Guide created by Scott Libson. Updated in January 2024 by Catherine J. Minter. Feel free to contact Catherine if you need help.
In a rush? Try the tabs below.
Ready to dive deeper? The other pages in this guide cover the following topics: finding books, gathering background information, finding primary and secondary sources about genocide, and general tips on academic paper writing.
The main catalog of books at Indiana University is IUCAT. Watch the video below if you need help finding e-books in IUCAT.
If you are just starting a research project and need to know some basic information to get started, encyclopedias and historical dictionaries are great tools.
Most databases allow you click a box with a name like "scholarly articles," which does a reasonably good job of limiting your results to high-quality, academic articles.
Provides full text access and indexing for e-journals and e-books from a variety of scholarly publishers. Covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others.
Although IU has access to newspapers from around the world, most of our large collections of historical newspapers center on the United States. Check out the "Old News" link below for non-American newspapers.
FBIS Daily Reports issued by the U.S. Government. Translations of broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the world
The original mission of the FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. Many of these materials are first-hand reports of events as they occurred. As such, the FBIS Daily Reports constitutes an archive of transcripts of foreign broadcasts and news.
FBIS Daily Reports is comprised of the reports from Middle East and [North] Africa (MEA), 1974-1987; Near East and South Asia (NES), 1987-1996; South Asia (SAS), 1980-1987; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), 1974-1980 and (AFR), 1987-1996; China (CHI), 1974-1996; Asia and the Pacific (APA), 1974-1987; East Asia (EAS), 1987-1996; Latin America (LAT and LAM), 1974-1996; Eastern Europe (EEU), 1974-1996; Soviet Union/Central Eurasia (SOV), 1974-1996; Western Europe (WEU), 1974-1996.
The IUB Libraries' Government Information, Maps and Microform Services (East Tower 2, or ET2), located on the 2nd floor of the Herman B Wells Library at 10th and Jordan, received these reports as part of the Federal Depository Library Program on microfiche. Feel free to contact ET2 staff regarding reports not yet available on this full text database, for earlier and later reports, and about related federal documents (including Congressional and Department of State documents).
Digital archive of historical newspapers. Each issue of each title includes the complete paper, cover-to-cover, with full-page and article images.
Primary sources take many forms and you can find them in all sorts of places, both online and in person, but you need to make be sure the source is legitimate. The websites below are just a few places to find primary sources. Go to the sources for researching genocide page for more options or contact me if you need help.
The Fortunoff Archive and its affiliates recorded the testimonies of willing individuals with first-hand experience of the Nazi persecutions, including those who were in hiding, survivors, bystanders, resistants, and liberators. Please note: To access users need to create an account and submit a request.
Click more for instructions to create account and submit request, as well as more details about the archive.
The Fortunoff Archive currently holds more than 4,400 testimonies, which are comprised of over 12,000 recorded hours of videotape. Testimonies were produced in cooperation with thirty-six affiliated projects across North America, South America, Europe, and Israel. Testimonies were recorded in whatever language the witness preferred, and range in length from 30 minutes to over 40 hours (recorded over several sessions).
Create Account & Request Testimony:
1. To create an account select Log In, and then Join Now. Users will then receive a confirmation email.
2. Login and then enter a search term. Click on a testimony in the search results and request access. Please note that records truncate last names of those who gave testimony to protect their privacy. If you are looking for a specific person’s testimony, either shorten their last name to the first initial (“Eva B.”) or contact the archive directly. You only need to request access to one testimony to obtain viewing access for the entire collection.
3. Once the approval email is received, users may view testimonies. A browser refresh may be necessary.