Global II: Holocaust Research: Background Research

Reference: Encyclopedias

Multiformat: Reference Articles, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources

Your textbook and encyclopedias are good places to find background knowledge. Please note that the information you gather form these types of sources is considered common knowledge and do not count to your required amount of sources.

The sources are great places to find information about the context of your paper but should seen as a beginning point of your research, reference materials will help you find more primary and secondary sources by:

• Giving you ideas about keywords to search for books and journal articles.
• Providing you a bibliography of sources about your topic.
• Help broaden or narrow your topic.

Once you've identified your topic, start by searching for background information on your topic. Background research serves many purposes.

• If you are unfamiliar with the topic, it provides a good overview of the subject.
• It helps you to identify important facts related to your topic -- terminology, dates, events, history, and names or organizations.
• It can help you to refine your topic.
• Background research might lead you to bibliographies that you can use to find additional sources of information.

A note on backgound sources: We recommend that you use encyclopedia articles for basic background information but they do not fulfill your requirement for a secondary source, neither does a very basic website.