Resource Guides: History: HTY 389: WWII in Europe

Reference and Instruction Librarian

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About this course

Course Description:
The Second World War was clearly one of the single greatest events of the twentieth century, with profound impact on the modern world we live in today. This 15-week online topics course will examine the short- and long-term diplomatic, political, economic, social, and military causes and impacts of World War II in Europe. Using primary and secondary sources, as well as films, oral testimonies, and online sources, we will trace how the war was prosecuted in the air, on the land, and sea, and consider the themes of diplomacy, collaboration, occupation, resistance, forced migration, genocide, and war crimes. In addition, we will engage in myth-busting by using case studies such as the life and death of Adolf Hitler, the alleged Nazi creation of Fanta orange soda, the presence of Nazi werewolves in Alpine redoubts, and operational deceptions as happened around the D-Day landings. The course will conclude with an examination of the modern day political, economic, and social consequences and legacies of World War Two in Europe.

Databases

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Academic Search Complete is a large scholarly, multidisciplinary, full-text database, with more than 7,400 full-text periodicals, including more than 6,300 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 11,500 scholarly, popular, trade, and special interest serials, and a total of more than 12,000 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, and more. Updated daily.
Credo Reference This link opens in a new window Credo Reference has 3.2 million entries from more than 450 encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, guides, and atlases in all fields. Sources are selected from major publishers, such as Bloomsbury, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Greenwood, Penguin, Routledge, Sage, Thames and Hudson, Wiley, and more. Bangor Public Library provides access via its in-house workstations.
Religion and Philosophy Collection This link opens in a new window Religion & Philosophy Collection features a selection of more than 200 magazines and academic journals--everything from Anglican Journal to Zygon--covering religion and the related areas of philosophy and anthropology. Researchers can use this database not only to study theological approaches to social issues, but also to learn about the impact that religion has had on culture throughout history, including literature, arts, and language. Coverage, which includes more than 1.1 million articles updated daily, begins as early as 1980 for indexing and 1983 for periodical full text.
World History Collection This link opens in a new window World History Collection provides access to scholarly journals and magazines useful to both novice historians as well as advanced academic researchers. The database offers balanced coverage of events in world history and scholarly work being established in the field.
National Geographic Kids This link opens in a new window Engage students and broaden their horizons with reputable, authoritative, and age-appropriate content that brings them the world in a way they've never seen it before. Fun and substantive, National Geographic Kids. will take them on amazing adventures in science, nature, culture, archaeology, and space. Fuel your students' natural curiosity with National Geographic Kids. Excite them to learn and dare them to explore more!
Avalon Project at Yale Law School This link opens in a new window Contains digital documents relevant to the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy and government.
British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new window British Newspapers, 1780 -1950 is a digital historic newspaper archive. It cross-searches and provides full-text access to national & regional papers from the British Isles in the following Gale collections: 19th century British Library Newspapers, Parts 1 and 2; and British Newspapers,1780-1950, Parts 3 and 4.
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies This link opens in a new window The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies currently holds more than 4,400 testimonies, which are composed 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. 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. Testimonies were recorded in whatever language the witness preferred, and range in length from 30 minutes to over 40 hours (recorded over several sessions). Users will be granted access to the resource by following this multi-step process, as listed on the resource's web page: 1) Register in Aviary CLICK HERE! 2) Receive Confirmation Email 3) Search and Request Access to Testimonies and 4) View Requested Testimonies.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window Indexes and provides full-text access to more than 400 journals from 100 not-for-profit scholarly publishers. Project MUSE covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others. University of Maine at Augusta subscribes to the Basic College Collection.
Times (London) Digital Archive This link opens in a new window The Times (London) Digital Archive (1785 - 5 years ago) offers searchable full text, with full page and article facsimiles (PDF) from the newspaper. This resource includes articles, reviews, advertising and classified ads, photos, maps and graphics, editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries and birth and death notices. Does not include the Sunday edition.

Teacher Reference Center This link opens in a new window Teacher Reference Center is an index of over 260 titles from the most popular teacher and administrator trade journals, periodicals, and books, offered free by EBSCO. This database provides coverage on key education topics such as Assessment, Continuing Education, Current Pedagogical Research, Curriculum Development, Instructional Media, Language Arts, Literacy Standards, Science & Mathematics, and more, for K-12 Teachers & Librarians.
Education Full Text This link opens in a new window Education Full Text, published by H.W. Wilson, provides high-quality indexing and abstracts for an international range of English-language education journals, books, and yearbooks. More than 725 Journals are indexed, cover to cover, going back to 1983. Full text articles are provided for over 350 journals going back to 1996. ArticleLinker connects to additional full-text articles and points to library holdings in print and microform.
Educator's Reference Complete This link opens in a new window This collection of more than 1,100 periodicals and 200 reports is a great resource for any educator--from the school teacher and administrator to those studying in the field at the collegiate and graduate level. Educator's Reference Complete seeks to provide full text for titles in the Eric database and covers multiple levels of education from preschool to college, and every educational specialty--such as technology, bilingual education, health education, and testing. It also provides insight on issues in administration, funding, and policy.

