Searching the Scholarly History Literature
The databases listed below are the ones that are most useful to identify articles in History journals. You might get some books and dissertations as well. They also contain many reviews of books and films. Each works differently, too, so, even though there may be some overlap, you could find something different in each.
Only the first one is purely history. The others are more interdisciplinary but will still be useful depending on your specific topic.
NOTE: As you may or may not have learned in the past, these databases do not work like Google. You might want to watch the short video and heed the tips in the box below this list!
- America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new windowThis database covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. With selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1964 to the present, this database also provides full-text coverage of more than 196 journals and more than 92 books.
- Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new windowIndexes and abstracts English-language articles in the most important journals in the humanities, from 1984-present. The full text of many of these articles is available online from 1995 forward. Updated daily. For indexing of articles appearing prior to 1984, use Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective.
- Black Studies Center This link opens in a new windowFully cross-searchable gateway to Black studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and much more. It combines several resources such as Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), Black Literature Index, and historical black newspapers such as the Chicago Defender (1910-1975) and the Daily Defender (1956-1975).
- Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new windowProvides access to more than 7,500 articles focusing on African American history and culture. The articles come from major reference sources and are written by leading scholars in the field. Also includes primary sources, images, and maps.
- LGBTQ+ Source This link opens in a new windowContains all of the content available in LGBT Life as well as full text for more than 140 of the most important and historically significant LGBTQ+ journals, magazines and regional newspapers, plus full text for 150 monographs/books. The database includes comprehensive indexing and abstract coverage as well as a specialized LGBTQ+ Thesaurus containing over 10,000 terms.
- Women's Studies International This link opens in a new windowThe ultimate women's studies resource! Includes over 540,000 records drawn from a variety of essential women's studies databases. 1972-present.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowProvides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics, biology, and other fields of the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences. Consult the online tables of contents for holdings, as coverage varies for each title. Updated monthly.
- Project MUSE This link opens in a new windowSearchable database that provides access to the full text of journals published by Johns Hopkins University Press and other university presses in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics. Consult the online tables of contents for holdings, as coverage varies for each title.
- Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI)--1993-present This link opens in a new windowA cited reference index, indicating which works were cited in the bibliographies of articles in over 1,400 journals in the arts and humanities. 1993-present.
- Berg Fashion Library This link opens in a new windowProvides a wide range of information on dress and body adornment worldwide throughout history. Includes the Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion and other reference works, the full text of nearly 60 other books on fashion, and an extensive collection of color photos of clothing and body adornment. Updated continuously.
Database Searching in 4 Steps: The Video
Is it really only 4 steps?
Pick a Database by answering these questions:
- Who do you want to hear from? Which disciplines would have done research in this area? Or, maybe you want to hear from folks working in a certain field? Perhaps librarians have something to say on that topic? Or oil & gas executives?
- What formats are you going for? Books? Scholarly articles? Streaming video? Newspaper articles?
- Do you need current information? Or, are you wanting to search historically?
Construct/Compose a logical beginning search by:
- Deciding on the simplest, clearest terms for each concept/idea inherent in your research topic; and, then
- connecting the ideas with AND; and, then
- separating synonyms with OR; and, then
- truncating to pick up word variants; and, then
- enclosing any phrases in quotations.
For example the search pictured below is looking for material on how Muslims are portrayed in popular media:
Revise your first search by:
- Scrutinizing your search results looking for additional or better terms; and
- being especially attentive to the words appearing the Subject fields; and
- making logical use of the Boolean OR; and
- perhaps, limiting major concepts to the Subject field search (assuming you saw these words/phrases used as Subjects).
Using the example above, I would change my search like this:
Efficiently sort through your results by:
- Collecting relevant citations using tools of the database; and, then
- emailing yourself formatted citations; and, always
- utilizing the Find-It-@-SCU link to locate additional fulltext.