. Certain of these databases, such as Ethnic NewsWatch, will require you to separate your search terms with what are called "Boolean" separators. These are: AND, OR and NOT (sometimes shown as AND NOT).
   
   Put AND between those search terms that all have to be contained in the articles you are searching for.
   Example: if you're looking for the history of the recent civil war in Liberia, your search will most probably have to contain all of the following words: civil, war and Liberia. These should be searched for as civil AND war AND liberia
   
   Put OR between two terms to indicate that only one of the two terms needs to come up in your search results, and that it doesn't really matter which one does. You would normally only do such a search when the two terms in question have the same or similar meanings.
   Example: if you're looking for the history of the recent civil war in Liberia, mentioned above, you might want to search liberia AND civil AND (war OR conflict). Requiring that either of these last two words, but not both, be present in the articles retrieved by your search is reasonable, because both words have similar meanings (at least in this context). Requiring both to be present however, would be unnecessary and probably redundant, and possibly keep you from getting access to some of the articles you need.
   
   Put NOT (or AND NOT) in front of those search terms that you don't want to be contained in the articles you're searching for.
   Example: as regards the history of the recent civil war in Liberia, that conflict largely coincided with, and to some degree overlapped with, another civil war in the neighboring country of Sierra Leone. A search for one of these civil wars often brings up results for the other. If you were uninterested in the conflict in Sierra Leone, and didn't want it to come up in your search results, you could do that with the following search: liberia AND civil AND (war OR conflict) NOT (sierra leone).

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ANYTHING ABOVE, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH WITH ME (see my contact information at the top of the page). You can also go to the Reference Desk in the Library, or call them at 303-556-2585.

Thank you!

Thomas Beck