The SFCC Library offers a variety of sources useful for researching topics in the history of the Middle East, and this guide is intended to help you identify them and use them effectively. Due to language issues, research may be a bit more challenging in this class than in some others. However, thanks to a variety of online databases as well as cooperative agreements with other regional libraries, it is certainly possible to do both extensive and high quality research.
It is strongly recommended that you start early, as research takes time. It is likely you will need to use interlibrary loan, and if so, please allow extra time to locate and receive books or copies of articles.
It also a good idea to keep a record of where you get information as you go along–nothing is more frustrating than trying to compile a bibliography when you can't remember where you got your information!
George Suttle (533-3807, georges 'at' spokanefalls.edu) is the library's liaison for Social Sciences classes, but never hesitate to ask any librarian for help.
Finding Books & Videos
The SFCC Library shares a joint online catalog with SCC at http://ccs.wash-id.net/ The catalog lists books, videos, magazines, journals, and other items held by one or both of the two libraries.
For books you can check out, you may simply wish to browse the mezzanine book stacks around the Dewey call numbers from 956-958, which is the area for Middle East history. (Titles about Islam as a religion are around Dewey 297.)
Since community college libraries do not generally acquire or maintain deep research collections, you may need to seek books at cooperating institutions in the Washington-Idaho Network (WIN) of libraries. Students and faculty can use our online catalog to search for and request items from the libraries at Gonzaga, Whitworth, North Idaho College, the University of Idaho, among others. Items will be delivered via courier, usually within 3-4 days, to the SFCC circulation desk, where they may be checked out.
In addition, consider searching catalogs for libraries physically nearby, such as Eastern Washington University and the Spokane city and county public libraries. Links to these are provided at http://library.spokanefalls.edu/LibraryandCatalogs.stm
Last but not least, Google has been scanning entire books into its vast databases, and it is thus possible to see at least part of several million titles via books.google.com. Depending on copyright status and the owner's wishes, Google may show nothing, snippets of text, multiple pages, or the entire book.
Reference sources
Reference items are usually distinguished by having an "R" or "REF" before the call number. Reference works are especially good for statistical data, information which must be up-to-date (e.g., addresses and phone numbers), and for quick overviews of a topic such as one finds in an encyclopedia.
Items in a reference collection usually cannot be checked out, but you can make photocopies if you like. You can also browse similar call numbers in the circulating stacks to find books which can be checked out.
The following printed reference books are in the SFCC library; you might want to look around the same call numbers in other libraries for similar kinds of books.
While the library has and will continue to buy printed reference books, the trend these days is to purchase reference books as online editions. This allows students to access the contents of such books from home at times when the library isn't open.
The following online reference books can be accessed almost any time, wherever you have an internet connection; off-campus users will need to put in their usernames (without the @stu part) and passwords:
Among the great civilizations of the world, Islam remains an enigma to Western readers. Now, in a beautifully illustrated historical atlas, noted scholar of religion Malise Ruthven recounts the fascinating and important history of the Islamic world.
This set "covers the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa, with major sections on Colonialism and Imperialism, the World Wars, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the United Nations involvement in the region. Each country in the region is reviewed, detailing its population, economy and government."
This is "a general introduction to the Islamic world from the point of view of those who lived there when the Islamic world represented much of the best of what human civilization had to offer with respect to political order, military prowess, economic vitality, and civil society, as well as intellectual and scientific inquiry." Note: There are numerous titles from this source which might be useful; the SFCC Library does not subscribe to all the titles on this list.
Focuses on cultures and countries around the world, specifically what is and is not shared culturally by the people who live in a particular country. Entries contain descriptive summaries of the country in question, including demographic, historical, cultural, economic, religious, and political information.
Information on the culture and traditions of 177 nations around the world is contained in CultureGrams. Special features include authentic recipes and short biographies of famous individuals from each county and a photo gallery.
Contains over 120,000 articles, an updated world atlas, thousands of images and videos, an online dictionary and thesaurus, over 300,000 articles from respected magazines and journals, news headlines, a guide to the Web's best sites, and much more.
The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion traces the roots of the relationship between politics and religion from antiquity to the present, revealing how it has shaped public discourse, social attitudes, collective action, and national and international policy, particularly during the past two centuries.
Examines the many issues surrounding immigration from a wide variety of perspectives - from the earliest settlement of British North America in the 17th century through the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of the 21st century. Places special emphasis on the many ethnic communities that have provided American immigrants.
Adopts an international, cross-cultural approach to such diverse topics as adolescent parenthood, family planning, cohabitation, widowhood, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, codependency, and commuter marriages. Includes articles specific to countries and religious traditions, examining the history of family life within these cultures and discussing how families have been affected by political and social change.
Databases
The SFCC Library subscribes to a number of commercial databases, some of which offer access to complete newspaper, magazine, and journal articles. Others include online books, primary documents, images, statistical data, and a variety of other things.
In addition to the full text of more than 130 leading history periodicals, the History Reference Center also offers the entire contents of more than 2,300 reference books, encyclopedias and other non-fiction titles; also included are more than 61,100 historical documents, 66,000 biographies of historical figures, more than 110,200 historical photos and maps, and some 80 hours of historical video.
Academic Search Complete is a full-text database of more than 5,990 periodicals, mostly peer-reviewed. This database has a more academic orientation than one such as ProQuest, which emphasizes popular magazines and newspapers.
JSTOR provides complete academic journal articles for a variety of subject areas; it is intended to offer archival access to older issues, and is not meant to locate the most current articles.
Although excellent for a broad range of topics, ProQuest is not our best database for scholarly articles in history. However, there are some Middle East history journals available here, so it's worth a look.
Comprehensive, country specific information about political, economic, cultural, business and environmental information can be found in the Country Reviews. Current news wire reports can be located for each country via the Country Wire.
The following indexes will have articles on Middle Eastern topics. However, as these databases are more often useful for contemporary controversial issues, the focus will be on political and socio-economic events such as terrorism, Islamic radicalism, petroleum prices, and so forth.
CQ Researcher is published about 45 times per year, and covers one topic very thoroughly in each issue. While the topic you're interested in might not have been covered recently, the online version goes back some fifteen years. The Library also has print editions in the reference section.
Opposing Viewpoints provides full-text pro- and con- coverage of numerous topics. It can be browsed or searched. Also provides some access to magazine and journal articles.
World Wide Web Resources
The World Wide Web has become indispensable for research, but the challenge is to identify stable, reputable academic sources. Search engines such as Google return too many hits, and most of them are not suitable. An excellent site listing various specialized search tools is
Look for sites that are kept up to date and which have an identifiable author or responsible party. You should be able to locate contact information easily (postal addresses, phone numbers, or at least an email address, ideally to someone more specific than "webmaster").
Once you find suitable sources of information, you will need to cite what you use. Please consult our list of citation resources.
Suggested Sites
Finally, the following Web sites may offer useful advice and guidance:
Claims to offer "everything you'll ever want to know about sentence structure and using the parts of speech correctly." This is one of a set of related, interlinked pages, all addressing topics of clear writing, punctuation, and communication in general.
The Online Writing Lab, or OWL, at Purdue University has dozens of handouts and guides available, both on matters of grammar, punctuation, and style, as well as on professional/business topics such as report writing, abtracting, resumes, cover letters, and so forth. A very useful resource.
