Generally, work from the Drew University Library Research Resources page; most of the best sources are listed on the subject list under “History”.
Catalog:
In keyword mode, try combinations like “Northern Ireland and troubles”; open up the citations of your better finds and look for good subject headings to adopt for your research. For a more organized approach, try “Northern Ireland” or “Sinn Fein” in BROWSE mode, click on “Subject”, scroll through the available subheadings. This browsing allows you to study the MANY specialized subject histories that fall under "Ireland" and "Irish" and to use the time divisions to choose suitable books or just to search for good topics. When you have located some useful books...browse the shelves in that area.
Databases: Modern and 19th* Century
Use American indexing to help find unindexed Irish material.
Index of journal articles, books and dissertations on world history, excluding US and Canadian history, since 1450. (Switch to America History and Life for USA related topics such as Irish American participation). If you need to search BOTH databases at once, use "choose databases" to combine the databases. |
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Searchable full text/page images for the New York Times, 1851 - 2003. Use Advanced search mode and set the time limits as narrowly as you can in order to avoid an overwhelming number of modern articles! Articles will appear with oldest first. Use National Newspapers Expanded to extend your search to present. |
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Huge multi-disciplinary database with vast holdings in multiple fields. Try it; you'll like it. Use advanced search and expect useful results. Usually does not cover the last several years. |
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Indexes to American magazines and books of the 19th century (1800-1899). No full text. |
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Indexes popular topics in popular American journals. Covers 1890 to the present with abstracts since 1984; No full text, but Drew owns many of the early sources. |
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Famine? Colonialism? Conflict? How did they relate? |
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Research containing full text articles from the ethnic viewpoints of American groups. Useful for Irish American history and viewpoints, academic and popular, on the Northern Ireland conflicts.\ |
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This database can take your search back to about the collapse of Rome; what were your ancestors doing in 642? Be aware that these cover esoteric journals and have no full text...you will need time and help from your librarian to use them effectively! | |
Irish News Articles of Recent Years:
A number of Irish newspapers and publications from the North as well as the Republic are available from LexisNexis Academic, but the process of searching is intricate and tricky. There are several ways to do anything in LexisNexis-look in all the dropdown menus!-but here is one: Open LexisNexis Academic. Click on "News" at the top left. In the News section, drop down the "Sources" menu and change it from "U.S. Newspapers and wires" to "News, All (English, full-text)"; also click "news" in the box below. Set the time span further below!! You can either choose a span or set a particular span fitting an event. Enter search terms as needed and search. From here on, modify using the "edit search" click, or you will have to re-do everything! Now, what you have will be a melange of material from all over the world...to get to Ireland, you have two possible paths: Click "Geography" over on the left and you will get clicks for Ireland and for cities. Some of the results will be from Irish papers, others from other papers or services reporting from Ireland. OR...click "Publication Name" and choose individual papers, like Belfast Telegraph. Your head may hurt from all the clicking necessary, but you will find material that cannot easily be found anywhere else.
Reference Tools:
Ref DA933 .M43 Medieval Ireland : an encyclopedia / Seán Duffy, editor ; associate editors, Ailbhe MacShamhráin, James Moynes. New York : Routledge, 2005.
Ref DA911 .M34 Ireland : a reference guide from the Renaissance to the present / John P. McCarthy. New York, Facts On File, c2006.
Ref DA912 .E53 Encyclopedia of Irish history and culture / James S. Donnelly Jr., editor in chief ; Karl S. Bottigheimer ... et al., associate editors Farmington Hills, MI : Macmillan Reference USA, c2004.
Ref DA910 .D38 Irish studies / editor, John Goodby ; authors, Alex Davis ... et al.. New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.
Ref DA906 .E52 The encyclopedia of Ireland / edited by Brian Lalor ; foreword by Frank McCourt. New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 2003.
Ref DA906 .E53 The Encyclopedia of Ireland : an A-Z guide to its people, places, history, and culture / Ciaran Brady, general editor. New York : Oxford University Press, c2000.
Ref DA990 .U46 E44 Conflict in Northern Ireland : an encyclopedia / Sydney Elliott & W.D. Flackes. Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO, c1999.
Ref G1831 .S1 E3 An atlas of Irish history; maps drawn by W. H. Bromage. London, Methuen, 1973.
Browsing: Generally, go to about 941.5 on F deck and start looking…arrangement by historical period will be apparent. Look around, open books, look at indexes and tables of content. This oft works better than computerized searching…really!
The Internet:
Try Google Advanced for general searching, Google Advanced Imagen for pictorial material. Study those search pages:
The obvious features include a PHRASE line ("Sinn Fein"), an ALL WORDS line ("troubles, violence") and an ANY WORDS line ("peace, settlement, "Good Friday"). These features allow you to build a tight and efficient search easily. Next, note the DOMAIN line. This can be your most powerful single tool! Try ".org" to find American organizations focused on your issues and interests. ".edu" will get you academic sources. Perhaps best of all, ".ie" will get you sites from the Republic of Ireland, and sites from the North will be found within the ".uk" domain. In the ".uk" domain use keywords to concentrate your results in Irish sources. This quickly nets you news, political sites, historical groups, and more FROM Ireland. Using these tools for images can get you political party posters, pictures of historical sites and markers, very local museums of events of the troubles. You can approach history on a much more intimate level by searching the place where the events took place and meeting people who live there.
Irish literature, dance, theatre, politics, sociology, current newspapers?...here and in Ireland?? Yes...we have databases for that. We have almost 200 databases. Come see us and we'll get you started!
Bruce Lancaster, Drew University Library Reference and Research
blancast@drew.edu, 973-408-3487
BML2009