History 491: Imperial Germany: Books

Controlled vocabulary legislate the use of predefined, authorised terms that have been preselected by the designer of the vocabulary, in contrast to natural language vocabularies, where there is no restriction on the vocabulary.

Subject headings are a controlled vocabulary. A single term or phrase is determined by an authority (Library Congress or a database vendor) to describe a subject. For example, try searching for the subject "sources"  in West-Cat or WorldCat  and your specific movement, and see what you get. 

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)

To retrieve primary sources, use the subject heading "sources" in the subject field box. 

• Lenin, Vladimir Ilʹich, >  1870-1924.
• Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
• Kulturkampf
• Catholic Church--Germany--Prussia--History --19th century
• Art and state--Germany--History--19th century.
• Art and society--Germany--History--19th century.
• Germany --Colonies
• Public Opinion, Germany
• Groener, Wilhelm, 1867-1939
• Bismarck, Otto, Fürst von, 1815-1898
• Socialism --Germany
• Germany --Economic policy
• Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901)
• military art and science
• Germany
• World War, 1914-1918
• nationalism--Germany

WestCat

An online catalog of the University Libraries’ books, periodicals and other library materials. Searchable from the library homepage (http://www.wiu.edu/libraries). If WestCat does not have what you need, search I-Share, a catalog of 76 libraries, mostly academic, in Illinois. WestCat, I-Share, and WorldCat all use Library of Congress Subject Headings.

 

I-Share

 

I-Share has changed. To use I-Share, create an account. Though a pain at first, having an account will make the book borrowing process much easier than in the past.

WorldCat

One of the databases available from FirstSearch. Bibliographic records of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries. Includes manuscripts written as early as the 12th century. Includes 52 million bibliographic records. If you learn how to use this tool, you will be able to tap into a huge amount of bibliographic information, including many historical documents. Use the Library of Congress Subject Headings to refine searches. To find primary sources, use the subject headings "sources." WorldCat has its own ILL function that works in conjuction with ILLiad. Very easy to initiate a request.