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History Research Guides: Transatlantic Slave Trade

 

VIDEOS

Slavery Route Series: The history of slavery did not begin in the cotton fields. It is a much older tragedy that has been going on since the dawn of humanity. How did Africa end up at the heart of the slavery routes?

Research is a process with many steps, and is rarely linear. A good researcher uses multiple sources and continually goes back and reviews their question and keeps  adding new vocabulary and  learning to their search. This Libguide has been created to provide support for your research tasks in this subject.

BOOKS

The library has a comprehensive collection of resources on Slavery and they can be accessed in a variety of ways.

There are two methods for accessing books in the library. You can browse in different sections of the non-fiction collection.  See the box on the right for the corresponding Dewey numbers for your topic.

Alternatively, you can use Oliver to search for information. Type in slavery, slave trade or emancipation to find relevant books

DIGITAL RESOURCES

The following PREMIUM DIGITAL RESOURCES may be useful for research in this subject . However they are password protected and when you click on any of the icons below you will be re-directed to a page that requires authentication.

 

THE MODERN HISTORY DATABASE  IS  AN EXCELLENT SOURCE FOR THIS TOPIC.  DO SEARCH A FOR YOUR SPECIFIC TOPIC. 

THE GALE IN CONTEXT  DATABASE IS A GREAT ONE FOR BROWSING FOR RESOURCES ON THE SLAVERY. IT HAS A WHOLE RANGE OF RESOURCES - ARTICLES, PRIMARY SOURCES, VIDEOS AND REFERENCE BOOKS ON THIS TOPIC. 

 

THE GALE VIRTUAL REFERENCE LIBRARY  HAS A COMPREHENSIVE COLLECTION OF E-BOOKS. YOU CAN BROWSE INDIVIDUAL TITLES OR DO A SEARCH FOR YOUR TOPIC.

 

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Before starting your research, it is good practice to think about and create a list of  keywords that you can use to search for information on your topic.  Google is very intuitive however databases  usually require a search string. Here are a few tips to help you.

  • Words are sometimes spelled differently, for example, colonization is sometimes written as colonisation.
  • Many search engines and databases use Boolean logic to construct a search term. The asterisk is known as a wild card. The use of AND, OR and NOT can also be helpful.
  • Sometimes it is useful to use other words that mean similar or the same thing (synonyms) or broaden the search by using a less subject specific word
  • Use quotation marks when you are searching for a phrase.

Suggestions for this topic:

LIBRARY CATALOGUE

SHELF BROWSING

You can use Oliver to find books in the library however sometimes it is helpful to know the Dewey numbers for a subject. In doing so you will be able to find  books on that subject in most libraries. It will also be useful at those times when you know the topic but don't know where to start looking.
Note that resources about specific events will be located within the Dewey division for the country where the event took place.

306.3 Culture
326

Slavery and Emancipation

909.7  World History  since 1700
970  History of North America
973 History of the United States

 

REFERENCING

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The Referencing Libguide has resources on how to cite/reference sources in research.

The  Online Reference Generator allows you to create citations and bibliographies using the Harvard Referencing Style for a comprehensive list of resources.

       

MyBib is a free online service that allows users to generate citations and bibliographies. You can paste in a DOI, ISBN or URL and have the fields populate automatically. However it does not always provide the correct reference so you must check that all possible parts of the reference have been included.