This guide will assist you in developing your research topic and subsequent paper for HIST 1955: History Capstone or if you are working in the area of current European History (eighteenth century to the present).  It will also provide you with links to helpful sites and people.

According to the Pitt-Greensburg program sheet for history, this discipline "is concerned with the broad range of experiences, events, and decisions which have taken place in the past and which have shaped our current world."

• Develop a topic that asks a question or poses a problem that interests you.

• Select appropriate search terms for your subject. In the field of European history, you will want to be more specific in your search terms to yield better results. For example:
  • Holocaust
  • Nazism
  • Battle of Britain
  • Iron Curtain
  • Cold War
  • Gulag
  • Berlin Wall

• Search PITTCat+ and subject oriented databases.
• Revise your topic. Determine how you will answer your question.
• Evaluate your resources carefully!
• When in doubt, contact your librarian.

These sample worksheets will help you refine your research topic, understand how to evaluate a scholarly journal article and explain what a literature review is.