History: Asia: Reference

Materials which are referred to for brief or general information. Examples include:

• Background or overview synopses (encyclopedia)
• Definitions (dictionary)
• Synonyms (thesaurus)
• Statistics
• Biographical Details
• Maps (atlas)

Reference resources are organized in an order that aids searching (alphabetically, chronologically, etc).  Most include an index which points users to the appropriate section.  Tips for searching:

1. Decide on your search terms
2. Try searching with them
3. If not satisfied with the results, try searching a synonym or related idea

Things to watch out for:

• Is the computer searching only the title/header of the entries or the full-text of the information?  You will get more results, but more of them will be irrelabent if you are searching the full-text.
• Are you searching for a proper noun (name, place,...)?  Make sure that the spelling is correct and try variations if it originated in a foreign language.
• Searching for something by date?  This is trickier than it sounds.  If possible, search for an event name or topic rather than a date, e.g. civil rights movement or hippies or flower children rather than 1960s.

Encyclopedia of Modern Asia
Call Number: Ref DS 4 .L48 2002

Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture
Call Number: Ref DS 33 .C63 2000

Modern China: an encyclopedia of history, culture, and nationalism
Call Number: Ref DS 733 .M54 1998

Japan: an illustrated encyclopedia
Call Number: Ref DS 805 .J263 1993

Historical dictionary of Indonesia
Call Number: Ref DS 633 .C75 2004

Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture
Call Number: Ref DS 822.5 .E516 2002

• Historical Maps of East Asia
• History of Japan: An Annotated Directory of Internet Resources
• Internet East Asian History Sourcebook
• INTERSECTIONS: Gender, History & Culture in the Asian Context
• Japan Focus
• Modern Japan in archives: 100-year history from the opening of the country to the San Francisco Peace Treaty
• Stanford JGuide - Japan > History
• Stanford JGuide - Japan > World War II
• WWW Sites for Japanese History