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HIST 231: World War II

Evaluating Sources

Evaluating your sources is a crucial step of the research process. You need to evaluate carefully each source to determine its appropriateness and quality.

Check our Evaluating Sources Checklist for criteria used to judge information sources and our Scholarly and Popular Resources page to distinguish between scholarly and popular publications.

It is particularly important to evaluation information that you find on the Web. Because there are no rules and anyone can post a page on the Web, you will have to determine whether the web site is of value. Go to Evaluating Web Sources for specific criteria used to analyze websites.

Check our Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from Other Periodicals page in order to evaluate periodicals by looking at their content, purpose, and intended audience.

Writing

Guide for Writing in History (Southwestern University)

History (Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

The History Student's Handbook: a Short Guide to Writing History Essays (University of Calgary, History Dept.)

Writing Historical Essays: a Guide for Undergraduates (Rutgers University)

Writing a Historiographical Paper

Citing Your Sources

Image result for chicago manual of style 1 7th

The Chicago style is widely used in the humanities and social sciences and history in particular. Check out these sites for information on citing sources:

Chicago Manual of Style Online

Chicago Manual of Style (OWL at Purdue University)