Collins Memorial Library: HISTORY: SUBJECT GUIDE: Books & more

Search Primo

E-books

E-books in Collins Library are fully integrated into Primo Search!

Consult the e-books guide to find out more about finding and using our growing e-book collection.

Book Reviews

By consulting book reviews of the scholarly works you are reading, you can gain a better understanding of the place of a particular work within the field. Here are a few tips for locating book reviews:

America: History and Life
Select the "Advanced Search" option.
Type (in quotation marks) the title of the book for which you seek reviews.
Under the limiter options, select "book review" in the "Document Type" category.

JSTOR
Select the "advanced search" option.
Type (in quotation marks) the title of the book for which you seek reviews.
Under the limiter options, select "review" in the "Type" category.

H-Net Reviews: an online scholarly review resource

Call Numbers to Browse

If you're interested in a broad historical topic, or would like to browse for inspiration, try one of these Library of Congress call letters:

CB: History of Civilization
CC: Archaeology
D: History (general)
DA: Great Britain
DAW: Central Europe
DB: Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovaki
DC: France
DD: Germany
DE: Greco-Roman World
DF: Greece
DG: Italy
DH: Low countries/Benelux countries
DJ: Netherlands
DJK: Eastern Europe (general)
DK: Russia, the former Soviet Union, and Poland
DL: Northern Europe, Scandinavia
DP: Spain, Portugal
DQ: Switzerland
DR: Balkan Peninsula
DS: Asia
- DS 700s: China
- DS 800s: Japan
DT: Africa
DU: Oceania
DX: Romanies
E: America
F: History of the Americas, continued
- F1-1000: Local and regional U.S. history
- F1001-1145: British America, including Canada
- F1200+: Latin America
HN: Social history
HQ: Women's and gender history

Locations of books

New books are located near the Library lobby and are in call number order.
Print Reference books are on the first floor across from the Learning Commons area.
Main stacks: Consult the library map; look for location posters; or ask any staff member for help!

What's a Monograph?

Historians produce scholarship in several different genres, including entries in specialized subject encyclopedias; edited and annotated volumes of primary sources; surveys or textbooks; articles published in scholarly journals; articles aimed at a general audience that are published in popular venues such as magazines or blogs; scholarly essays published as part of a digital humanities project; and monographs.

A scholarly monograph:

Is a one-volume work.
Gives in-depth treatment to a specialized subject.
Is written by a scholar in the field.
Is written mainly for an academic audience.

Primo is the best tool to use when searching for monographs. When you see a title that might be relevant to your research, be sure to click on the "item details" tab in the catalog record to find out more information about it. Typically the full catalog record will provide several clues to help you determine whether the title is a scholarly monograph written by a historian: