HISTORY 201: The Historian's Craft: Nation Breakers, Nation Makers (Spring 2025) : Finding Books
Finding Books
Books may be or contain primary sources. Examples may include personal narratives, memoirs, and autobiographies, collected works, and collections of documents. They may be published at the time or compiled and published at a later time.
The following catalogs can help you find both print and electronic books.
- Library CatalogThe Library Catalog is the UW-Madison Libraries' catalog. It contains materials from the Wisconsin Historical Society, as well as, special collections from across campus.The Library Catalog is the online catalog of more than 6 million books, periodicals, videos, audiobooks, music recordings, maps, music scores, microforms, Internet sites, electronic books, and computer databases currently owned or licensed by more than 30 University of Wisconsin-Madison campus libraries. The Library Catalog provides access to what is owned by UW libraries outside of Madison through its UW System Search option. The Library Catalog also contains records for most of the items which on order. The Library Catalog does not include journal articles, although it can be used to determine which journals we have. It also does not include some special collections, the records of some libraries/reading rooms, and materials that have not yet been converted from the card catalog (mainly items from Memorial or State Historical Society libraries). Hint: Use My Library Catalog Account to access a list of what you have checked out, to renew items, or to see what's waiting for you. Use Place Requests to recall a book from the current borrower, to retrieve a book from the shelf, or to borrow from another UW System library.
- WorldCatWorldCat is a catalog of libraries from around the world and can be used to request items through interlibrary loan.WorldCat is a catalog of more than 49 million books, serials, audiovisual media, maps, archives, manuscripts, scores, and computer files owned by more than 9,000 OCLC member libraries around the world, including UW-Madison and the Library of Congress. More than 400 languages are represented. One of its many uses is the ability to make online interlibrary loan requests for books.
HathiTrust
- HathiTrustHathiTrust offers access to a collection of millions of titles digitized from academic and research library collections from around the world, including the UW-Madison Libraries. Full-text of works that are out of copyright or in the public domain are available for viewing or searching.
Useful Subject Headings
Library Catalog records include subjects, or tags from an official list. They describe what the books or other items are about. Clicking on subjects from within a catalog record or using them as keywords in searches can help you find similar books.
These subject headings might be useful to you for this class:
Anti-imperialist movements
Constitutions
Independence movements
Insurgency
Latin America -- History -- Wars of Independence, 1806-1830
Revolutionaries
Revolutions -- Latin America
Social conflict
South America -- History -- Wars of Independence, 1806-1830
Most of these subject headings can be divided by country or region (e.g. Peru, Brazil, Latin America, Caribbean Area) and many can also be further subdivided by topic. Useful sub-headings may include:
Biography
Campaigns [used after the name of a particular battle or war]
Colonies [used after a country name, e.g. Spain -- Colonies]
Economic conditions
Foreign participation
History -- Autonomy and independence movements [used after a country name, e.g. Mexico -- History --Autonomy and independence movements]
Personal narratives
Social conditions
Politics and government [used after a country heading only]