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HIST 1301 - Professor Ball

Library research and resource guide for HIST 1301, Professor Ball

Keywords

What Are Your Keywords?

You have several topics that Prof. Ball allows you to choose from:

  • Medical care during the American Revolution
  • Prison ships during the American Revolution
  • Camp wives during the American Revolution
  • Weapons and munitions during the American Revolution
  • A particular battle of the American Revolution
  • Role of the French in the American Revolution
  • Role of the Spanish in the American Revolution
  • Loyalists during the American Revolution

Once you have chosen your topic, it's time to develop keywords. Watch the video above. It explains what keywords are and how to write them. Write down your own keywords for your topic. Consider what words might appear in information sources for your topic. For example, if you are researching camp wives during the American revolution, consider these related words:

  • women
  • woman
  • girl
  • camp follower

I want to emphasize that when you are searching for primary sources, it will be especially important to search for the words used by the people during the American Revolution. There were camp wives on both sides of the American Revolution, but the people who lived during that time and wrote about their experiences didn't necessarily call them that. That's why, when I searched for primary sources on this topic, I found the first three items in the bulleted list to be far more useful as search terms.