Guides: HIST 299: The Historian's Craft: Home

Getting Started

How to Write History That People Want to Read by Ann Curthoys; Ann McGrath
Drawn from decades of experience, this is a concise and highly practical guide to writing history. Aimed at all kinds of people who write history academic historians, public historians, professional historians, family historians and students of all levels the book includes a wide range of examples from many genres and styles.
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Ninth Edition by Kate L. Turabian
The popular Turabian manual provides assistance to writers in the fundamentals: writers need to have a strong research question, construct an evidence-based argument, cite their sources, and structure their work in a logical way.

Library Catalogue
When searching the catalogue for monographs, limit your results to books and eBooks only.

Find databases tailored to your research topic and question in the History Subject Guides, or start with one of the databases below:

International Medieval Bibliography
Find citations to articles, essays, conference proceedings, and festschriften about all aspects of medieval life (300-1500), covering Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

Historical Abstracts (EBSCO)
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Find references to journal articles, book reviews and some dissertations about the history of all parts of the world from 1450 on, EXCLUDING Canada and the United States. In the search options, select "Peer Reviewed" and enter "Historical Period" (e.g., Start Year: 1450 To End Year: 1600).
Academic Search Complete (Ebsco)
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A useful multidisciplinary database. Be sure to carefully consider your search terms to ensure that you retrieve content related to history/historiography.
America: History and Life
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Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.
JSTOR
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JSTOR is a database containing the full text of over 500 scholarly journals. You can search the full range of journals, or a specific thematic subset in the "Advanced Search" such as History, History of Science and Technology, Religion, and more.

Chicago Manual of Style Citation Quick Guide
Purdue OWL Chicago Style Guide
Resource from Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) with explanations of how to write Chicago-style citations. Select the source type (books, periodicals, web sources) on the left-hand side.
McGill Library Citation Subject Guide
Under "citation styles by subject", select "History" for more resources on Chicago style.

Attend a Chicago Citation Style Workshop
Virtual workshop on Chicago citation style offered by McGill librarians. Click the link to find the date and time and register!
Drop-In Citation Support
Citation trouble? We can help! Drop by with questions on in-text citations, difficult to cite sources, footnotes, endnotes, bibliographies, and more. Librarians will be present to answer any citation questions you might have.
Get Started with Zotero
Zotero is a free, open-source citation management system that will make it easier for you to write and cite throughout your undergraduate education and beyond! Get started early for the most benefits.

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Subjects: Classical studies, Government information, History, Indigenous studies