Resources – The Digital Past: Tech & the Tudors

Tutorials and Documentation

GitHub help:

General GitHub documentation
Specific documentation on GitHub Desktop
What you can and can’t do with GitHub Mobile
How to set up your GitHub Pages (username.github.io) repository
Using Terminal with GitHub and messed something up? Here are some helpful commands to fix common errors
Markdown tutorial
StackEdit (real time display of what your markdown will look like )

Twine help:

Searching the Internet

Doing Google searches is not a good place to start doing research for your projects. You should use all the other sources listed below on this page instead. But guess what? I know that no matter what I tell you, some of you are going to use Google search (or some other search engine) anyway! So here’s some quick advice on how to practice safe search:

Once you do a Google search, use the top level menu to filter down to just “Book” results. This weeds out random web pages and sends you to books published on the subject. Many can be consulted through Amazon or Google Books web previews so you can read about what you searched for without buying the whole book.
Instead of searching regular Google, search Google Scholar, which limits its search to academic articles, books, etc.
If you end up on Wikipedia, skim the article but then move on to consulting the articles and books listed in footnotes and the bibliography.
Read the optional class book, Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg, Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online, to learn how to fact-check the things you find online (also good for life in general!)

Key Library Links

British History Online (primary sources)
Direct link to GMU login for Bibliography of British and Irish history
Direct link to GMU login for Daily Life Through History
Direct link to GMU login for Early English Books Online (primary sources)
Direct link to GMU login for ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Direct link to GMU login for JSTOR (academic research journals)
Direct link to GMU login for Oxford English Dictionary (how era-appropriate is your language?)
Direct link to GMU login for Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (short biographies on people of historical significance)
Direct link to GMU login for Perdita Manuscripts (primary sources, women’s writing)
Direct link to GMU login for Project Muse (academic research journals)
GMU Advanced Catalog Search (select WRLC catalogs to see all books in the northern Virginia area that can be rapidly shipped to campus)
GMU InfoGuide on British/UK History (note: weighted towards later history, but still has some good stuff on it)
Worldcat (if you’re not near a GMU campus and are trying to find the closest copy of a book near to your current location)

Finding Journal Articles

There are numerous ways to find journal articles on early modern English history. One good way to start is by “bibliography chaining,” which is just a fancy way of saying: read the footnotes of another book/article, if a book/article listed in those footnotes sounds interesting/relevant then go look it up by name in the library catalog and read it.

You can also browse and search by keywords/subject. Many articles are included in the basic search bar of the GMU Library’s catalog. You can also search databases of journal articles, such as JSTOR or Project Muse (linked above). Alternatively, you can search for specific journals and look for relevant articles within them. Some potential journals to look for (all of which you should have *free access* to via GMU) include:

Other Writing Tips, Guides, and Information

Joe Miller’s Writing Tips: These writing tips were created by the late Dr. Joseph C. Miller and are shared here for academic/classroom use only with his permission. The following link will give you a zip file you must uncompress to get to the Word documents: Miller’s Writing Tips