View All Pages

Research Supports

History DayResearch Supports

Howard County Public School SysteM 

NHD_2025ThemeBanner.jpg

Conducting Historical Research

Creating a National History Day project requires more than simply gathering the evidence that relates to your topic. You are taking on the role of a historian and will be using historical research strategies. You need to find information concerning the historical background of your topic as you will need to situate your argument and evidence correctly in time and space. You have to examine and evaluate the past through the lens of the past. Developing a researching question as well as gathering and analyzing primary and secondary sources will be the focus of much of your NHD journey. You will support your thesis by building your historical arguments and explaining the significance or lasting impact of your topic/event. However, before you can take on any of these steps, you need to fine tune your search skills.  This page provides a starting point for students to launch into their NHD research journey.

Search Strategies

How to use Google Scholar

 

Boolean Operators

Boolean Operators are simple words (AND, OR, NOT or AND NOT) used as conjunctions to combine or exclude keywords in a search, resulting in more focused and productive results. This should save time and effort by eliminating inappropriate hits that must be scanned before discarding. Using these operators can greatly reduce or expand the amount of records returned. Boolean operators are useful in saving time by focusing searches for more desired results that are more appropriate to your needs, eliminating unsuitable or inappropriate. Each search engine or database collection uses Boolean operators in a slightly different way or may require the operator be typed in capitals or have special punctuation.

Search Strategy Tips Links to an external site.

Boolean Operators for Kids

Domain Extensions

Sites on the web are grouped by their URLs according to the type of organization providing the information on the site.  The domain extension or suffix provides you with a clue about the purpose or audience of a website.  The domain extension might also tell you about the geographic origin of a website.

Extension Description
.edu

Educational institution

Sites using this domain name are schools ranging from kindergarten to higher education.  Information from sites within this domain must be examined very carefully. If it is from a department or research center at a educational institution, it can generally be taken as credible. However, students' personal websites are not usually monitored by the school even though they are on the school's server and use the .edu domain.
.gov

Government

If you come across a site with this domain, then you're viewing a federal government site. All branches of the United States federal government use this domain. Information such as Census statistics, Congressional hearings, and Supreme Court rulings would be included in sites with this domain. The information is generally considered to be from a credible source.
.org

Non-profit organization

Organizations such as the American Red Cross or PBS (Public Broadcasting System) use this domain extension. Generally, the information in these types of sites is credible and unbiased, but there are examples of organizations that strongly advocate specific points of view over others. Traditionally, .org is reserved for a non-profit, however, you probably want to give this domain a closer scrutiny these days. Some commercial interests might be the ultimate sponsors of a site with this suffix.
.mil

Military

This domain extension is used by the various branches of the Armed Forces of the United States.
country domains Observing the country abbreviation Links to an external site. in the domain extension will identify where the website was published.

 

Google scholar

Google Scholar Links to an external site. provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.

Advantages

  • Searching is free
  • Easy to use; similar interface that works much like regular Google.
  • Indexes a wide range of scholarly literature

Disadvantages

  • Results may not offer full-text like regular Google
  • Can not search by subject area or material type; results will return a mixture of articles, books, unpublished manuscripts, etc. Therefore, you must critically evaluate what you find.
  • Content not organized by experts

Google Scholar Search Tips Links to an external site.

Google Scholar: Advanced Searching

On-Line Databases

Be sure to explore the numerous on-line databases and other electronic resources available to HCPSS students.  Here are just a few for you to get started: