Locating historical scholarship and resources
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America: History & Life from EBSCOhostAmerica: History and Life is an index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database includes citations and links to journal articles, dissertations, primary documents, and book and media reviews. Some content is available full-text (PDF and HTML). Allows limiting to peer reviewed articles, those with references, and to historical periods (date ranges). 1863-present.
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ArchiveGridArchiveGrid provides more than 7 million records "describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more," from 1,400 archival institutions mainly from the US but with some international coverage. Finding aids include linked cross-references by subject heading, genre, personal names, groups, and places. Records also provide maps and contact information to make arrangements for examining the collections in person or, occasionally, online.
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Congressional Serial Set (from ProQuest) Don’t be misled by the title: as the official historical record of the U.S. government, these resources are essential for any historical, political, or cultural research of the United States. The US Congressional Serial Set(incorporating American State Papers,1789-1838, and maps,1789-1969) includes documents on virtually every topic the US Congress has taken an interest in – which can be just about anything anywhere in the world -- since 1789 both for law-making and for oversight of executive-branch agencies: congressional reports on public and private legislation considered during each Congress (example); reports of investigations commissioned or conducted by Congress or its parts (example); reports from federal executive agencies (including land surveys, research and statistical publications, and reports of scientific investigations and explorations) submitted to Congress (example); budgets of the United States (since 1923) (example); treaties presented to the Senate (since 1979) (example); and reports and other documents of select nongovernmental organizations (example), from the Red Cross to the Smithsonian and the American Legion to the American Historical Association. Comprising only documents Congress has declared to be particularly important, the Serial Set does not (usually) include text of bills and resolutions, hearings, nor committee prints. See ProQuest's Serial Set guide. Alternative access to the Serials Set: HeinOnline. Our existing Hein databases have always contained substantial portions of the Serial Set, including the American State Papers, comprehensive coverage of Foreign Relations of the United States, and thousands of House and Senate reports and documents inside compiled federal legislative histories.
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Social ExplorerSocial Explorer focuses on representing patterns in historical demographics of the United States since the first census in 1790. International coverage has less historical depth but includes recent census data from Canada and the UK, EuroStat's European Statistics, and the World Bank's World Development Indicators. The easy-to-use web interface lets users create maps and tables to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change. In addition to its comprehensive data resources, Social Explorer offers features and tools to meet the needs of demography experts and novices alike.
Complements the broader but recent US coverage in PolicyMap for social policy and the US and Canadian coverage in SimplyAnalytics for business. -
Document Bank of Virginiathe Library of Virginia’s initiative to get documents into classrooms. Using primary sources, teachers can make history relevant to students while helping them learn and understand state standards. DBVa will teach students to be critical thinkers as they analyze the original documents and draw their own conclusions about Virginia’s past.
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Virginia Heritage Archives Databaseindexes finding aids (collection descriptions) to manuscripts and archival materials held by libraries across Virginia. These finding aids may link to digitized versions of these materials, but the majority of these collections have not been digitized, requiring researchers to go to the respective repositories.. 1607-present.
Academic journal archives (could be primary or secondary, depending on use)
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PAO: Periodicals Archive OnlineComplementing the better-known JSTOR with a more international orientation, PAO is a archive of more than 700 periodicals in the humanities and social sciences since their first issues. More than 150 are in languages other than English. Coverage is from volume 1, issue 1 of each journal, and all issues are digitized from cover to cover.
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JSTORJSTOR (from Journal STORage) is an archive of academic journals in the humanities, social science, and sciences, from earliest issues up to 3-6 years before present. So for some purposes, it is a collection of secondary sources and for others, primary sources.
If you want to do a comprehensive, up-to-date search of the literature on a topic, don't begin in JSTOR; start in a discipline-specific database instead. JSTOR articles are exact facsimiles of originally as originally printed: they will include information may be obsolete and may use words that have shifted meaning and/or have become regarded as inappropriate, incomplete, or worse. But if you want to know what scholars in, say, the 1930s said about controversial topics like race, some religious traditions, gender and sexuality, or mental or physical impairments, you will need to use search terms that match words of that time, not ours, even though they may offend you deeply. -
HeinOnline Portal Large and wide-ranging collections of historical and contemporary legal materials, including codes, treaties, constitutions, topical collections of historical documents, law reviews (resembling JSTOR), legal treatises from the US, Canada, and the UK. Not limited to narrowly legal topics: includes, for example, Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law.
Indexes to popular and specialist literatures
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C19: The Nineteenth Century Index: Periodicals (from ProQuest)Portal to citations in American and British periodical indexes from the "long" 19th century. Search individually or cross-search with several governmental and book indexes. Tech won't necessarily have online or physical access to every indexed item.
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Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 from EBSCOhostReader's Guide Retrospective indexes citations to articles published in popular magazines and newspapers published in the United States.
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Book Review Digest Retrospective from EBSCOhostCollecting nearly eight decades of H.W. Wilson's Book Review Digest, this archive database provides over a million book review citations from 1903 to 1982. It covers adult and juvenile fiction and nonfiction and provides at least one review excerpt per book.
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Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984 from EBSCOhost Humanities & Social Science Index Retrospective offers the ability to search a wide range of important journals in the humanities and social sciences as far back as 1907. Coverage also includes content from H.W. Wilson’s International Index.1907-1984.
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Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective: 1908-1981 from EBSCOhost The Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective indexes citations to articles and summaries in annual surveys of laws and courts, legal journals, and legal yearbooks. 1908-1981.
Background: overviews and themes in United States history
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Oxford Research Encyclopedias : American HistoryThis continuously updated scholarly reference work is part of Oxford University Press's Research Encyclopedias series. It contains commissioned articles in the field of American History.
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Gale EbooksGale Ebooks is a collection of searchable ebook reference works, formerly known as Gale Virtual Reference Library. You can search within a particular work or across the entire collection. Individual articles from these sources are presented in HTML and PDF. Illustrations, photos, maps, and multimedia content is often included.
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U.S. History in Context from GaleGale in Context: U.S. History provides curated topic pages with academic journal articles, primary sources, reference works, news sources, multimedia, and biographies on people and peoples, events, places, conflicts, the government, movements, and economics. Use only as a starting point to help you frame your own, original research. Talk to your instructors about whether using materials from pre-selected sources in this database is acceptable under the Honor Code.
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CQ Researcher Plus Archive Begun in 1923 as a service providing background information and pro/con arguments for American editorial writers, CQ Researcher Plus Archive is a window on hot topics in public life across the 20th century as well as a tool to make sense of today's controversies. It can function as starting point for background information, search terms, and topics to use in searching archived journalistic sources. Language and viewpoints in archived reports are products of their time and culture; a browseable "issue tracker" allow you to connect historical and recent discussions without needing to know or use obscure and possibly offensive search terms. Part of CQ Press Library collection of political, news, and reference works.