Christine Hawryluk: Digging Deeper

Hi everyone, I hope everyone is enjoying their reading week. Usually people do not want to do anything school related, but this year, at least for me, it happens to be inevitable.

When beginning my research, I found that the term "Holodomor" was a fairly specific term, but then I also thought that "Ukrainian famine" was another option.

I first began my research by heading down to the reference library, since I find that I am usually most successful with books (secondary sources). When I headed down to the library, I found many useful books, but the one that I spent my most time reading was The Holodomor Reader by Bohdan Klid. This book is a sourcebook for many different articles of information including articles, first hand accounts and documents. However, I found myself spending too much time at the library and decided to calls St. Vladimir's Institute in Toronto, which happens to have a library. There I found I was able to take out the above mentioned book, as well as a few others which have been very helpful.

The next thing that I found was a documentary called The Soviet Story which had a small section on the Holodomor, which I found some information that I had not found in my other sources so far. There is another documentary called The Harvest of Despair, which is all about the Holodomor and I have heard from other Ukrainians that it is a very informative documentary.

The final thing that I have done, so far in my research process, is went on to the York University database to see what I could find in the historical databases and I have found absolutely nothing on the York databases that was useful. However, I made an appointment with a librarian at York to assist me on finding sources through York.

However, I decided to look on the Toronto Public Library website and look through their database called the Academic One File, which runs through Ebscohost. I used the Boolean method: Holodomor or Ukrainian famine and removal of grain. I found when I narrowed it down to using this Boolean method, I really narrowed it down and found more useful sources, rather than just using the term Holodomor.

I am finding much success in my research so far and I hope that the rest of this assignment goes this well! Have a great day everyone!