User:Pieter Kuiper/sources

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From User talk:Angusmclellan/Archive 11#Swedish history:

But it is not a good idea to base an article on NE or Vikingatidens ABC. Those articles are generally short and lack depth.
There are scholarly reference works which give a good overview while at the same time relating to earlier authors and historiography.
  • SBL is one; the earlier volumes are somewhat dated, but at least give good references to earlier literature.
  • Another is the Scandinavian collaboration project Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder/Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid.
  • LIBRIS includes the digitized Svensk historisk bibliografi for the last few decades (from 1977, but uneven when it comes to individual periodicals), and articles in a large number of periodicals can be found there, including HT, Scandia, Fornvännen and many of the regional or more specialized periodicals (a complete list of indexed periodicals can be found here). It also includes articles or chapters published in festschrifts.
  • Before that, there are the many volumes of the printed Svensk historisk bibliografi (covering the period 1771-1976).
  • Some textbooks also give a quick, good overview of earlier research, such as Jerker Rosén's and Sten Carlsson's Svensk historia from 1962 (dated, but has good commented bibliographies of research until that time).
  • Dissertations tend to include reviews of earlier literature and are a good starting-point for further research. Recent dissertations can be found in the databases of the individual universities or in the diva-portal database. With a few exceptions, dissertations in history are not available in digital form, only in print, but one can usually find an abstract. Older dissertations can generally be found in Libris. Many Swedish dissertations have been reviewed in foreign history journals, such as the American Historical Review, which is available through Jstor.
To write an article describing a complicated issue (and almost any historical topic tends to be a complicated issue, when you look close enough), you need to acquire an understanding beyond what you can get from very short and "pre-distilled" references like NE. Olaus 11:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)