Research Guides

Conducting Primary Research

This guide, developed by Mount Holyoke archivists and librarians, is an outline of the process of doing primary research. Its purpose is to provide students with advice for thinking and working through the research process from choosing a topic to actually sitting down to read through a group of papers or records.

Guide to Conducting Research (Duke University Libraries)

The examples in this guide are based on resources and services available in the Duke University Libraries. However, the general concepts make the guide useful for anyone conducting research in a library.

Library Research Using Primary Sources (UC Berkeley Teaching Library)

This guide provides especially helpful information on getting started and using library catalogs to identify primary sources.

Primary Sources Research (Yale University)

This site was created to support a colloquium. It includes definitions and extensive bibliographies.

 

Searching for Books

Search the Five College Online Library Catalog by author, title, keyword or subject.

Bibliographies and Indexes

America : History and Life (1964- )

Citations, with abstracts, to social science humanities literature on all aspects of US and Canadian history, culture and current affairs from prehistoric times to present. Includes articles, book reviews, chapters from books, dissertations and articles from approximately 2100 journals.

Arts and Humanities Citation Index (1975- )

Indexes more than 1,300 arts and humanities journals and selected articles from more than 5,800 social science and science journals. Indexes articles, chapters in books, and book reviews.

Bibliography of Asian Studies (1971- )

This on-line version of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) contains more than 410,000 records on all subjects (especially humanities and social sciences) pertaining to all parts of Asia.

British Humanities Index (1962- )

Covers some British sources not included in online indexes.

Historical Abstracts (1954- )

Indexes and provides abstracts for articles on the history of the world (other than the US and Canada) from 1450 to the present. Includes articles, chapters of books, book reviews, and dissertations.

Humanities Abstracts (1984- )

Humanities Index (1974- )

Main Periodicals

Indexes humanities journals from 1984 to the present.

ITER (1859-)
An electronic bibliography of interdisciplinary journal literature pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700 A.D.). It currently contains over 230,000 records from more than 400 journal titles and is updated daily.
L'Annee Philogique (1924-)
A comprenehsive, bibliographic index to scholarly work published in any language anywhere in the world concerning the areas of ancient Greek and Latin language and linguistics, Greek and Roman history, literature, philosophy, numismatics, papyrology and epigraphy, and concerning the time period from the second millennium B.C. to roughly 500-800 A.D. Published annually
New York Times

Contains the full-text and images of the New York Times from 1851 to 1999.

Periodical Contents Index

A table of contents database including English and foreign language journals published from 1700 - 1991.

Poole'sPlus/Nineteenth Century Masterfile

Poole's Plus merges 19th century indexes to periodicals, newspapers, books, and government documents into a single, searchable site and contains more than 3 million citations. Includes: Index to the New York Times (1863-1905); Index to Harper's Magazine (1880-1905); Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1906); Stead's Index to Periodical Literature (the "British Poole's") (1890-1902); Index to the New York Daily Tribune 1875-1906; Descriptive catalog of the government publications of the U. S. (1774-1881).

Readers' Guide Retrospective

(1892 - 1982)

Similar in scope to Readers' Guide Abstracts, this database provides indexing to older popular magazines published in the United States and Canada. The print version, Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature covering 1900/04 -1996, is available in the Main Reference Room, call number: AI3 .R48. Access Instructions: After clicking on the link above, the WilsonWeb page should appear. Click the checkbox next to Readers' Guide Retrospective and then click either the Search or SearchPlus buttons on the upper right side of the screen. Periodicals Indexed.

Social Science Abstracts (1983- )

Social Sciences Index (1974- )

Main Periodicals

Indexes social science journals. Consult the paper indexes for the years 1974 - present.

Social Sciences and Humanities Index (1907-1973)

AI3 R49 Reference

 

E-Texts

J-STOR

Provides full-text for selected journals from their beginning through 1993. The most recent five years of these periodicals are available in print in the library.

Project Muse

Provides electronic access to the full text of journals published by Johns Hopkins Press.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 Edition

Although now dated, the 1911 edition contains articles written by some of the major writers and scholars of the time. This edition is also a good place to start identifying primary source material. An especially useful entry is "Periodicals" which lists and describes the major journals and magazines of that period.

Sanborn Map Collection

Sanborn Maps are large-scale plans of a city or town, drawn at a scale of 50 feet to an inch. They were created to assist fire insurance companies. A valuable tool for maping the growth of American towns and cities, the collection is now available online for Massachusetts locations. Most of the maps were created in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

 

Organizations

American Historical Association

Oral History Association

Organization of American Historians

 

WWW Sites (Selected)

General History

History Subject Guide (University of Virginia)

This is a selective, annotated list of websites, grouped by subject area.

Africa

African History on the Internet (Stanford University Libraries)

The Americas

Subject Guides

African American History

Arctic Circle : History and Culture (University of Connecticut)

Indigenous Cultures (NativeWeb)

Labor Links (University of Washington)

United States History to 1865 (University of Washington)

United States History from 1865 (University of Washington)

Digital Archive Resources

National Archives and Records Administration

Contains online exhibits of American historical images and documents, as well as a searchable database of records and digital images of selected holdings (NAIL).

Suffragists Oral History Project (Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley)

Contains transcribed interviews with twelve leaders and participants in the Women's Suffrage Movement. The interviews were taped in the 1970s.

Asia

Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library (Australian National University)

Listing of links dealing with all aspects of Asian Studies, including history.

John Fairbank Memorial Chinese History Virtual Library (maintained by Rob Gray, a Ph.D. student at University of Michigan)

Europe

CAIN (Conflict Archives on the INternet)

Contains a wide range of information and source material on the Northern Ireland conflict from 1968 to the present. The site also contains information on politics in the region and on Northern Ireland society.

EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents From Western Europe (Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University)

Selected transcriptions, reproductions and facsimiles of Western European historical documents.

Internet Library of Early Journals (Joint project by the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Oxford)

Contains digitized 20 year runs of several 18th and 19th century British periodicals.

The Labyrinth : Resources for Medieval Studies (Georgetown University)

Western European Social Sciences & History Web (Western European Specialists Section, Association of College & Research Libraries)