Academic Video Online: History This link opens in a new window History Discipline-specific Titles. Academic Video Online: Premium is the largest and most comprehensive video subscription available to libraries. It delivers more than 48,000 video titles spanning essential subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, history, music, film, and more. More than half of the titles can be found only at Alexander Street.
Digital Campus (Swank Motion Pictures) This link opens in a new window Click "Use maine.edu Login" to use. Major Hollywood and independent movie studios have appointed Swank as their exclusive licensing and distribution partner to offer their box-office hits for public performance in non-theatrical markets (markets outside theaters)". Please contact Cynthia Young or Donna Maher to secure rights to films in the Digital Campus catalog.
Films on Demand: Master Academic Collection This link opens in a new window Films On Demand is a streaming video platform providing outstanding educational video content. Integrates into curriculum through learning management systems, online lesson plans, distance learning courseware, or electronic card catalog systems. Includes the FMG Archival Films & Newsreels Collection.
Kanopy Video Streaming This link opens in a new window Kanopy is a leading Australian based distributor of tertiary educational videos (streaming videos and DVDs). Major subjects covered include: The arts, business and training, health sciences, media and communication, natural sciences, social sciences, and teacher education.

Various resources

The GeaCron Project The GeaCron Project is a customizable geo-temporal database for historical research. Use the map to investigate known countries, states, nation states, ethnic groupings, and other named partitions of the geographic world through history.
Old Maps Online Search engine for historical maps.
Digital Collections at the Beinecke Library Search for "map" and then what you are looking for.
Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection: Historical Maps eg., "Historical Atlas," by William R Shepherd (1923): https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/history_shepherd_1923.html. Digitized images of Shepherd's historical atlas at the Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection, UT Austin.
Digital Maps @ LoC
Various map websites
World War Two Newsmaps
David Rumsey Map Collection The David Rumsey Map Collection was started over 30 years ago and contains more than 150,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, wall maps, globes, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children's, and manuscript maps. Items range in date from about 1550 to the present.

"Mapping through the ages: the history of Cartography," by Caitlin Dempsey, GIS Lounge

German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) Subjects: Primary Documents, History, Religion
Veterans History Project @ LoC Listen to WWII veterans tell their story. The Veterans History Project contains oral history from veterans who served in wars from WWI- Present.
British Pathé This website has video footage from 1896 to the 1970s.
Primary Sources in American History - Bowdoin College
How to Analyze a Primary Source - Carleton College
There are many other resources on this page, too. Check 'em out!
Document Analysis Worksheets - National Archives
Guidelines for Writing a Critical Analysis of a Primary Document - Bowdoin
"Using your freshly honed skillset at primary source analysis, find a primary source related to the war in the West spring/summer 1940 (Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France – as well as Great Britain). Here is a link to what might constitute a primary source:"

World War II Resources @ Chowan U
Contains an incredible list of resources including women, D-Day, and African-Americans in WWII.
Primary Sources - WWII - U of Exeter
World War II This guide has been developed to provide links to resources that could be useful in research about the World War II. It provides information on searching WestCat and I-Share, indexes that can be used to locate information about World War II history and links to digital and other collections that could be used for research about World War II.
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Check out the pages on Government Info, Digital Collections, and Statistics.
History: WWII @ Koç University Below and to the left of the books are interesting videos and other links.

CDRI: Digital Resources for the Study of Religion "The Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative of the American Theological Library Association and Association of Theological Schools is a repository of digital resources contributed by member libraries."
The Global Religious Landscape PEW Research Center "Worldwide, more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group. A comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life estimates that there are 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children around the globe, representing 84% of the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion."
World Digital Library Large, well-organized collection of print and visual primary sources from ancient to current times. Material may be browsed by place, time, topic, type of resource, or contributing institution.
Online Library of Liberty The OLL is a curated collection of scholarly works that engage with vital questions of liberty. Spanning the centuries from Hammurabi to Hume, and collecting material on topics from art and economics to law and political theory, the OLL provides you with a rich variety of texts to explore and consider.
Hanover Historical Texts Collection Presents texts from ancient to modern times. Material touches on the Crusaders, Italian Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, French Revolution, and many other topics. The Hanover Historical Texts Collection makes available digital versions of historical texts for use in history and humanities courses.
Internet History Sourcebooks Project - WWII The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use.
WWII @ BBC The causes, events and people of the most destructive war in history. **This page has been archived and is no longer updated.
Hyperwar - A Hypertext History of the Second World War Has information about political papers, treaties, and all branches of the armed service. This website also has detailed information about the Pacific and European theaters of operations.
World War II in Europe Timeline Timeline with Photos and Text Timeline in separated into years for easy access. Also has photos and more than 100 links.
World War Two Collection @ UNT These materials focus on WWII and the immediate postwar period of the late 1940s. In addition to materials created during the time period, materials may include modern studies and commemorative works about the era.
The American Soldier in World War II During World War II, the US Army administered more than 200 surveys to over half a million American troops to discover what they thought and how they felt about the conflict and their military service. The surviving collection of studies is now accessible to the public for the first time at The American Soldier in World War II. Browse and search over 65,000 pages of uncensored, open-ended responses handwritten by servicemembers, view and download survey data and original analyses, read topical essays by leading historians, and access additional learning resources.

Open Educational Resources (OER) are freely accessible, scholarly learning tools made available on the web for education. OER also stands in as a name for the movement of scholars working toward making published knowledge more freely accessible without sacrificing quality or academic rigor. Some OER in World History, Ancient History, and History are: