Need topic ideas?
A great idea can come from anywhere! Here are some suggested places to start:
- Class discussions
- Assigned readings
- Personal interests
- Trending topics
- Browse journals in the field
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Developing a Topic
Before you develop your research topic or question, you'll need to do some background research first. This will help you:
- begin to understand the context of your topic
- narrow the topic to a more manageable size
- direct you to where to do more specific searches
Encyclopedia-style databases offer short overviews of a topic and are good places to start.
Try the library databases below to explore your topic. When you're ready, move on to refining your topic.
Find General Background Information:
- BritannicaOnline version of Encyclopedia Britannica, a well-regarded general encyclopedia.
- Cambridge Histories Online This link opens in a new windowThis is the Global History Collection which includes 34 titles including Cambridge World History, The Cambridge History of the Second World War, Cambridge History of Capitalism, Cambridge History of the Cold War and more.
- Credo This link opens in a new windowCredo is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Find Focused Background Information:
- Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, GermanyWebsite of the Memorial Site located on the grounds of the former concentration camp. The website includes exhibitions, research and collections.
- Holocaust Encyclopedia of the USHMMThis encyclopedia is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's website. It can be searched by topic or can be browsed.
- The Holocaust Resource CenterThe Yad Vashem archives contain numerous testimonies several thousand of which are on videotape. Also includes excerpts from diaries, memoirs, and letters.
- Memorial and Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, PolandWebsite for the memorial and museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
Now that you've done some background research, it's time to narrow your topic. Remember: the shorter your final paper, the narrower your topic needs to be. Here are some suggestions for narrowing and defining your topic:
- Is there a specific subset of the topic you can focus on?
- Is there a cause and effect relationship you can explore?
- Is there an unanswered question on the subject?
- Can you focus on a specific time period or group of people?
Describe and develop your topic in some detail. Try filling in the blanks in the following sentence, as much as you can:
I want to research ____(what/who)____
and ____(what/who)____
in ____(where)____
during ____(when)____
because ____(why)____.